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    Soul Survivor: How Thirteen Unlikely Mentors Helped My Faith Survive the Church
    Unavailable
    Soul Survivor: How Thirteen Unlikely Mentors Helped My Faith Survive the Church
    Unavailable
    Soul Survivor: How Thirteen Unlikely Mentors Helped My Faith Survive the Church
    Audiobook (abridged)5 hours

    Soul Survivor: How Thirteen Unlikely Mentors Helped My Faith Survive the Church

    Published by Penguin Random House Audio

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Philip Yancey, whose explorations of faith have made him a guide for millions of readers, feels no need to defend the church. "When someone tells me yet another horror story about the church, I respond, 'Oh, it's even worse than that. Let me tell you my story.'I have spent most of my life in recovery from the church."

    Yancey acknowledges that many spiritual seekers find few answers and little solace in the institutional church. "I have met many people, and heard from many more, who have gone through a similar process of mining truth from their religious past: Roman Catholics who flinch whenever they see a nun or priest, former Seventh Day Adventists who cannot drink a cup of coffee without a stab of guilt, Mennonites who worry whether wedding rings give evidence of worldliness."

    How did Yancey manage to survive spiritually despite early encounters with a racist, legalistic church that he now views as almost cultic? In this, his most soul-searching book yet, he probes that very question. He tells the story of his own struggle to reclaim belief, interwoven with inspiring portraits of notable people from all walks of life, whom he calls his spiritual directors. Soul Survivor is his tribute to thirteen remarkable individuals, mentors who transformed his life and work.

    Besides recalling their effect on him, Yancey also provides fresh glimpses of the lives and faith journeys of each one. From the scatterbrained journalist G. K. Chesterton to the tortured novelists Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, to contemporaries such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Annie Dillard, and Robert Coles, Yancey gives inspiring portraits of those who modeled for him a life-enhancing rather than a life-constricting faith.

    "I became a writer, I now believe, to sort out and reclaim words used and misused by the Christians of my youth," Yancey says. "These are the people who ushered me into the Kingdom. In many ways they are why I remain a Christian today, and I want to introduce them to other spiritual seekers."

    Soul Survivor offers illuminating insights that will enrich the lives of veteran believers and cautious seekers alike. Yancey's own story, unveiled here as never before, is a beacon for those who seek to rejuvenate their faith, and for those who are still longing for something to have faith in.


    From the Hardcover edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateSep 18, 2001
    ISBN9780553754025
    Unavailable
    Soul Survivor: How Thirteen Unlikely Mentors Helped My Faith Survive the Church

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    Reviews for Soul Survivor

