The TGC Book Awards is our annual tradition of honoring the best new releases in Christian publishing, and earlier this week we announced the 2023 winners. We evaluate publisher-nominated books in 12 categories, whittling down each category to four finalists, which are then submitted to a panel of expert judges.

I oversee the Arts and Culture category and served as one of four judges, alongside Canadian Christian music artist Joshua Leventhal, Biola University Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences Melissa Schubert Johnson, and Wheaton College Visiting Associate Professor of Art History Taylor Worley. The four of us read the finalist books in our category and voted on our top two picks. The results were very close, but I’m so pleased with the winner we selected as well as the “award of distinction” (runner up).

The winning book in Arts and Culture is Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt’s Redeeming Vision: A Christian Guide to Looking at and Learning from Art (Baker Academic), a refreshing, robust, and all-too-rare study of visual art from a distinctly Christian perspective. I am so happy this resource exists. For anyone who wants to grow in the love of God and neighbor through the practice of growing in appreciation of art, this book is a must read.

Our award of distinction went to Abundantly More by Jeremy Begbie—an absolute titan in the contemporary arts and theology world. Begbie’s book is characteristically profound and could have easily taken the top spot. Sometimes Christian books about the arts can seem more interested in art than in God. But this is never the case with Begbie, and Abundantly More is as stirringly worshipful as it is intellectually stimulating.

I highly recommend these two books and many of the other winners. Happy reading!