InterVarsity Press (IVP) is pleased to announce that three IVP titles have been recognized as finalists in the twenty-first annual Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards.

As part of its mission to discover, review, and share the best books from university and independent publishers, Foreword Magazine Inc. hosts an annual awards program each year. Finalists represent the best books published in 2018. After more than two thousand individual titles spread across fifty-six genres were submitted for consideration, the list of finalists was determined by Foreword’s editorial team.

IVP books were chosen as finalists in the following categories:

Biography (Adult Nonfiction)

In Becoming Dallas Willard: The Formation of a Philosopher, Teacher, and Christ Follower, Gary W. Moon, a close friend of Willard, offers a candid and inspiring biography about a great man of the faith who was a personal mentor and inspiration to hundreds of pastors, philosophers, and average churchgoers. His presence and ideas rippled through the lives of many prominent leaders and authors, such as John Ortberg, Richard Foster, James Bryan Smith, Paula Huston, and J. P. Moreland. As a result of these relationships and the books he wrote, Willard fundamentally altered the way tens of thousands of Christians have understood and experienced the spiritual life. Moon writes about the development of Willard’s personal character, philosophical writing, and spiritual teaching, and how he has inspired some of the most influential books on spirituality of the last generation.

Multicultural (Adult Nonfiction)

In Reconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove recovers the subversiveness of the gospel that sustained the church through centuries of slavery and oppression, from the civil rights era to the Black Lives Matter movement and beyond. Wilson-Hartgrove grew up in the Bible Belt in the American South as a faithful church-going Christian. But he gradually came to realize that the gospel his Christianity proclaimed was not good news for everybody. The same Christianity that sang, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound” also perpetuated racial injustice and white supremacy in the name of Jesus. His Christianity, he discovered, was the religion of the slaveholder. Wilson-Hartgrove traces his journey from the religion of the slaveholder to the Christianity of Christ.

Religion (Adult Nonfiction)

Still Evangelical?: Insiders Reconsider Political, Social, and Theological Meaning, edited by Fuller Theological Seminary president Mark Labberton, is a collection of essays offering a diverse and provocative set of reflections from evangelical insiders who wrestle with the question of what it means to be evangelical in today’s polarized climate. Contributors include Shane Claiborne (Red Letter Christians), Jim Daly (Focus on the Family), Mark Galli (Christianity Today), Lisa Sharon Harper (FreedomRoad.us), Tom Lin (InterVarsity Christian Fellowship), Karen Swallow Prior (Liberty University), Soong-Chan Rah (North Park University), Robert Chao Romero (UCLA), Sandra Maria Van Opstal (Grace and Peace Community), Allen Yeh (Biola University), and Mark Young (Denver Seminary).

In the next three months a panel of volunteer librarians and booksellers will determine the winners in each category based on their experience with readers and patrons. Winners in each genre—along with Editor’s Choice Prize winners and Foreword’s INDIE Publisher of the Year—will be announced June 14, 2019.

For a complete list of IVP award winners visit ivpress.com.