Nourishing Narratives: The Power of Story to Shape Our Faith

Humans are story-shaped creatures.

We make sense of our world, pattern our lives, and reflect on what is ultimately significant through language and the words that compose our stories. But how does this relate to the narrative of the Bible and the story that God is writing through history?

In Nourishing Narratives, writer and professor Jennifer Holberg engages with words from the likes of Dante, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Flannery O’Connor, Marilynne Robinson, and more while also offering some of her own stories to reflect on the importance of story to our lives and our faith.

Here, readers are encouraged not only to understand how stories nourish our faith, but to discover how our stories are part of God’s great story.

Jennifer L. Holberg (PhD, University of Washington) is professor and chair of the English department at Calvin University and codirector of the Calvin Center for Faith and Writing, the home of the Festival of Faith and Writing. She is a founding coeditor of the academic journal Pedagogy and also the editor of Shouts and Whispers: Twenty-One Writers Speak About Their Writing and Their Faith.