Local books: Monster, Advent devotional, Indigene Heart, suffragist pioneer . . .

This is my fifth local books round-up of 2025, covering 12 recent books from the Christian community.

Again there is a very wide range of topics. The write-ups are primarily from Amazon and publisher / author sites.

• Dennis & Tikvah Wilkinson: Three Years with a Monster: Our Struggle Against a Vicious Eating Disorder (Grateful Grump Publishing)

Part one of Three Years With A Monster comes to you in real time as Dennis scribbled it down in his journal and recapped the events every few months in blog form. You will experience the heartbreaking daily struggle as it unfolds.

Eating disorders are nearly impossible to understand unless you come face-to-face with them. This book brings you so close you can smell the monster’s breath. The Wilkinsons were directed to use family-based therapy and dialectical behavioural therapy. Helpful explanations and observations of these tools are contained in this section.

Part two is the fruit of a frantic, desperate attempt to figure out what was happening and why. Dennis’ research uncovered three external factors which proliferate in Diet culture, the beauty industry and dangerous religious perspectives.

Part three contains small offerings of hope and practical help for those caught up in the slash-and-burn, take-no-prisoners world of eating disorders. Finally, the book ends with an encouraging postscript from father and daughter.

Dennis Wilkinson: Three Years With A Monster is born from the raw and unfiltered pages of journal entries and blog posts. It is the story of a heartbroken father trying to battle a ruthless monster bent on destroying his daughter. From the trauma of three years come valuable insights on the dangers of the beauty industry, diet culture and bad religion. Finally, help and hope are offered to all who must face this pernicious beast.

Tikvah Wilkinson: At just 15, Tikvah was ambushed by a vicious eating disorder that launched a three-year siege on her mind, body, and spirit. She has fought this relentless foe with phenomenal bravery and wants to redeem what the monster has taken by helping others overcome the ravages of eating disorders. Tikvah created the art for the front and back covers and has written extensively in the introduction and conclusion.

• Darrell Johnson: Awaken Wonder: Daily Devotions for Advent (independently published)

Awaken Wonder is a four-week devotional journey through the Advent season with pastor and teacher Darrell Johnson.

Each week begins with a Gospel passage and unfolds through daily reflections and historic prayers, inviting readers to step into the wonder of the Christmas story.

Rooted in Scripture and drawn from decades of preaching, these reflections help us see again the surprising beauty of Jesus’ arrival and the way it continues to reshape our lives today.

Whether you’re returning to the story or discovering it anew, this book is an invitation to slow down, reflect, and awaken wonder this Advent.

(Sorry, a bit late, but better late than never.)

Darrell Johnson has been preaching Jesus Christ and His gospel for over 50 years. He has served a number of Presbyterian congregations in California, Union Church of Manila in the Philippines and the historic First Baptist Church in the heart of Vancouver.

He has also taught preaching at Fuller Theological Seminary in California, and Regent College and Carey Theological College, both in Vancouver. He is now serving as part of the pastoral team at The Way Church in Vancouver.

He and his wife Sharon have been married over 50 years. Together they have raised four children adopted from four different countries of the world, and now enjoy loving 11 active grandchildren!

• Daniel Cowper: Kingdom of the Clock (McGill-Queen’s University Press)

Such exchanges animate the kingdom // of the clock, but one by one their trades / complete, blink out like eyes. The city sleeps.

Set in a vibrant yet ragged coastal city, Kingdom of the Clock is a verse novel whose interwoven storylines begin with one day’s dawn and end at the first light of the next. Within the cycles of that single day, the lives of the city’s inhabitants unfold.

An ageing stock promoter presides over the fruits of his predatory life. A woman tracks her husband’s iPhone to the casino. An artist races to prevent her masterpiece from being seized to cover unpaid rent. A commuter is shaken by a private vision. A mother plots to care for her unwell adult daughter. Senior and junior partners involved in a fraud weigh the risks and rewards of betraying each other. A boy boards an oil tanker with his father in an emergency. An elderly chess player prays to the moon for his grandchild to be born alive. A homeless man does not know his father is dying.

