September (Web-only) 2003

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Philip Yancey is a columnist and editor at large of Christianity Today and cochair of the editorial board for Books and Culture. His books include Soul Survivor: How My Faith Survived the Church (2001), Reaching for the Invisible God (2000), The Bible Jesus Read (1999), What's So Amazing About Grace? (1998), The Jesus I Never Knew (1995), Where is God When It Hurts (1990), and many other books.

His latest book is Rumors of Another World: What on Earth Are We Missing? (Zondervan).

Unlike many of your previous books, this one is written for people on the "borderlands of belief." Who are those people?

Borderlands are marginal area between two clearly defined areas, like the areas some countries are still fighting over. And I find people—actually, I'm in this category—who because of wounds from the past are fleeing the church or are recovering from the church, but still believe that was something that was touched deeply in their soul.

Then there are other people who don't know what to do with the church. It seems like a totally alien experience to them. They go and see these people raise their hands, and they stand up and sit down, and they don't know when to stand up or sit down and it seems like this strange language. It's another planet.

So the people I direct this book to are in the borderlands, some of them going away from the church, some of them going very warily toward the church, and both are the kind of people you meet who say, "I'm spiritual but not religious."

What was the trigger for Rumors of Another World?

C.S. Lewis wrote a book called Mere Christianity. And I suppose this is my Even More Mere Christianity. I think the church has missed the boat in trying to figure out how to put together the invisible world with the ...