The only other person I have fallen in love with that way is Jesus, and I hope that goes more smoothly. I hope I remember, when I'm bored with Him, and antsy, and sick of brushing my teeth next to the same god every morning, I hope I remember not to leave Him. I am not so worried that He will leave me. The Bible, after all, is full of stories about God sticking with His Bride, no matter how stiff-necked and prideful and unfaithful she may be.

Scholars have endlessly written about antebellum Protestant thinking about slavery. Now, finally, Friends of the Unrighteous Mammon turns a spotlight on a new, crucial question: how did antebellum Protestants parse capitalism? For anyone who seeks to understand the political economy of the antebellum era-or, indeed, the complex entanglement of Christianity and capitalism today-this book is critical. I, for one, am very grateful to Stewart Davenport for having written it.

I feel annoyed that in His wisdom, [God] chose to reel me in with middle-brow Christian fiction. It could be worse, I suppose. I could have come to faith while reading Left Behind.

Sometimes, as in a great novel, you cannot see until you get to the end that God was leaving clues for you all along.

I am not a saint. I am, however, beginning to learn that I am a small character in a story that is always fundamentally about God.

In observing the Sabbath, one is both giving a gift to God and imitating Him.

The church has long used the concept of sacraments--outward signs of inward grace--to name the spaces where God meets us in an especially present way. For many Christians, however, that language seems abstract, even (sadly) foreign. Dean Nelson lovingly explores those spaces of encountering God; his luminous book has helped me see anew the sacred in the ordinary. I am grateful.