My Own Personal Top 25

In my previous post I listed the 25 books that people sent in as the most transformative in their Christian journeys. After the last post some late submissions came in: Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time by Marcus Borg, An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor, A Theology of Liberation by Gustavo Guitierrez, Walking the Bible by Bruce Feller, and Money, Possessions, and Eternity by Randy Alcorn.

Now that I have heard all of your great submissions, here is the list of 25 books that have most significantly shaped by understanding of God, myself, and others. I am not saying that these are the 25 best Christian books of all time, just the ones that have shaped my faith the most.



Soren Kierkegaard

My own personal top 25
in alphabetical order

1. A Plain Account of Christian Perfection by John Wesley
2. Celebration of Discipline by Richard J. Foster
3. Church Dogmatics by Karl Barth
4. Come Be My Light by Mother Teresa
5. Dark Night of the Soul by John of the Cross
6. I See Satan Fall Like Lightning by Rene  Girard
7. In God’s Presence by Marjorie Suchocki
8. Jesus of the Disinherited by Howard Thurman
9. John Wesley's Sermons by John Wesley
10. Letter from the Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King
11. Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
12. Martin Luther's Large & Small Catechism by Martin Luther
13. On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent by Gustavo Gutierrez
14. Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year by Anne Lamott
15. Origen: The Song of Songs, Commentary and Homilies by Origen
16. Overcoming Life's Disappointments by Harold S. Kushner
17. Preaching by Fred Craddock
18. Silence by Shusaku Endo
19. Struggling with Scripture by Walter Bruegemann
20. Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion by Sara Miles
21. Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion by Gregory Boyle
22. Teaching the Dead Bird to Sing by W. Paul Jones
23. The Divine Hours by Phyllis Tickle
24. The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium by Walter Wink
25. Works of Love by Soren Kierkegaard