After night’s crescendo comes the blank page of a new day. A clear, flowing lyricism fuses the many moving parts of Kingdom of the Clock into an immersive, unforgettable reading experience.Reviews have been very positive.

Daniel Cowper is from Bowen Island. After studying medieval literature, philosophy and law in Vancouver, Manhattan and Toronto, Daniel is building a cabin on Bowen Island. His poetry has appeared in Arc Poetry, Literary Review of Canada, Prairie Fire, Vallum and other reviews and anthologies in Canada, the US and Ireland. He is the author of The God of Doors, published in 2017 as co-winner of Frog Hollow Press’s Chapbook Contest, and Grotesque Tenderness, published in 2019 by McGill-Queen’s University Press. Daniel and his wife Emily Osborne served for many years as poetry editors for Pulp Literature Press. He refers to his church from time to time on X.

• Carmen Lansdowne: Wearing a Broken Indigene Heart on the Sleeve of Christian Mission (CMU Press)

The Indigenous intercultural theology proposed in this groundbreaking work by Dr. Carmen Lansdowne seeks to reframe many of the (often unspoken) assumptions about the field of Christian mission.

Ultimately, Dr. Lansdowne searches out answers to the question, ‘If Indigenous hearts are broken by Christianity, what is it in Christian theology that is life giving at all?’

She wrote of Wearing a Broken Indigene Heart on the Sleeve of Christian Mission:

We must raise voices that offer a different and insistent Indigenous narrative to transform the understanding of Settlers. In this, I am attempting to set the stage for a new relationship altogether. From that new relationship, perhaps the church can be transformed as well as be transforming.

The Right Rev. Dr. Carmen Lansdowne was elected Moderator of the United Church of Canada in 2022, the first Indigenous woman in that position. Born in Alert Bay, and a member of the Heiltsuk First Nation, she has a history degree from University of Victoria and both Master of Divinity and Master of Theology degrees from Vancouver School of Theology. Before her election as moderator, Dr. Lansdowne directed First United in Vancouver.

• James R. Coggins: The Cabin and Other Stories (Mill Lake Books)
• E. May Coggins (edited by James R. Coggins): What is God Able to Do? The Devotional Meditations of E. May Coggins (Mill Lake Books)

The Cabin and Other Stories: This is a collection of stories, some long, some short, many recognizably ordinary, some fanciful or allegorical. They are set in a wide variety of times and places, most in the present but some in ancient times, most in North America but some in other places. They explore a wide variety of themes, human, biblical and theological.

At their heart are people, young Victor and old John, young couples and loners, simple folk and a few odd university professors. If there is a common theme, it is that all of these people, in various times and places, are surprised by grace.

The title story, ‘The Cabin,’ is centred on John, an old man who shows up in church one morning and who seemingly lives a simple life in a log cabin; however, there is much more going on under the surface. The final story, ‘Dead Man,’ is a John Smyth murder mystery.

What is God Able to Do?: Why do we pray? What is God able to do? Why is the Bible like a valentine? Is God alive? Can you sign up for immortality? What causes worry? What are you searching for? What do we see? What do you have in the house? Why hobbies? Do we sometimes get into a rut at Christmas?

These are just some of the practical spiritual questions addressed in this collection of biblical meditations. They were delivered mainly in women’s mission societies in a small-town church during the second half of the 20th century. Besides offering practical spiritual enrichment, they also provide insights into social life in a previous age and are thus of historical interest.

Jim Coggins is a professional writer and editor based in Chilliwack. He has BA and MA degrees from McMaster University, a Diploma in Christian Studies from Regent College and a PhD in history from the University of Waterloo. He has served as an editor of Christian magazines – Mennonite Brethren Herald, BC Christian News [where we worked together / fr] andThe Light – and written a wide variety of materials, including devotional and academic articles. He is the founder and operator of the Mill Lake Books imprint.

E. May Coggins is Jim Coggins’s mother. He found this collection of devotional meditations among her papers when she died. He used them for his own personal devotions, but thought that others might also benefit, so he edited and published them.

