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On My Shelf: Life and Books with Michael McEwen
On My Shelf helps you get to know various writers through a behind-the-scenes glimpse into their lives as readers.
I asked Michael McEwen—a pastor, publisher, and author of The Devil Reads Nietzsche: A Public Theology for the Post-Christian Age—about what’s on his bedside table, his favorite fiction, the books he regularly revisits, and more.
What’s on your nightstand right now?
With my position as publisher, my time is primarily consumed with our authors’ manuscripts. Yet there are a few I’m slowly digesting.
First, Nijay Gupta’s The Affections of Christ Jesus: Love at the Heart of Paul’s Theology. I’ve long admired Nijay’s research as well as his superhuman ability to write an enormous number of books. If we were to poll believers on some evergreen topics in Paul’s epistles, we may hear “righteousness,” “law,” “gospel,” and a short list of other answers. Rarely are “love” or “affections” on that short list.
Through his typical conversational tone, Nijay rightly (re)introduces readers to the topic of love that permeates the corpus of Paul’s letters. As in many of his other books, Nijay has learned how to write in a way that dances between exegesis and dialogue—a skill worth emulating in academia.
Second, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Lamott is a gifted writer, but she’s also gifted at teaching writing. One of my daily responsibilities is to help writers cultivate ideas as well as develop a technical excellence in communicating those ideas, so Lamott has served as a type of literary mentor lately.
In fact, if I could use a few other metaphors for Lamott, she’s also a literary psychiatrist and counselor. I often found myself being counseled and comforted by her. As I read her, it seemed she was reading me. She understood my frustrations with word choice and ideation; she counseled my heart and my hopes to write even if the path of words leads to a dead-end street; like a mother, she provided harsh reprimand and encouragement when needed. I believe Bird by Bird is an essential read for beginning and seasoned writers.
What are your favorite fiction books?
This is easy. First, John Steinbeck. His fiction has an unparalleled ability to describe the topographies of California; he makes that western coastland feel like a primary, living character in his books. Also, I’m a hopeless romantic of fictional writers who adopt and adapt biblical themes in their writings, so I admire how he doesn’t shy away from adapting biblical names and topics in his works.
Additionally, I cannot overlook my favorite short-story fiction writer, Flannery O’Connor. I even have a portrait of her hanging in my church office. She was a genius at confronting the grotesque with the raw reality of grace. Her culturally subversive faith—the idea that grace often shows up in the middle of our biggest messes—is incredibly powerful, and I believe the church in America can learn much from O’Connor’s subversive themes as we’re postured toward culture.
What biographies or autobiographies have most influenced you and why?
Unfortunately, I’ve never been a big biography or autobiography fan, but the last one I read was Bob Dylan’s Chronicles: Volume 1. In this book, Dylan treated every word like a doctor holds a scalpel: every word mattered. I absorbed his stories on writing droughts, learning that even the poets of our day are weathered by the seasons of writing.
The church in America can learn much from O’Connor’s subversive themes as we’re postured toward culture.
In February 2026, I am anticipating Eric Smith’s John Broadus biography, Between Worlds: John A. Broadus, the Southern Baptist Seminary, and the Prospects of the New South. In a nutshell, Broadus was a cofounder of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and he also helped establish the Sunday School Board (now Lifeway Christian Resources). In a time when biblical literacy was scarce, Broadus’s preaching, lecturing, and publishing created a fertile environment for theological education. His legacy still shapes how Christian books and study materials are developed today.
What are some books you regularly reread and why?
This one is easy to answer. I cycle through Augustine’s Confessions at least once a year. Augustine captured my attention and affections in my first semester in seminary, and he’s been an ancient friend of mine for years.
Throughout his work, Augustine wrestles with everyday topics including doubt, hopelessness, sin, time, grace, evil, and even helicopter moms (reader: that’s not a typo). His faith wasn’t abstract, as much as some may want to portray Augustine as hyper-Platonic. His faith was gritty, raw, and earthy. Philosophical questions and quests were, for Augustine, longings for deep communion with the triune God here and now. Ultimately, he interweaves existential and theological questions as doxological forms of prayer. Confessions is certainly an invitation for me to orient my daily life doxologically.
