Literature on sex and gender seems to be more interesting than books on mission.
Christianity Today has revealed which book reviews got the most readers in 2019. On top of the list appears Nadia Bolz-Weber with the book Shameless: A Sexual Reformation followed by Mark A. Yarhouse’s Costly Obedience: What We Can Learn from the Celibate Gay Christian Community.
21 martyrs
No mission books made it into the top 10 list of the most read book reviews. In 15th place there is however a book that focuses on Christians living and working abroad. Martin Mosebach’s The 21: A Journey into the Land of Coptic Martyrs tells the story of the 21 Christians who got martyred by ISIS on the shores of Libya in 2015.
The author aims at finding out who these 21 martyrs were. He describes them as a “poor… inconspicuous little group heading out to look for jobs together”. He also portrays their Coptic background and gives the readers a little taste of their spiritual lives. The book shares how they sang, prayed, and read the Bible together in the evenings. Some of them were illiterate and were thus dependent on others reading the Bible passages for them.
Average men
“These were average young men, completely normal guys. I never would have thought they’d become saints,” states one of their pastors in the book.
Christianity Today has also made a list of the most read stories about the persecuted church in 2019. This list is topped by an article displaying how Chinese authorities are shutting down one of the biggest churches in Beijing, followed by stories on persecution in Algeria and India.
By Steinar Opheim