A Guide to Second-Growth Faith

A Feature Review of "Slow Theology: Eight Practices for Resilient Faith in a Turbulent World"

The treasury of resources housed as the Englewood Review of Books provided me with an advance copy of this book and has now posted my reflection as a feature review.

This remarkable and much-needed book addresses how believers can respond when our faith hits turbulence. Coming from theologians, you might expect a book on what to believe or why to believe. But the authors take on the more surprising question of how to believe. Or to phrase it as a question I have asked more than once, with sincere urgency, “What can I do when my faith stops making sense?”

Like many, I grew up in a cozy faith fort, furnished with Bible stories and memory verses. As life became more challenging, I needed new strategies for navigating disappointments and grappling with God. The church can be maddeningly unhelpful at integrating theology with the rest of life. New questions arose in my mind, which apparently no one could answer, and the whole thing started feeling mighty thin.

Slow Theology (Brazos, 2025) is the book I needed. My twenties could have been quite different if I had encountered a professor like Nijay Gupta or A.J. Swoboda. (pronounced: swa-BOAT-ah)

In the years since returning to faith, I’ve learned how common it is for a crisis like this to precede what I understand as “second-growth faith.” These challenges signal the beginning of a new deeper phase in which we labor more actively with the Spirit to work the gospel into the fabric of our lives.

For example, consider the sixth chapter “Let Pain Be The Altar” (which, btw, seems an excellent name for a metal album.) Here they offer a particularly helpful section on lament, pointing out four ways the Psalms invite us to respond to painful experience: 1 Be honest and transparent with God.
2 Name God’s character.
3 Invite God to act.
4 Affirm God’s faithfulness and commit to hope.

These four exhortations permeate the entire text. The authors are upfront about the struggles we face in reconciling theology, scripture, and life. They affirm God’s character as both knowable in practical ways and yet, beyond what we can know fully. They convey an implicit trust that God will be present and active as we wrestle with our quandaries and will ultimately bless us. It is rare to see a work so accepting of questions which also maintains an unwavering commitment to hope in God’s faithfulness.

The authors say, in one way after another, to embrace the journey, think deeply, and ponder the mysteries we encounter. Disappointment and suffering come to us all. The way forward is to keep thinking, remain in community, and trust that God will continue cultivating us. The title Slow Theology is presumably taken from this long-simmering experience.

Seasoned Christians can readily agree with this approach but may have forgotten the panic of first encountering such challenges. Swoboda and Gupta are both college faculty, well-positioned for conversations with believers at this inflection point. The text appears to be collected from many informal conversations with students. These aren’t lectures, but compassionate responses to sincere questions. Typical of the sensitivity shown throughout the text, they ask:

“What can we do to develop a faith that not only is resilient through difficulty but actually grows as it faces challenges? What if, by God’s grace, every new question we asked was not a problem? What if it was just a way for our faith to become deeper?” (9)

The gentleness and promise in this phrasing epitomize this book’s affect; it feels like it was baked in conversations during office hours, then sliced into topics and served here, still warm from that compassionate oven.

The quote above is clearly building on Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s thinking about anti-fragile systems, a connection made explicit in the text. This is one among dozens of wide-ranging references the authors use to illustrate aspects of believing, including the tragic invention of chemotherapy, an experience Swoboda had with a UFO (later identified), and five lessons from an obscure 3100-mile footrace. The breadth of references can feel chaotic, but together they effectively convey that knowing about faith is, in many ways, like knowing about anything else.

Scripture remains present throughout, as we should expect from two theologians. Yet they don’t assume readers share their Bible knowledge. At times, they will introduce a well-known passage, such as the parable of the soils, with no presumption that the reader has heard it before. Other times, they’ll go deep into biblical B-sides to pull out a verse like Isaiah 45:7 “I…create evil” (KJV). Such passages can be weaponized out of context, and I appreciate their willingness to address them directly.

The chapter names, including “Take Your Time,” “Embrace the Theological Journey,” and “Think Slowly,” are indicative of the perspectives the authors encourage. These are helpful ways to respond when some life event or line of thinking reveals a shortcoming in your current theology. The text offers encouragement to articulate the question, revise your understanding, and strengthen your faith.

Each chapter addresses its theme through four to seven short essays. For example, chapter four, “Ponder the Mysteries” includes ways of responding to a newfound theological puzzle. The authors note that our questions sometimes work like cliff-hangers, urging us to keep reading. Other times our questions highlight the incomprehensibility of God or an element of the ‘now and not-yet’ nature of the kingdom.

“This tension—that Christ is disclosed and yet not yet fully understood—is at the heart of what we mean by theological mystery.” (96)

The chapter concludes with a brief essay on “Practicing the Mystery of God” which encourages us to hold our current understanding with humility, remain open to the Spirit, and trust Christ.

Our work of faith in Christ should always be written in ink. It is our theology that should be done in pencil. (90)

Throughout the book, Gupta and Swoboda hold space for what we don’t know without sliding into agnosticism or adopting an apophatic stance of, “if you understand it, it’s not God.” Yet they readily admit there are questions we can’t answer. It helps that they remind us that many things we now know required a genuine struggle before finding peace in our current understanding. Successfully walking this line of epistemic humility is one of the most distinctive accomplishments of the text.

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David Lindrum is still trying to figure everything out. Since 1994, he’s worked in college textbooks so he can keep posing questions to professors. He’s been in Bible Study Fellowship since 2002, so he can ask questions about scripture weekly. In 2025 he received an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from SPU, where he is best known for ceaselessly asking, “What is creative nonfiction?” He lives, with his long-suffering and saintly wife Mary Jane, in Asheville, NC.