Two weeks after America’s COVID-19 shutdowns, a friend of mine gathered ten thoughtful Christian women to read the novel 1984. We called ourselves The Plague Reading Group, focused as we were with placing words from the past around our turbulent present.
Since 2020, when we first met on Zoom, we’ve moved outside and then finally inside. We’ve read dystopian fiction and histories of the fall of empires. Over plates of Korean short ribs and Swedish meatballs, we digest what we’ve read together, sharing our reading over a long table robed in candlelight.
Books, and a shared desire to understand the times we’re in, brought us together.
As Christians, we are “people of the Book.” Each Sunday, we read, recite, and are formed and fed by the reading and preaching of God’s Word. The Bible is always a conversation partner to the other books on our nightstands and bookshelves.
It is our delight, then, to invite you to this feast of words. We’re particularly proud to share our annual CT Book Awards, curated by our senior books editor, Matt Reynolds.
Also in the issue, editor in chief Russell Moore shares how his own book club taught him how to live and die well. Picking up that theme, Jen Wilkin explains how biblical structure illustrates our life arc in “A Life’s Faithful Symmetry.” Mark Meynell shows us how C. S. Lewis’s sermon “Learning in War-Time” relates to ministers in Ukraine today.
Poet Malcolm Guite guides us into the pleasures of poetry as a vehicle for developing a Christian imagination, vital in our time of division and polarization. Emily Belz reports how churches in New York City are preserving endangered languages. And in Guest Appearances, you’ll read how hope is a muscle from journalist Krista Tippett.
We pray that as you read the stories on these pages, your own muscle of hope will be strengthened to work at connection rather than division, at truth rather than disinformation, at goodness rather than rancor.
Good reading so often goes with good eating, as both are vehicles for communion with God and each other. To whet your appetite for good conversation and good gathering, enjoy my sister-in-law’s recipe for your next book club or dinner. Take up and eat!
Kerry’s Mustard Braised Pork
Ingredients:
- A 5–7 pound pork butt roast or similar (bone-in is more tender)
- 1 bulb of fresh garlic
- Salt and pepper, to taste
- Yellow mustard and brown sugar, to taste
- 1 small can of pineapple juice (may substitute apple juice)
Instructions:
- Preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Use a knife to make holes in the meat, and insert a whole peeled garlic clove in each hole—about 6 to 8 cloves altogether. Salt and pepper all four sides of the roast (kosher salt is best). Score the fat cap with a knife.
- Warm up a well-greased dutch oven or other casserole dish over medium heat on the stove. Place the roast fat side down first, and then, using tongs to rotate it, brown all four sides, nudging it to keep it from sticking.
- With the fat side back on top, spread some mustard and brown sugar on the fat. Pour in some pineapple juice until there is at least an inch of liquid at the bottom of the pan.
- Cover and place in the oven. After an hour, reduce the heat to 275 degrees.
- Cook for 3–4 hours until the meat chunks easily.
This is great to serve alongside boiled potatoes or roasted vegetables. You can thicken the pan gravy with cornstarch and pour it over the meat and vegetables. Serve all together on a platter and bring to the table. Mustard and currant jam make lovely condiments.
This article appeared in the January/February 2025 issue of Christianity Today as "Editor's Note".