She was born in 1915 in England. She immigrated to Canada as a child and grew up in Ontario. Unusual for her time, she not only graduated from high school but also attended both teacher’s college and business college. She worked as a teacher and an office worker before marrying and raising three children.  She maintained an extensive correspondence with distant missionaries, friends and relatives. She was a faithful member of her church, teaching Sunday school for decades and playing a leading role in the mission circles. She was able to continue that work until her sudden death in 2000.

• Sarah C. Williams: When Courage Calls: Josephine Butler and the Radical Pursuit of Justice for Women (Hodder Faith)

Millicent Fawcett, the leader of the British suffragist movement, described Josephine Butler as ‘the most distinguished English woman of the 19th century’. Among the first feminist activists, Butler raised public awareness of the plight of destitute women, worked to address human trafficking and led a vigorous campaign to secure equal rights for women before the law.

In her pursuit of justice, Butler did as much for women as William Wilberforce did for African slaves within the British Empire, and yet, while Wilberforce remains a household name, Butler is forgotten.

Social historian Sarah C. Williams presents a re-examined biography of the radical political activist Josephine Butler. From the beauty of her childhood in Northumbria, to the stifling intellectual environment of mid-Victorian Oxford; from the impoverished streets of Liverpool and the brothels of London, Brussels and Paris, to the offices of Westminster and the Houses of Parliament. Butler’s relentless drive to secure rights for women against the sexual double standard of her day captures a remarkable woman with deeply held values for equality.

Underpinning Butler’s public life of political activism lies the full corpus of her writing and the spirituality that grounded her activism. When Courage Calls offers a profound examination of Butler’s inner life of prayer, defined by her radical sense of justice that was able to transform Victorian society.

Such conviction offers us a taste of the possibility for our time and culture.

Sarah Williams is a highly respected social historian. A specialist in 19th and 20th century cultural and religious history, she has taught on Butler in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States, as well as Britain. Having taught history at the University of Oxford; she moved to Regent College, teaching the history of Christianity to graduate students from all over the world. Now returned to England, Williams remains a research professor at Regent College.

• Jack A. Taylor: The Sacrifice: Yearning for Messiah (Word Alive Press)

The Temple of Jerusalem was recognized as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, but how did it rise out of the rubble of social chaos, international intrigue, family mutiny and a passionate quest for the Messiah?

How did two simple servants of Yahweh linger through bloodshed and traumatic leadership changes to remain standing when the day of the Messiah’s arrival finally came?

In a place dedicated to sacrifice, there was one sacrifice no one expected. The Sacrifice is the untold story of the years before the event that forever changed the course of world history.

Jack Taylor is passionate about words. He has penned 17 books, hundreds of award-winning short stories and monthly news articles. While his forte is adult historical fiction, he dabbles in children’s books and other supportive works.

His book When Ministry and Marriage Collide: Honest Conversations on Thriving Through Conflict draws on his 47 years as a married leader coaching couples through quagmires that impact their home and workplaces. His book 12 Tasks assists parents who are attempting to orient their preadolescents toward adulthood.

Monthly blogs are posted on his website to assist those who follow his work.

• Rod Bergen: Under the Halo (Friesen Press)

Under The Halo is an examination of whether William Branham, a 20th century faith-healer and evangelist, was a prophet of God – as believed by an estimated 1 to 1.5 million followers who call his teachings the ‘Message.’

Written by a former Message member who shares his journey into and out of this cult, it’s a well-researched review of the prophecies, visions, stories and doctrines of William Branham – things that can’t be questioned by those in the Message.

Though most people today have never heard of William Branham, he had a significant influence on Pentecostalism and the Christian Charismatic movement.

After his passing, zealous followers carried his sermons around the world. Today, the bulk of his followers are found in small pockets globally.

Under The Halo will be illuminating for both former and present members of the Message, and those interested in the history of the healing revival of the 1940s and 1950s, or how fringe religious groups form and thrive.

Under The Halo is more than an examination of the critical errors in William Branham’s prophecies, credibility, and teaching; it also provides practical advice to anyone seeking to help members leave the Message.

