Every Somewhere Sacred: Rescuing a Theology of Place in the American Imagination, By Ben Norquist and Brian Miller

Every Somewhere Sacred

Rescuing a Theology of Place in the American Imagination

by Benjamin Norquist and Brian J. Miller

Every Somewhere Sacred
Paperback
$27.99
  • Length: 256 pages
  • Dimensions: 6 × 9 in
  • Published: June 16, 2026
  • Imprint: IVP Academic
  • ISBN: 9781514009413
Other Formats:

Become Stewards of God's Vision Where You're Placed

It’s possible for American Christians to live everywhere and nowhere at the same time. We’re often disconnected from the places we inhabit—cut off from nature, our neighbors, people different from us, and a sense of rootedness. It’s time to imagine a better way.

Each of us is placed by God in a specific "somewhere." Drawing on social science research and their experiences across American landscapes and the Middle East, Ben Norquist and Brian Miller show how Christians in the US can develop a redemptive imagination for place. Many people have uncritically accepted American cultural assumptions about land, property, home ownership, and the good life. Yet our identity as followers of Jesus should transform how we live in the physical world, even as we recognize how places shape their inhabitants.

Every Somewhere Sacred explores

  • tools for deeply understanding or “reading” places;
  • interdisciplinary scholarship from Scripture, sociology, and theology on land and place; and
  • connections between colonialism, race, social class, and American landscapes.

Norquist and Miller offer avariety of personal and corporate practices including land research, reassessing priorities and habits, advocating for others, and reconsidering the nature of sacred space, prompting us toward a broader vision for how God works through space, usingbiblical lenses of landscape as gift, sacrament, kin, and home.

Are you seeking a rooted, meaningful faith that responds to the needs of your community? If you want to dive deeper into a theology of place, Every Somewhere Sacred willhelp you connect to your own "somewhere" and offer guidance for becoming a steward of God's vision where you are.

"The present society, country, and Christian tradition have largely encouraged people to see land as commodity. Every Somewhere Sacred invites its U.S. audience to correct their worldviews and lifeways, so that one's relationship with land mirrors more closely the Creator's design. Readers will welcome the case studies and practical examples of how to interpret and understand the places they occupy, cultivating a sense of belonging that calls them to responsibility and reciprocity."H. Daniel Zacharias, professor of New Testament studies at Acadia Divinity College and coauthor, with T. Christopher Hoklotubbe, of Reading the Bible on Turtle Island
"Ben Norquist and Brian Miller offer a searing critique of American Christianity's inability to 'see' the land on which we live. More than criticism, this book is a clarion call to people of faith to tell truer, more honest stories about the places we inhabit. Profoundly hopeful, this book will change the way you think about who you are and where you're from."Robert Brenneman, author of Homies and Hermanos: God and the Gang in Central America
"In a culture where we are increasingly untethered to the land and to our neighbors, we are in desperate need of theology that quite literally grounds us. Every Somewhere Sacred does just that, offering a profound and essential invitation to reimagine the power of place."Amanda Held Opelt, speaker and author of A Hole in the World
"Important, innovative books are sometimes called groundbreaking. This book is that, but even more so, it is groundhealing. It offers 'Christian practices for living faithfully as members of our human geographies.' Beautifully written, rich with historical insight, and prophetic in its practical, ethical implications, these pages invite Christians back into the sacred space of our world that is all around us and full of God."Andrew DeCort, author of Reviving the Golden Rule
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Read an Excerpt

CONTENTS

Introduction: Why American Christians Need a New Way to Live in Place

Part 1: Where Do We Think We Are?
1. Spatial Texts: Tools for Reading Places
2. American Land Stories

Part 2: How Did We Get Here?
3. Settler Places on Indigenous Land
4. Race and Class
5. Types of Space

Part 3: Is There a Better Story?
6. Four Themes for Rereading Bible Stories about Land
7. Swords into Plowshares: Revising Christian Land Stories
8. Living Out the Better Stories as Individuals
9. Living Out the Better Stories Together

Conclusion: A Renewed Approach to the Landscape
Acknowledgments
General Index
Scripture Index

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Ben Norquist

Ben Norquist (PhD, Azusa Pacific University) has served as director of grants and academics for Churches for Middle East Peace and as director of the Network of Evangelicals for the Middle East, where he helped American Christians pursue holisticpeace with their neighbors around the world. Previously he also worked as a leader on the spiritual formation and community engagement team at Bryan College (Dayton, Tennessee) and with the Center for Faith and Innovation at Wheaton College (Illinois).

Brian Miller

Brian Miller (PhD, University of Notre Dame) is professor of sociology at Wheaton College and regularly teaches about and publishes on Christian residential and cultural patterns. His books include Sanctifying Suburbia: How the Suburbs Becamethe Promised Land for American Evangelicals and Building Faith: A Sociology of Religious Structures, coauthored with Robert Brenneman.