Recommended Reading for Curious Christians

Warning - this blog exceeds the length limits that custom dictates.  I apologize.  If these kinds of book discussions interest you, it may well suck up way more of your time than you wanted.

I asked several people recently for book recommendations.  The question I asked was this: what books would you recommend to those who are curious and want to explore the Christian faith, or to those who are new in the faith and want to learn and grow.  I got an interesting range of responses.  Not the typical list of books I expected.   The list below is unedited by me.  If it got recommended by someone, it’s on here.  Only a small portion of them come from me personally.  And I haven’t read all the books on the list.  I just thought it would be interesting to list the wide range of books that turned up when I put all the lists together.

Not everyone reads.  I know that.  But lots of people do.  And sometimes the best way to help people explore the Christian faith is by recommending a good book or two.  Now books are no substitute for ongoing conversations and face to face relationships.  But there are times when good books are even better than good friends.  They fit more easily into a backpack, for example, and are less expensive to take on vacation.  I have been blessed in my life by people who are good book recommenders.  They read widely, remember what they read, and are helpful guides to what might be a good book for a particular person at a particular time in her or his life.  So in the hopes of stimulating us all in the grace and gift of recommending helpful books, a beginning list.

Have you read any of these books?  Would they make it on your list?  Are there other books you think should be on here?  I was interested that what popped up on people’s radars for what should be read included memoirs, poetry, novels, popular spirituality, philosophy, cultural analysis, hard core theology and biblical scholarship, parenting, psychology, science, sociology, self-help, and a whole lot else that’s hard to classify.  Stuff is in no particular order.  Enjoy.  

N.T. Wright 

Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense

Christian Origins and the Question of God, vols. 1-3

The New Testament and the People of God (vol. 1)

Jesus and the Victory of God (vol. 2)

The Resurrection of the Son of God (vol. 3)

The Lord and His Prayer

David Ford 

Christian Wisdom: Desiring God and Learning in Love

The Shape of Living: Spiritual Directions for Everyday Life

Living in Praise: Worshiping and Knowing God

Self and Salvation: Being Transformed

Ellen Charry

By The Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine

Jurgen Moltmann, with Nicholas Wolterstorff and Ellen Charry

A Passion for God’s Reign: Theology, Christian Learning, and the Christian Self

Sarah Coakley

Re-thinking Gregory of Nyssa

Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy, and Gender

Religion and the Body

Kathryn Tanner

God and Creation in Christian Theology

The Politics of God

Jesus, Humanity, and the Trinity: A Brief Systematic Theology

Brian Walsh and Richard Middleton

Transforming Vision: Shaping a Christian Worldview

Truth is Stranger Than It Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age

Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmat

Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire

Mark Gornik

To Live in Peace: Biblical Faith and the Changing Inner City

Miroslav Volf

Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and

Reconciliation

Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace

The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World

After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity

Dorothy Bass (with M. Volf)

Practicing Theology: Beliefs and Practices in the Christian Life

Timothy Keller

The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

Thomas Howard

On Being Catholic

John Behr

The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death

Walker Percy

Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book

The Second Coming: A Novel

Henry Zilstra

Testament of Vision

Paul Elie

The Life You Save May be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage

Francois Mauriac

Vipers Tangle

Ron Hansen

Mariette in Ecstasy

Henri Nouwen

The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society

In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership

Phillip Yancey

What’s So Amazing About Grace?

The Jesus I Never Knew

Where Is God When It Hurts?

When We Hurt: Prayer, Preparation, and Hope for Life’s Pain

Disappointment With God

Finding God in Unexpected Places

Os Guiness

The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life

Long Journey Home: A Guide To Your Search For the Meaning Of Life

Winning Back the Soul of American Business

Peter Kreeft

The Best Things in Life

C.S. Lewis

The Chronicles of Narnia (one friend recommends the audio version, esp. for kids)

The Great Divorce

A Grief Observed

The Problem of Pain

Mere Christianity

The Screwtape Letters

Surprised by Joy

Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold

Eugene Peterson

Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading

A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology

The Message (a translation of the bible)

Frederick Beuchner

Godric: A Novel

Brendan: A Novel

Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale

Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC

Lee Strobel

The Case for Christ

Walter Wangerin, 

The Book of the Dun Cow

The Book of Sorrows

Robert Wuthnow 

Creative Spirituality: The Way of the Artist

The Restructuring of American Religion

After Heaven: Spirituality in America Since the 1950’s

After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty and Thirty-Somethings are Shaping the Future

of American Religion

Peter Gomes 

The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What’s So Good About the Good News?

The Good Life: Truths that Last in Times of Need

The Good Book: Reading the Bible With Mind And Heart

Cornel West

Race Matters

Peter Hawkins 

Dante’s Testaments: Essays on Scriptural Imagination

Zygmaunt Bauman

Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumers?

Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty

Consuming Life

Liquid Life

Liquid Modernity

Randall Balmer

Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture of America

(There is also a pbs video version of this that is excellent)

Phillip Jenkins

The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity

The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South

Marcus Borg

The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith

Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of

Contemporary Faith

The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic Contemporary

Faith

Brian McLaren

  A New Kind of Christian: A Tale of Two Friends on a Spiritual Journey

A Generous Orthodoxy

Finding Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices

Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope

Donald Miller

Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

Rob Bell

Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith

Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality

“Everything is Spiritual” Video

Mike Yaconelli

Messy Spirituality 

Brennan Manning

Ragamuffin Gospel

Ronald Sider

Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger

Ernest Becker

The Denial of Death

Reynolds Price

Letter to a Man on Fire: Does God Exist and Does He Care?

Three Gospels

Hirsh & Kise

Soultypes: Finding the Spiritual Path That’s Right For You

Owen Gingrich

God's Universe

John Polkinghorne

Quarks, Chaos, and Christianity: Questions to Science and Religion

Mary Oliver

Thirst: Poems

Dante

The Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso)

Scott Peck

The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual

Growth

A World Waiting to Be Born: Civility Rediscovered

Ronald Rolheiser 

The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality

The Restless Heart: Finding Our Spiritual Home in Times of Loneliness

The Shattered Lantern: Rediscovering a Felt Presence of God

Henry Louis Gates, ed.

The Classic Slave Narratives

Kathleen Norris

Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith

Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and  Writer’s Life

The Cloister Walk

Annie Dillard

Pilgrim At Tinker Creek

Holy The Firm

Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters

The Maytrees: A Novel

The Living: A Novel

Archbishop Oscar Romero

The Violence of Love

Anne Lamott

Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year

Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

Nicholas Wolterstorff

Lament for a Son

Martin Luther King, Jr.

A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writing and Speeches of M.L. King, Jr.

The Autobiography of M.L. King, Jr.

Nelson Mandela

Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela

Tony Hendra 

Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul

Mother Theresa

Come Be My Light

In My Own Words

Carlos Eire

Waiting for Snow in Havana

Cornelius Plantinga

Engaging God’s World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living

Bo Burlingham

Small Giants: Companies That Chose To Be Great Instead of Big

Stephen Toulmin

Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity.  

Jean Bethke Elshtain

Who Are We? Critical Reflections and Hopeful Possibilities

oh yeah . . . and the Bible.