I cannot forget to mention Kevin Vanhoozer’s works here, including The Drama of Doctrine and First Theology. As I was rummaging among topics of doctrine, liturgy, and the Christian life around 2010, a professor suggested I read Vanhoozer.
Drama of Doctrine primed my imagination to see every arena of my life as a divine theater—not in any superficial sense of religious performance. Instead, Vanhoozer pulled the curtains back on my eyes to see life as a terrestrial stage of God’s inbreaking presence. Vanhoozer’s works have discipled me professionally, pastorally, and personally. Not only am I grateful for his scholarship, but I always salivate to read his next project.
What books have most profoundly shaped how you serve and lead others for the sake of the gospel?
Will Guidara’s Unreasonable Hospitality. It’s certainly not written from a Christian perspective, yet it imports teachings, topics, and themes of Scripture. For instance, Guidara teaches leaders that the pursuit of excellence in any skill requires a pursuit of human connection and genuine care. True leaders, Guidara believes, are masters of both technical excellence and profound human hospitality. I found myself highlighting so many sections of his book.
True leaders are masters of both technical excellence and profound human hospitality.
For my role as publisher of an academic imprint, I want us to be known for how we treat our authors by extending a degree of unreasonable hospitality to them. Practically speaking, this requires attentive listening, a fellowshiping of ideas, a thoughtful choice of cover art, our marketing endeavors, and, ultimately, how we treat the author through all those processes.
What’s one book you wish every pastor would read?
Such a difficult question because I want to list four or five books. My go-to book for pastors, especially younger ones, is Eugene Peterson’s The Pastor: A Memoir. Peterson exemplified the role of pastor-theologian. As he narrates in his book, he longed to be a professor, yet he became a pastor for over three decades. Within his pastoral ministry, he didn’t disconnect pastor from theologian but powerfully interwove the two callings.
Peterson’s pastoral-theological framework has directly influenced my own. It’s not uncommon for me to use Petersonian phrases like “long obedience in the same direction.” As someone who has pastored a small, rural church for almost a decade, I don’t want to leave it. Selfishly, I do desire to grow old with our church to embody “long obedience in the same direction” with the saints at Hickory Grove Baptist Church.
How does reading and understanding Nietzsche help us grasp our current cultural moment?
Ah, my friend Friedrich Nietzsche. In my recent book, The Devil Reads Nietzsche, I try to invite the reader into a posture of hearing Nietzsche well. We know him as the atheist philosopher who advocated for the death of God, and we unfortunately stop there.
Within the book, I’m dialoguing with six topics intimately familiar to Nietzsche and especially to us today: theology, identity, meaning/morality, truth, faith, and hope. I excavate Nietzsche’s take on these areas to illustrate the various ways he has undeniably influenced how we now imagine these categories in modern American stories, practices, and perspectives. As the late Alasdair MacIntyre noted, we all see through a Nietzschean lens, so my book tries to reveal those lenses.
In modeling a charitable reading of Nietzsche, I invite the reader to hear someone else—the Other—as a hospitable act that Christ calls us to, and I’d even add that charity is missional because it seeks what is lost and broken (Luke 15). When Nietzsche is read charitably, he is sought after in order to be known and understood, not used or vilified. I’m convinced this Christlike posture has direct import for our cultural apologetics: to hear, to understand, and to seek the Other.
What are you learning about life and following Jesus?
Right now, I’m being challenged in my dad era. Four kids have my wife and me running four directions between the two of us, so I’ve been learning much about the spiritual fruits of joy and faithfulness (Gal. 5:22–23). Those two fruits have been before my eyes for months now.
I’ve been watching my children grow quickly and my beard grow even whiter. I’m slowly realizing that I can’t control time, so I’m learning how to discover joy within this plane of finitude as well as the faithful God who, in his infinite goodness, sustains and matures my family.