page_title: What's So Amazing About Grace?
section_title: Christian media
hierarchical_section_title: What's So Amazing About Grace? / Reception / Christian media
caption_attribution_description: English: John Henry Newton, Jr. (1725-1807) was an Anglican clergyman and former slave-ship captain. He was the author of many hymns, including Amazing Grace.
context_page_description: What's So Amazing About Grace? is a 1997 book by Philip Yancey, an American journalist and editor-at-large for Christianity Today. The book examines grace in Christianity, contending that people crave grace and that it is central to the gospel, but that many local churches ignore grace and instead seek to exterminate immorality. What's So Amazing About Grace? includes Bible stories, anecdotes from Yancey's life, accounts of historical events and other stories. These include a modern retelling of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, an account of Yancey's friendship with Mel White who came out as homosexual, a comparison of the teachings of early Christians Pelagius and Augustine of Hippo, and a summary of Karen Blixen's short story "Babette's Feast".
  Yancey was inspired to write What's So Amazing About Grace? after President Bill Clinton asked him, "Why do Christians hate so much?"
context_section_description: What's So Amazing About Grace? was named Book of the Year by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association in 1998 when it was chosen by Christian retailers as the title they most enjoyed selling; Yancey's The Jesus I Never Knew had received the same award two years earlier. In 1998, Christianity Today compared What's So Amazing About Grace? to Joel A. Carpenter's Revive Us Again, writing that both books productively analyze Christian fundamentalism. That year, Karla Vallance's Christian Science Monitor review called the book similarly sentimental to John Newton's hymn "Amazing Grace".
  In a 1998 Presbyterian Record review, Canadian Christian writer Phil Callaway writes that What's So Amazing About Grace? made him "thankful afresh for God's grace and challenged to live a life reflecting it". Callaway was haunted by Yancey's question, "If grace is so amazing, why don't Christians show more of it?" and expressed his appreciation to the author at the 1998 Christian Booksellers Association convention. When he asked Yancey why he wrote the book, the author answered: "I long for the church to become a culture of grace ... A graceful church knows how to welcome failure and rewards vulnerability so that a person automatically thinks of the church when needing help." Yancey asked Callaway if he thought the book would generate controversy, and Callaway said it would. Callaway asked Yancey why his book was so harsh in its description of Christians, and Yancey responded, "I'm picking on Christians because I am one". Yancey said that he knew many gracious Christians and that secular culture was filled with examples of ungrace, including media manipulation of body image and the belief that "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch", which contradicts the concept of undeserved grace from God as taught in Christianity.
  A 1999 Christian Science Monitor review said that, filled with "poignant stories" that are "likely to ruffle some feathers, this compelling book challenges Christians to become a genuine healing force in society". Presbyterian pastor John Buchanan, editor and publisher of The Christian Century, also reviewed What's So Amazing About Grace? that year, writing that "Yancey is such a good writer and such a generous evangelical that even though I occasionally disagree with his conclusions, I'm glad to be in the same family with him".
  In 2006, What's So Amazing About Grace? placed 17th on Christianity Today's list of fifty books that had most shaped Evangelicals. That year, Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, compared What's So Amazing About Grace? to Chuck Swindoll's book The Grace Awakening, calling both "wonderful books on grace [that] did a valuable service rescuing the doctrine of grace from the legalists who say that we must earn our salvation". Christian professor Craig Detweiler writes in his 2008 book A Purple State of Mind: Finding Middle Ground in a Divided Culture that, if he could have given his students a graduation present, it would have been a copy of What's So Amazing About Grace? because many of his Christian students were more concerned with avoiding the forbidden than they were with enjoying the permitted. Detweiler writes that Christianity was founded on forgiveness and that Christians should not bear the burden of guilt, and he therefore agrees with Yancey that "grace" is "our last best word".
  In a 2014 article in the "Spiritual Matters" section of the Australian newspaper The Daily Examiner, Reverend Chris Sparks calls What's So Amazing About Grace? "masterful" and writes that Yancey provides a good answer to the question raised by its title. In his 2015 book Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better, Christian radio personality Brant Hansen calls What's So Amazing About Grace? life-changing and writes that Yancey's discussion of "Babette's Feast" inspired him to see the film. U.S. Catholic reviewer Mary Lynn Hendrickson also praised Yancey's retelling of Karen Blixen's story.
caption: In The Christian Science Monitor, Karla Vallance calls the book similarly sentimental to the hymn "Amazing Grace" by John Newton (pictured).
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