The folks at Renovare’ took on an ambitious challenge when they began 25 Books Every Christian Should Read: A Guide to the Essential Spiritual Clasics.  Of the thousands (millions?) of books written by Christian authors over the past 2000 years, twenty-five have been chosen as “must read” importance.  The editorial board that put the list together must have had dozens of debates about the list!

And what an editorial board it is.  Dallas Willard, Richard Foster, Phyllis Tickle, Richard Rohr, Gayle Beebe … you get the idea.  These are intellectual heavyweights.  And spiritual guides for many of us.

Of course, the list is still somewhat subjective.  Books have a way of hitting us in different ways at different stages of life.  I might pick up a book and be unimpressed today … then read it again in ten years and come away with a new appreciation.  On the other hand, less revered books might be exactly what I needed to hear and might be transformational in my life.  Sometimes a book is very personal that way.  So any list like this has to be viewed with some caution.

On the other hand, the list is truly impressive.  It captures the traditions of faith as far back as St. Athanasius and works its way through history up to Henri Nouwen.  Each chapter explains why the book is important and what the core message is.  There are even excerpts from each book so you can capture the flavor of the writing.

Then there is a final section that cheats a bit:  Best Contemporary Authors.  That allows the likes of Anne Lamott, Wendell Berry, Eugene Peterson and others to receive a sort of honorable mention.  Another nice feature of the book is that the editorial board lists their personal top 5.  Interesting to see how some of their personal favorites didn’t make the list of top 25.  But then, a personal favorite is not necessarily something that all Christians should read, as I said above.

This is a good book to use as a guide for a reading list.  A person who read all 25 books would receive a tremendous education.  It actually makes me pause and ask myself which books are on my top 25 list.  Perhaps a future blog post on that.

Oh, and to answer the inevitable question, I’ve read ten of the 25 books. Below is the full list if you are interested:

On the Incarnation, St. Athanasius

Confessions, St. Augustine

The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Various

The Rule of St. Benedict, St. Benedict

The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri

The Cloud of Unknowing, Anonymous

Revelations of Divine Love (Showings), Julian of Norwich

The Imitation of Christ, Thomas a’ Kempis

The Philokalia, Various

Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin

The Interior Castle, St. Teresa of Avila

Dark Night of the Soul, St. John of the Cross

Pensees, Blaise Pascal

The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan

The Practice of the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence

A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, William Law

The Way of a Pilgrim, Unknown

The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky

Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton

The Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

A Testament of Devotion, Thomas R. Kelly

The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton

Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis

The Return of the Prodigal Son, Henri Nouwen