Beauty and Resistance: Spiritual Rhythms for Formation and Repair

by Jonathan P. Walton

How can you pursue justice, work toward a renewed world, and sustain your faith without burning out?

Beauty and Resistance is a call to rest for weary activists, justice advocates, and believers who long for a life of consistent peace and abundant purpose. Grounded in the conviction that God doesn't intend for you to live in chronic exhaustion and burnout, Jonathan Walton outlines a path that relies on the structure and support of a rule of life, first forged by the desert fathers and mothers of the faith but adapted for sustaining a collective and communal spirituality in today's world. Beauty and Resistance invites you into that rule of life.

Through stories, prompts, and spiritual formation, Walton calls you to see the pain of the world and respond—not out of outrage, reactivity, or performance but as a rested person. It's an invitation to a life immersed in true rest in all its forms—from active rest to delight to community building—so that beauty and resistance naturally flow from your deeply rested life. Part personal narrative, part practical guide, Beauty and Resistance outlines ingredients essential to spiritual formation—rest, restore, resist, repeat—and invites you to join God's renewal of all things.

In this book, you'll

How to reflect God's kingdom in every area of your life. How to live out a rule of life grounded in Christ and his kingdom that leads to communal flourishing.How both beauty and resistance are necessary to fully engage with delight and grief, lament and rejoicing, and appreciation and disappointment.How to live within your limits to contribute to radical flourishing in the world, recognizing that God is God and you are not.You can trade anxious, reactive spirituality for a grounded and freeing connection with God, yourself, and your neighbors. Whether you're a justice seeker teetering on the edge of burnout or someone desiring a deeper, sustainable connection with God while pursuing hard, necessary work, this book offers the spiritual scaffolding you need to tend to your interior life with God while sustaining the outward flow of love and engagement with the world. This book is your invitation to an integrative way of life that restores, renews, and fuels your pursuit of justice.

Genres: Theology

1 pages, Audio CD

Published November 11, 2025

Reviews

[AJ Westendorp · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was really grateful for Jonathan’s perspective. He’s introspective and vulnerable about how his productivity mindset has hurt him, and come through with practical tools that help us live lives that can encapsulate the best of both worlds - Beauty and Resistance.
Using planning days, traditions, rhythms, songs, poems, baking, and Rule of Life to carve out practices that work inspired me to carve out the same instead of bending my life to the next thing on the to do list.

[Wesley Ellis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jonathan P. Walton’s Beauty and Resistance is a thoughtful and often compelling exploration of how beauty, spirituality, and moral imagination sustain people engaged in the work of resistance. I appreciated Walton’s pastoral tone and his deep concern for the spiritual and mental health of those striving for justice. At the same time, the book reflects a more conservative theological posture than I resonate with. While Walton critiques patriarchy and Christian Nationalism, he stops short of naming the specific figures, ideologies, and economic systems that actively perpetuate them. I found his use of masculine pronouns for God frustrating, and I wished he had more directly confronted forces like Trumpism, Silicon Valley oligarchy, and capitalism itself. His focus remains largely on personal responsibility rather than systemic power. Still, to be fair, Walton’s aim is not political analysis but spiritual formation for resilient resistance—and on those terms, the book offers real gifts.

[Jlnelso · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book I didn’t want to end. Walton’s self-disclosure is courageous and always in service of illustrating his point. He wants readers to grasp these simple yet challenging truths about Christian life: first, God calls us to higher purposes than achievement and acquisition, and our choice to rest will make this possible; and second, God desires that we follow Jesus by resisting the patterns of this world. Walton gives equal weight to these two interconnected sides of Christian life – the titular beauty and resistance – and the sound advice that we might need to recuperate first from “rules of life” that have injured and deformed us (e.g., overwork, activism with no rest, or living with no margin left to resist the world’s temptations). This is a book I pray I will hold in my mind all year.

[Seth · Rating 3 out of 5]

A strong call to focus on what really matters & realign our priorities with God's.

It does come from a solidly progressive, Christian, 21st-Century, BIPOC worldview so if that sort of thing bothers you it would be a very difficult read. But if you lean that way or can overlook the politics, it is a refreshing call to prioritize abiding in Christ with our active work to live out the Gospel in our habits & lives. I will certainly be trying to incorporate some of these ideas into the coming year.

[Chris Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of good stuff for the burned out, anxious and those exhausted by "all this." It is, yes, another rule of life book, and I tend to be a bit skeptical of those because in their attempts to alleviate exhaustion and celebrate humanity, they often just give more work and treat people like machines. But Walton's openness and vulnerability provide a humanity that mostly avoids that, although I think there is maybe a tad too much therapy speak.

Walton writes from the position of a person of color in a white-centric culture. That means his journey and perspective is often different than mine; that's not a criticism. Just a note that there were times it was harder for me to be able to totally understand the added context because it is not my experience ... it's a me problem, not a Walton problem.

[Dorothy Greco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Walton has written an honest, vulnerable, insightful book that deserves to be widely read. He bases his thesis on 4 essential rhythms that will allow us to flourish and continue to resist systemic oppression: rest, restore, resist, repeat. I appreciated many things about this book, but perhaps #1 is Walton's willingness to vulnerably share his struggles with insight and profound self-awareness. I feel like often, when male authors disclose, they either are self-deprecating (yes, aren't I a jerk?!) or clueless about the implications/cost of their limitations for those around them. Not so with Beauty and Resistance. He carries a depth of understanding and wisdom that is uncommon and welcome. Well worth your time.

[Ethan · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s nice in here. It’s rough out there. This is the kind of life many of us have experienced, and it’s hard to keep it all in balance.

In Beauty + Resistance: spiritual rhythms for formation and repair (galley received as part of early review program), Jonathan P. Walton suggests some ways in which Christians can maintain healthy spiritual disciplines to cultivate beauty within and resist the difficulties without.

The author provides a lot of examples from his own life of why he has reached the conclusions he has reached regarding these matters. He encourages all to work out of rest, and not in order to rest; how to pursue effective restoration in life and in relationships; how to well resist the forces and systems against us individually and in community, which often involves developing and maintaining good collective habits.

It’s an encouraging book for those who find themselves in the kind of predicament in which they have much for which to be thankful while the horrors persist.

[Paul Stack · Rating 5 out of 5]

A life-giving book - Jonathan shares from a place of deep honesty, vulnerability, and hope. I am reading the book with my mom in a book group, and it is inspiring spiritual rhythms and political action for us that is grounded in God’s love and care for us and the world.