Winner, a best-selling author, scholar, and priest, drew upon her own difficulties reading the Bible while writing this book.

Although the Bible has always been central to Winner’s faith, for most of her life it bored her. Seven years ago, something changed. She found herself open to and curious about the Bible:

“I found that, for the first time, I was particularly awake – to God and myself – when I read the Bible. I began to have some inkling of what people mean when they say the Bible seems to effervesce with God’s presence.”

“A Word to Live By,” is the seventh volume in the Church’s Teachings for a Changing World series, a collection of books by visionary Episcopal thinkers and leaders to reintroduce the essentials of Episcopal teaching and faith. Discussion questions within each chapter invite readers and study groups into deeper engagement. Additional resources are available online.

Winner introduces readers to the genres that we find in the Bible (among them founding narratives, genealogies, psalms, epistles, apocalypse, and gospels) and the ways that scripture is used during worship. She’s especially interested in why Episcopal worship so thoroughly involves “offering God’s own words back to God”–that is, why Episcopal prayers draw so heavily on the language of scripture (she draws on pie baking and contemporary theater in discussing that topic). And she explores ways to study and pray the scriptures outside of Sunday morning worship. “Pause and Consider” questions in each chapter invite readers into deeper engagement. Throughout, Winner aims to spark readers’ curiosity about how the Bible can deepen their relationship with God.