A Book Update!

And a PhD Update (Exclusively For Paid Subscribers)

Hey Friends -

Just wanted to send a quick update from my end. It’s been 2+ weeks since the launch of my first book (The Justice of Jesus) and my publisher tells me that we’ve already sold a few thousand copies so far. Not normal at all for a first time author from an underrepresented community for publishing! To put that in perspective, I’m told that 90% of published books don’t sell more than 1000 copies - automatically placing The Justice of Jesus in the top 5%-10% of books sold. Again, completely wild for this book to get there despite its author.

From the bottom of my heart, *thank you* for your partnership in this journey! I’m so incredibly grateful to each of you who have bought copies for yourself + friends / family, read the book, and left a review (especially on Amazon and Goodreads). If you haven’t bought your copy or left a review yet, I’d be so grateful if you did that today!

Speaking of reviews, your early reviews of the book have brought so much joy to my heart - especially as someone whose top love language is words of affirmation! Here are just a few of my favourite ones so far:

One word stands out to me in these (and all the other reviews): Hope. Hope is something we’re all desperately longing for in these discouraging and challenging times. In these times, Hope feels like something in extremely short. I take this so much for granted in my voice but the reality is that I do have an audacious (borderline, naive) amount of hope for the future of the Western Church. Because things don’t have to be this way. And I’m already seeing signs of hope in the Western Church and across the Global Church right now - signs I share through good news stories throughout my book!

Which leads me to my main update for this newsletter - my PhD plans. I’m going to keep this part of my newsletter exclusive to paid subscribers because paid subscribers here give generously to directly funding my current ordination costs into the priesthood in addition to my upcoming PhD costs; after so generously funding my seminary costs over the past few years. I’d be so grateful if you upgraded your subscription to join these generous paid subscribers today who are going to be funding my research costs into something that I think can be truly hope-fueling and healing for the Western (and even, Global) Church.

As many of you have likely been tracking, much of my book and writing here centers around the faith of my St. Thomas Indian Christian ancestors. My family has been worshiping Jesus for 2000 years, going back to AD 52, when St. Thomas the apostle brought the just and liberating Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth to my southern Indian ancestors. For context - my ancestors worshiped Jesus for nearly 1500 years before the first colonizers showed up with the Western Church (Portuguese Catholic and Church of England missionaries) trying to convert my St. Thomas Indian ancestors to their narrow, western, Empire-shaped, dualistic ways of loving God and neighbour. I go into great detail on this in my book but researching for The Justice of Jesus made me realize that there I had only scratched the surface of the tip of the iceberg. There is *so* much more I'd like to spend years researching through field research; research that I ultimately hope to share through more books in the years ahead - ultimately for the healing of the church and world today.

I’m thrilled to share that just yesterday, I applied to my dream PhD program to research something very specific to this (and another ancient, indigenous, precolonial Christian tradition) further - for the sake of justice, liberation, and healing in our beautiful and broken world today. Since Paid Subscribers will directly be funding this multi-year research project, I will be sharing key parts of my PhD research journey (insights, presentations, hopes, etc.) via paywalled content. This will now become a form of regular, paywalled content for Paid Subscribers here in addition to other perks like the Monthly Virtual Chai we’ll be resuming next month).

I am now going to share with my paid subscribers a few excerpts from my submitted PhD Research Proposal (specifically, some of my research overview, thesis statement, and books cited for the research proposal). If you’re curious, you could get a 7 day free trial for now and continue reading: