The 2024 Australian Christian Book of the Year, Young Australian Christian Writer and Australian Christian Teen Writer Awards were announced and prizes presented during the SparkLit Awards Night on Thursday 22 August, 2024. Join us to celebrate the courage and endeavour of our Christian writers!
Made in Our Image
God, Artificial Intelligence and You
Stephen Driscoll
ISBN 9781922980199
This is a realistic and fearless assessment of the ways AI could change our world. Stephen Driscoll expertly explains AI technologies and how they evolve. Because it is made in our image, AI will make our lives better and worse. We know we can’t rely on humans or market forces to make the right moral calls about the development and implementation of AI, but we can trust the promises of God. Because we are created in God’s image, and recreated in the image of his Son, we occupy a place that is not determined by technology. Driscoll communicates with wit and gravity and the result is balanced and memorable. There is nothing like a revolution to test the foundations and scope of our hope.
The 2025 Australian Christian Book of the Year, Young Australian Christian Writer and Australian Christian Teen Writer Awards will be announced and prizes presented during this year’s SparkLit Awards Night on Thursday 21 August from 7:30pm (AEST). Join us to celebrate the courage and endeavour of our Christian writers!
The Australian Christian Book of the Year Award is given annually to an original book written by an Australian citizen. The award recognises and encourages excellence in Australian Christian writing. Entries close 31 March 2025. Download conditions and entry form here.
The following ten titles have been shortlisted for the 2025 Australian Christian Book of the Year Award.
This is an impressive scholarly response to a pressing social issue. Robert Smith engages at length with theorists who argue in favour of divorcing sex from gender. He then summarises biblical scholarship on the topic. Finally, he examines key Bible texts, carefully refuting other scholars with whom he disagrees. Smith is thorough and comprehensive. While critical, he is also compassionate and fair. A solid and insightful defence of the enduring created order and the idea that sex determines gender.
How does a Christian leader forsake formulas and self-reliance and learn to trust God? What does it mean to serve faithfully in a context where growth seems elusive and unlikely? What about the desire to control or the temptation to despair? These confessional devotions are warm and easy to read but traverse disturbing territory. The journey is uncomfortable because the destination is humility. Mandy Smith is personal and vulnerable, and her accessible and engaging manner and probing questions make the book interactive. This degree of transparency is rare in church leaders. And what is rare is valuable.
In their unique idiom, Pitjantjatjara artists tell God’s story. Fifty-nine key Bible verses from Genesis to Revelation are rendered in the words and iconography of the Central Desert. While originally conceived as a Bible outline for local children, subtitles and a guide to the icons make the book accessible to English speakers. Each page glows with meaning and the reader’s attention is rewarded with fresh insights into Scripture. This handsome volume is the fruit of the collaboration of numerous artists and linguists. It is a work of great generosity.
Knowing what kind of book we are reading determines how we approach it and how we interpret and apply what we read. If the book of Revelation is not a road map to twenty-first-century Middle Eastern politics how should we read it? To this challenge, Andrew Judd brings recent developments in the field of genre studies (which incorporates literary, linguistic, and rhetorical analysis) and shows how problems of biblical interpretation can be clarified and solved by asking questions about genre. Despite the academic setting, this is a friendly, entertaining and useful book. It will change the way you read the Bible for the better.
This generous and inspiring compilation is the fruit of a long life spent contemplating, teaching and practising Christian mission. The enterprise engages the head, heart and hands (intellectual rigour, deep love and practical application) and has transformed Ringma as much as his world. The book is encyclopaedic in scope and eclectic in nature. It explores issues, movements and protagonists throughout the history of the church and across its denominational divides. The insights are rich and the writing is both scholarly and personal. A valuable sourcebook on the history, strategy and spirituality of global Christian mission.
Christianity is a historic faith: without the record of what God has done and continues to do, we are nothing. To overcome our preoccupation with the present, and individual autonomy and authenticity, Sarah Irving-Stonebraker urges Christians to recover, guide and keep our history. This will enable us to mature as disciples and navigate complexity and conflict with grace and humility. Irving-Stonebraker was an atheist who was drawn to Jesus by the beauty and promise in Christian customs, seasons, testimonies, liturgy and prayers. Her story is beautiful and her reasoning is elegant and compelling.
“By declaring that Jesus is Lord, we make a fundamentally political statement about power and authority in human life.” In this refreshing book, Jensen offers a practical and pastoral reading of Romans chapters 12 to 15 for our fractured and fractious world. When we submit to the Lord Jesus and serve in the kingdom of heaven we become agents of mercy, peace, justice and encouragement. The church is to be an alternative society, not isolated, but characterised by respect, love, hospitality and sacrificial nonconformity. Self-rule is self-serving. How will we show the world that God is our boss?
In the inexplicable suffering of mental illness and the everyday glory of simply being alive, God’s mercies do not pass unnoticed. Matthew Pullar moves easily between praise, disillusion, wonder and doubt. He celebrates the joys and challenges of fatherhood. He voices the lament of an heir to stolen land. He displays his craft in wonderful bursts of wordplay and excels in his exploration of the sonnet form. In poems that connect the Covid sourdough craze to the resurrection (Resurrection Bread), or the constant intrusion of small children to God’s omnipresent gaze (You Are Not Your Own), Pullar reminds us that God is present in our mess. He is a tender and courageous companion.
A big book with a big agenda. Graham Hill advocates for a decentralised and interdependent church in which Christians from every culture contribute and are mutually enriched. To achieve this, Christians everywhere bring their particular insights and sensitivities to the tasks of mission, governance, and the interpretation of Scripture. Hill’s contribution to this vision is to give majority world believers a voice. Interviews conducted with church leaders and theologians from Africa, Asia and Latin America form the heart of his book. This is a wonderful opportunity to broaden and deepen our understanding of the world’s only truly global religion.
Greg Clarke has a doctorate in modern literature and long experience in publishing, academia and Christian mission. He is the CEO of Leprosy Mission Australia and the author of the 2014 Australian Christian Book of the Year, The Great Bible Swindle. Greg and his family are members of St Mark’s Anglican Church in Darling Point, Sydney.
Miriam Wei Wei Lo is a writer intrigued by the intersection between faith, art and messy human lives. After eleven years in country ministry with her husband, she has worked as a creative writing academic for seven years and is now on the cusp of another change. Miriam and her family go to East Fremantle Baptist Church. Her latest poetry collection is Who Comes Calling?
Catherine Place started out as a secondary school teacher. Theological study added to the excitement of raising a family with her husband Dan. She has written for a Catholic liturgical magazine, produced resources for teachers of Religious Education and Texts and Traditions in secondary schools and was a tutor at Corpus Christi Seminary and the Catholic Theological College in Melbourne.
The Meaning of Singleness
Retrieving an Eschatological Vision for the Contemporary Church
Danielle Treweek
ISBN 9781514004852
This is a work of tremendous scholarship and intellectual acuity. By adopting the perspective of our destiny rather than origin, Treweek demonstrates that in church history, biblical exegesis and Christian theology, singleness has the same eternal significance as marriage. She takes on sacred cows and names Christian leaders who have veered away from the Bible to privilege marriage and devalue singleness. Treweek presents us with a vision of the church that is far more inclusive and faithful to Scripture. Taken seriously, this book will change the way churches operate, preachers preach, Christian organisations act, friends befriend, and crucially, how we love and are loved.
Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture
Christopher Watkin
ISBN: 9780310128724
A philosopher uses the Bible to analyse and interpret contemporary Western culture. The task is ambitious and daunting but Watkin’s confidence, curiosity and joy are contagious. No matter where you happen to open the book, the author’s easy style, wide-ranging scholarship and generosity grab your attention and you are off, exploring the unfolding biblical narrative and how it cuts through assumptions and ideologies to speak to our times. An enlightening and absorbing read for anyone wanting to deepen their appreciation of how the Bible addresses our world here and now. To reframe debates and culture wars, you will return regularly to this resource.
Appalled and infuriated by the abuse and degradation of the environment, a boy offers himself to God. God answers this child’s prayer and the ensuing adventure across continents and decades is breathtaking. The simple and sustainable system of land management that Tony Rinaudo pioneered in Niger is transforming the lives of subsistence farmers around the world and offers a model for solving our environmental crisis. Reviving dormant tree stumps is as powerful a metaphor as it is a method of reforestation. Tony is determined and faithful, and writes without guile or hubris. Irresistible, exemplary and, above all, hopeful.
Being the Bad Guys: How to Live for Jesus in a World that Says You Shouldn’t
Stephen McAlpine
ISBN: 9781784985981
No longer just quaint or irrelevant, Christians in Western society are once again regarded as “haters of humankind”. After exploring the ways a Christian worldview is unacceptable in contemporary Australia and the complex situations in which this places orthodox believers, Stephen McAlpine gets down to business. There is neither reason nor time for indulging in despair or victimhood. Being the Bad Guys calls on Christians to admit our failures and embrace life as a creative minority. As a community on the margins, we can welcome the actual victims of contemporary culture as they look for grace and solace from its bruising brutality. McAlpine is fearless, feisty and fluent. This book is an overdue reset for Christians who have not yet realised that they are more like Daniel in Babylon than Solomon in the land of milk and honey.