    4/5

    159 ratings9 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Yancey's "Soul Survivor" presents us with 13 individuals whose lives and writings allowed him to hold on to his faith despite his extreme disappointment with his southern fundamentalist upbringing. His early church's racism and legalism left him with doubts about the very truths of the "good news" of the gospel and the grace of God. He focuses primarily on Christians (among them Martin Luther King, Jr., G.K. Chesterson, Paul Brand, and John Donne), but also includes Mahatma Gandhi who rejected Christianity while adopting many of Christ's teachings. Yancey makes it clear that each "spiritual director" is flawed and yet each held on to his/her faith despite their doubts, sins, rejection, and sometimes severe physical costs. Each of these guides strove to have a real relationship with God and to share that grace with others in the best way they knew how. Raised as a fundamentalist, I've been facing my own struggles with the hypocrisy of the Church. I found this book a particularly timely reminder that we must keep our eyes on the God of the Bible, and not those who claim to be Christ's namesakes. Christianity is about grace (unmerited favor), not judgment, sin, patriotism or politics, or business practices.
    • 5/5
      This book had a profound and affirming influence on me. It also led me to many other wonderful authors and books.
    • 4/5
      Any book with a chapter on Frederick Buechner rocks. Philip Yancey is a breath of fresh air in this current "Pray it and get it" stream of Christianity. This is how his faith survived the church. This may be how I survive my faith.
    • 4/5
      So what do a former U.S. surgeon general, a poet, two well-known Russian novelists, and a closeted homosexual Catholic priest have in common? These were people who, because of the way they lived their lives according to their beliefs, impacted Yancey profoundly. Yancey, growing up in a very, very legalistic and racist church outside of Atlanta in the early 60s found himself very disillusioned with the church. "When someone tells me yet another horror story about the church, I respond, 'Oh, it's even worse than that. Let me tell you my story.' I have spent most of my life in recovery from the church." The people Yancey writes about here aided him in his recovery. Some of these names are old familiar ones but some people I met in the pages here were new to me:In order of appearance:Martin Luther King Jr.G.K. ChestertonDr. Paul BrandDr. Robert ColesLeo Tolstoy and Feodor DostoevskyMahatma GandhiDr. C. Everett KoopJohn DonneAnnie DillardFrederick BuechnerShusaku EndoHenri NouwenMany times the essays start out a bit autobiographical. Yancey talks about his experience growing up in an extremely legalistic (no movies - "too worldly"), racist church ("... we were taught, {the Ku Klux Klan was}, a last line of defense to preserve the Christian purity of the South.") and world and how that particular experience led him to all but totally abandon his faith. Somehow or another, the list of people above crossed Yancey's path, whether in writing or in person, and instead of Yancey finding himself rejecting his Christian faith more and more found himself introduced to what an amazing force for good in the world faith can be if actually lived out by humble and sincere people. One of the strong points of the essays is the biographical information presented that may stir up some curiosity. There are people presented here that I wanted to find out more about. Fortunately, Yancey provides a list of book recommendations about the people written in each essay for the more curious readers. If I had any criticism it would be that sometimes Yancey doesn't write too clearly about exactly how each of these people impacted his journey home to faith. The reader is left, on many occasions, to simply read between the lines.
    • 5/5
      This is an amazing book for those who suffered burn out in church...Or to those who wonder whether life is worth living when it is so rigged with pain and suffering. A just and a good God but an imperfect world. How do we even life with it when everything seems so dark and gloomy? This book have shown me that despite all the imperfection life is still beautiful and worth living for. An amazing book that is worth every penny you spent on it.
    • 3/5
      Yancey is a somewhat difficult author for those who still have emotional ties to the imperfect, fundamentalist churches of their youth. Even if they have long since left these churches, it is sad for some who in contrast to Yancey have warm memories, to have the blemishes so clearly displayed. Yancey, an author and jounalist of note, gives us insights into the lives of 13 men and women, many with whom he was personally acquainted, who played an influencing role in his spiritual recovery from his fundamentalist upbringing.
    • 4/5
      This was an absolutely wonderful book - the first I've read by Yancey, but it will certainly not be the last. Actually, I listened to it as a book on tape, and much of it by walking around the office park at Colonial Point with a tape player and earphones.Yancey opens his book by saying that many times when he is in a waiting room or on a plane, people will ask what he does. When he says that he is a writer of books on spiritual themes, they tell him their horror stories. He response with, "Oh, it's worse than that. Let me tell you my story."Yancey grew up in a small, strict, fundamentalist church in the south who believed that everyon who didn't agree with them was teetering on the edge of hell. It was not a healthy environment and many people left. In his book, he probes the question of why he survived. This book is a tribute to thirteen remarkable people who influenced him for good.Yancey has forgiven the repressiveness of the church, much because of Chesterton who wrote, "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and untried."As Yancey reviewed his list of people who had influenced him, he sees flawed, not perfect people. From them, he learned how to handle his own longings.
    • 3/5
      An easy book to pick up and put down. The chapters all sit independantly of eacother, which is a very good thing. I've learned a lot about the different people in this book: GK Chesterton, Mo T, Nouwen, MLK, and others.
    • 5/5
      Blending biography and autobiography, Yancy retraces the role of several prominent authors, doctors, and leaders in sorting out the struggles and difficulties of his faith from adolescence to adulthood. Yancy describes the influences of MLK Jr., Gandhi, Tolstoy, Chesterton, and Annie Dillard (to name 5 of the 13) in his progression of faith. Soul Survivor offers an intensely personal and honest testimony of both Yancy’s faith and doubt. A