How Dallas Willard Changed My Life and Inspired My New Book

The Spirit of Our Politics Comes Out This Month!

My first external meeting after I officially became a White House staffer was at an event held by the International Justice Mission at what was then the Newseum. The Newseum had a wonderful building, and on its top floor was a big glass-enclosed conference space with beautiful views of the nation’s capital. It had been a whirlwind, awe-inspiring/intimidating couple of weeks already, but a meeting in such an incredible setting with a leader I respected as much as I respected IJM’s CEO Gary Haugen (and my respect for him as only grown in the fourteen years since I met him that day) was a highlight.

Still, I was a bit befuddled when soon after our meeting I received a copy of a book with a somewhat suspicious title by an author I’d never heard of that was sent by none other than Gary Haugen. Gary’s a busy man, I thought. I’m working insane hours. Why would he send me a dense book with no readily apparent relevance to my work or his work? What an odd thing to send when we had just met. I don’t have time to read a book like this!

So the book sat on my bookshelf for months. Then, my pastor back home in Buffalo, Jerry Gillis, who rarely wrote blog posts, put up a series of book recommendations that included The Divine Conspiracy. I thought that if Gary Haugen and Jerry Gillis were both recommending the same book, I ought to read it. So I did. And as a twenty-one year old White House staffer who had given his life to Christ as a teenager, The Divine Conspiracy and the work of Dallas Willard prompted something of a second spiritual awakening in my life.

As I put it in The Spirit of Our Politics:

I had thought this was what I had been reading in my Bible, and I had heard rumors of it in church, but Dallas gave me confidence that such a vision was real and could be trusted. The Christian life is not about a moment, but rather about a life. The resources that are available through Jesus are actually up to the task of meeting our real, lived existence. I have come to believe that the kinds of ideas Dallas Willard taught about Jesus and the life he offers have the power to reorient our politics for the good of the public.

This, my friends, is the heart of the book. I have wanted to write this book since I finished Reclaiming Hope, but was not sure the opportunity would ever arrive. By the grace of God, the many individuals and friends who have encouraged and informed this book, and the good folks at Zondervan, this book will now be in your hands in less than three weeks.

My aim with the book is to empower individual Christians and the church with proactive perspective and guidance that is not merely reactive to a particular political moment, but instead grounds an approach to politics in the life we are called to in and with Jesus Christ. I intend for this book to bridge the spiritual formation and Christian Living/current events audiences with this book, because they need one another. I hope to introduce a new cadre of readers and leaders to Dallas Willard, and to help those who are deeply attuned to Willard’s work connect dots they might have missed.

This book, which will be a foundational resource supporting and informing the work of the Center for Christianity and Public Life, is the most essential word I can offer in this moment. If you are struggling with the state of our politics, and how politics is interacting with and shaping your church, your family, your own heart—I wrote this book for you.

Because you are receiving this email, I know you are already interested in my work. I am so grateful for you. Can I count on you to preorder The Spirit of Our Politics? Might you want to preorder it for a friend who will read and discuss the book together with you? I wrote this book to be read, and nothing advances that goal like preordering the book now so that book retailers know there is interest.

Thank you for your support. You’ll hear from me in coming weeks regarding news about the book, and ways to interact around its content.

Happy New Year! Let’s be a blessing in 2024.

Michael

The Spirit of Our Politics: Spiritual Formation and the Renovation of Public Life will be published on January 23, 2024—less than three weeks from today! In October, I began a monthly series describing the development of this book. You can read Part One of this series here. Part Two is here. Part Three is here. This post is the final installment in the series.