On a Tuesday afternoon in April 1993, a middle-aged man called Jim climbed into his car in a neighbourhood in Minneapolis, Minnesota and drove to a local hotel a few kilometres away from his home. On the way to the hotel, he stopped at a liquor store and bought a few bottles of vodka. He locked himself up in his hotel room and went on a drinking binge for five and a half days. On the evening of Monday, 19 April 1993 he ran out of alcohol. He phoned his wife and the following day they started to make arrangements for him to go for treatment at the Hazelden Centre.

In 1992, the year before this incident, he published his follow-up book titled, Body Theology, in Louisville, Kentucky. In an interview in 2007 James Nelson described himself as “a Christian ethicist (retired) and a recovering alcoholic (from which there is no retirement).” In his last book Thirst: God and the alcoholic experience (2004) he explains that he writes from an “insider perspective” for people who “want to use the lenses of theology to look at their own addiction and recovery…who want to think ‘theologically’ about life and its important events…who know that their personal stories…are best understood as part of a larger faith story”.  Autobiography has the potential to be a theological statement. John Barbour writes that “at its heart lies bios. “Bios” in autobiography does not simply mean the temporal span of organic existence, but the ‘sense of life’ of an individual: all that gives meaning and purpose to a person’s experience in time”. A narrative approach infuses theology with passion. We need a theology that “creates connective tissues among us”, that reminds us of our vulnerabilities and struggles instead of a theology characterised by “coolness and detachment” (Nelson).