Rod Bergen has a Bachelor of Commerce from UBC and is a Chartered Professional Accountant (FCA, FCPA). He was the tax partner-in-charge of the BC tax practice of a global accounting firm before joining Canada’s second largest private corporation as a senior executive. Despite being smart, driven and always at the top of his class, he enthusiastically joined the Message while at university and followed its teachings for almost 40 years.

After leaving the Message, he went on to lead Power to Change, the Canadian affiliate of Cru (Campus Crusade for Christ), one of Canada’s largest Christian evangelism ministries. He also completed a certificate program in Christian Apologetics with BIOLA University.

Rod lives in the Vancouver area and has been married for 49 years. He and his wife have four children and eight grandchildren. He currently serves as the Pastor of Leadership at an independent Pentecostal church in Surrey.

• Grace Fox: Names of God: Knowing Peace: Devotional Study (Aspire Press)

Names of God: Knowing Peace: The very word ‘peace’ evokes images of serene landscapes and quiet stillness. In today’s chaotic world, peace is a valuable commodity.

The Bible has a lot to say about peace, claiming that God himself is the ultimate source. In this follow-up to Names of God: Living Unafraid, Grace Fox reflects on how the following names of God point to the peace our souls so desperately crave:

Grace Fox has written 15 books and published hundreds of articles in magazines including Focus on the Family, Insights and Today’s Christian Woman.

Her book, Finding Hope in Crisis: Devotions for Calm in Chaos won the Golden Scroll ‘Devotional Book of the Year’ award in 2021. Keeping Hope Alive: Devotions for Strength in the Storm won the same award in 2022.

Fox speaks at women’s events worldwide and is the national co-director of International Messengers Canada, an interdenominational ministry that offers creative short-term and career opportunities in more than 30 countries. She and her husband married in 1982 and celebrate three grown children and 14 grandchildren. They live full-time on a sailboat near Vancouver.

• Ann Griffiths: God I’m Broken: Finding Hope and Comfort in Your Grief Journey (Redemption Press)

When her best friend and ministry partner died, Ann Griffiths was surprised by the raw grief that rolled over her. This 40-day devotional beautifully chronicles the journey of two women, one dying, one facing loss, and shows us how to die well – with faith, humour, love and hope in Christ for the future.

This is a deeply personal chronicle of losing a best friend yet finding joy in the process of letting go. These words of encouragement, hope, and comfort from someone who has been there will resonate with anyone experiencing the pain of grief and bring God’s peace.  

Ann Griffiths has strong leadership insight and a passion to impact future generations. Her Bible school, business and coaching credentials complement her extensive experience as a coach/mentor, entrepreneur, corporate executive and ministry leader.

She has launched programs for women in leadership and is the author of A Mentor’s Fingerprint: Leave a Mark, Make a Difference, Grandma’s  Fingerprint: Love a Child, Change a Life and Reignite Your Leadership Heart. 

An accomplished drummer, Ann also enjoys reading and organizing anything. She currently serves as ministry director at her church in Abbotsford, where she and her husband live. 

• Phillip H. Wiebe: Religious Experience: Implications for What is Real (Cambridge University Press)

In Religious Experience, Phillip Wiebe examines religious, spiritual and mystical experiences, assessing how these experiences appear to implicate a spiritual order. Despite the current prevalence of naturalism and atheism, he argues that experiences purporting to have a religious or spiritual significance deserve close empirical investigation.

Wiebe surveys the broad scope of religious experience and considers different types of evidence that might give rise to a belief in phenomena such as spirits, paranormal events, God and an afterlife. He demonstrates that there are different explanations and interpretations of religious experiences, both because they are typically personal accounts, and they suggest a reality that is often unobservable.

Wiebe also addresses how to evaluate evidence for theories that postulate unobservables in general, and a Theory of Spirits in particular. Calling for more rigorous investigation of these phenomena, Wiebe frames the study of religious experience among other accepted social sciences that seek to understand religion.

Although Phillip Wiebe passed away in 2018, this book has just been published. He was Professor of Philosophy and former Dean of Arts and Religious Studies at Trinity Western University. He was the author of Visions and Appearances of Jesus (2014), God and Other Spirits (2004), and Intuitive Knowing as Spiritual Experience (2015).