The Books Briefing: As the Good Book Says | Books Briefing - The Atlantic

Each week in the Books Briefing, we thread together Atlantic stories on books that share similar ideas, and ask you for recommendations of what our list left out.

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Your weekly guide to the best in books by Rosa Inocencio Smith, assistant editor at The Atlantic. 

Photo: New York Public Library

Faith, for many people, is a deeply personal thing: a set of spiritual beliefs that are inseparable from one’s identity. At the same time, especially in the context of organized religion, faith is defined by social customs—and this combination of private passion and public practice can sometimes be fraught. In one recent book, Jemar Tisby confronts racial divisions within his own evangelical Christian community. The artist Sandow Birk addresses anti-Muslim prejudice in the United States by framing passages of the Koran in visual symbols that are more widely familiar to Americans. And a novel by Jonathan Safran Foer reckons with the political and familial weight of a Jewish identity. 

Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory was heavily criticized by some Catholic officials when it was published in 1940—yet its flawed protagonist gives a realistic portrait of faith and its challenges. And for Min Jin Lee, the author of Pachinko, the ethical questions raised in the Biblical story of Joseph provide inspiration for the moral physics governing her fiction.

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Source: The Atlantic