For the Love of God: How the Church is Better and Worse Than You Ever imagined
Natasha Moore with John Dickson, Simon Smart & Justine Toh
Centre for Public Christianity
ISBN: 9780647530351
For the Love of God is a bold yet balanced appraisal of the impact of Christianity, examining both the best and worst of what Christians have done over two millennia. Natasha Moore and her collaborators confront the failure of those who claimed to follow Christ but were responsible for the Crusades, the Inquisition and the abuse of children. The ease with which Christians through the ages have ignored both the teaching of Jesus and the dissenting voices of contemporary prophets is a caution. The authors also show how—when they obey Jesus—Christians have contributed to what is beautiful and beneficial in culture and society. In a time of social media echo chambers, fact-free opinion bubbles and divisive culture wars, this sort of fair and generous commentary is invaluable.
The Australian Christian Book of the Year Award is given annually to an original book written by an Australian citizen. The award recognises and encourages excellence in Australian Christian writing. The ACBOY Award carries a prize of $3,000 for the author, and a framed certificate for the author and publisher.
Entries are judged with an eye to the:
Original nature of the work.
Literary style, including suitability for the target audience.
Design, layout, cover, text and illustrations.
Contribution that the book makes in meeting a need for Christian writing in the Australian situation and in the Australian market. Entries are read and judged by a panel selected by the SparkLit Council.
Download conditions and entry form here.
The Australian Christian Book of the Year Award has been conferred annually since 1981.
2024 Australian Christian Book of the Year The Meaning of Singleness: Retrieving an Eschatological Vision for the Contemporary Church by Danielle Treweek (InterVarsity Press)
Open 2024 awards results and judges’ comments.
2023 Australian Christian Book of the Year Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture by Christopher Watkin (Zondervan Academic)
Open 2023 awards results and judges’ comments.
2022 Australian Christian Book of the Year The Forest Underground: Hope for a Planet in Crisis by Tony Rinaudo (ISCAST)
Open 2022 awards results and judges’ comments.
2021 Australian Christian Book of the Year Being the Bad Guys: How to Live for Jesus in a World that Says You Shouldn’t by Stephen McAlpine (The Good Book Company)
Open 2021 awards results and judges’ comments.
2020 Australian Christian Book of the Year For the Love of God: How the Church is Better and Worse Than You Ever Imagined by Natasha Moore with John Dickson, Simon Smart & Justine Toh (Centre for Public Christianity)
Open 2020 awards results and judges’ comments.
2019 Australian Christian Book of the Year The Fountain of Public Prosperity: Evangelical Christians in Australian History 1740–1914 by Stuart Piggin & Robert D. Linder (Monash University Publishing)
Open 2019 awards results and judges’ comments.
2018 Australian Christian Book of the Year The Bible in Australia: A Cultural History by Meredith Lake (NewSouth Publishing)
Open 2018 awards results and judges’ comments.
2017 Australian Christian Book of the Year Our Mob, God’s Story: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Artists Share their Faith edited by Louise Sherman & Christobel Mattingley (Bible Society Australia)
Open 2017 awards results and judges’ comments.
2016 Australian Christian Book of the Year Child Arise! The Courage to Stand by Jane Dowling (David Lovell Publishing)
Open 2016 awards results and judges’ comments.
2015 Australian Christian Book of the Year Captains of the Soul by Michael Gladwin (Big Sky Publishing)
Open 2015 awards results and judges’ comments.
2014 Australian Christian Book of the Year Winner. The Great Bible Swindle by Greg Clarke (Bible Society Australia)
Open 2014 awards results and judges’ comments.
2013 Australian Christian Book of the Year Forged with Flames by Ann Fogarty (Wild Dingo Press)
Open 2013 awards results and judges’ comments.
2012 Australian Christian Book of the Year Gumbuli of Ngukurr: Aboriginal Elder in Arnhem Land by Murray Seiffert (Acorn Press)
Open 2012 awards results and judges’ comments.
2011 Australian Christian Book of the Year Economics for Life by Ian Harper (Acorn Press)
Open 2011 awards results and judges’ comments.
2010 Australian Christian Book of the Year Losing My Religion by Tom Frame (UNSW Press)
Open 2010 awards results and judges’ comments.
2009 Australian Christian Book of the Year No Ordinary View by Naomi Reed (Ark House Press)
Open 2009 awards results and judges’ comments.
