If you want to be changed, read a good book. Or so said A. W. Tozer: “The things you read will fashion you by slowly conditioning your mind.” Of the millions of books published this century, only a few hundred have shaped people in extraordinary ways. Here are some of those—100 books that had a significant effect on Christians this century.
Christianity Today asked more than 100 of its contributors and church leaders to nominate the ten best religious books of the twentieth century. By best books, we meant those that not only were important when first published, but also have enduring significance for the Christian faith and church. We have included books which do not always prompt agreement, but which are important for evangelical Christians to read and contend with. A few “period” pieces also made the list of 90.
By far, C. S. Lewis was the most popular author and Mere Christianity the book nominated most often. Indeed, we could have included even more Lewis works, but finally we had to say: “Enough is enough; give some other authors a chance.”
Readers are welcome to send us their own nominations of the top ten religious books of the twentieth century, with comments.
THE TOP 10
1. C. S. Lewis
Mere Christianity
The best case for the essentials of orthodox Christianity in print.
David S. Dockery
2. Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The Cost of Discipleship
Leaves you wondering why you ever thought complacency or compromise in the Christian life was an option.
Mark Buchanan
3. Karl Barth
Church Dogmatics
Opened a new era in theology in which the Bible, Christ, and saving grace were taken seriously once more.
J. I. Packer
4. J. R. R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings (trilogy)
A classic for children from 9 to 90. Bears constant re-reading.
J. I. Packer
5. John Howard Yoder
The Politics of Jesus
Some 30 years after this book was published, the church has found itself culturally in a more marginal position, and this book is making wider and wider sense.
Rodney Clapp
6. G.K. Chesterton
Orthodoxy
A rhetorically inventive exposition of the coherence of Christian truth.
David Neff
7. Thomas Merton
The Seven Storey Mountain
A painfully candid story of one Christian soul’s walk with grace and struggle, it has become the mark against which all other spiritual autobiographies must be measured.
Phyllis Tickle
8. Richard Foster
Celebration of Discipline
After Foster finishes each spiritual discipline, you not only know what it is, why it’s important, and how to do it—you want to do it.
Mark Buchanan
9. Oswald Chambers
My Utmost for His Highest
A treasury of daily devotional readings that has fed the souls of millions of Christians in the twentieth century. Future generations of Christians must continue to draw from this treasury.
Richard J. Mouw
10. Reinhold Niebuhr
Moral Man and Immoral Society
Introduced a breathtakingly insightful, shrewd, and cunning realism about human sin, especially in its social expressions,
rooted in biblical theology and a penetrating appraisal of the dark era into which the Western world had entered.
David P. Gushee
THE OTHER 90
in alphabetical order by author
Chinua Achebe
Things Fall Apart
Alcoholics Anonymous
(The Big Book of A.A.)
Roland Bainton
Here I Stand
Karl Barth
The Epistle to the Romans
Ernest Becker
The Denial of Death
Robert N. Bellah, ET AL.
Habits of the Heart
Georges Bernanos
The Diary of a Country Priest
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Letters and Papers from Prison
David Bosch
Transforming Mission
Walter Brueggemann
The Prophetic Imagination
Emil Brunner
Truth as Encounter
Albert Camus
The Plague
Edward John Carnell
The Case for Orthodox Theology
Willa Cather
Death Comes for the Archbishop
Dorothy Day
The Long Loneliness
Annie Dillard
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Documents of Vatican II
W. E. B. Dubois
The Souls of Black Folk
T. S. Eliot
Four Quartets
Ralph Ellison
Invisible Man
Jacques Ellul
The Technological Society
Shusaku Endo
Silence
Anne Frank
The Diary of Anne Frank
Victor Frankl
Man’s Search for Meaning
Sigmund Freud
Civilization and Its Discontents
The Fundamentals
Langdon Gilkey
Shantung Compound
Carol Gilligan
In a Different Voice
Graham Greene
The Power and the Glory
John Howard Griffin
Black Like Me
Gustavo Gutiérrez
A Theology of Liberation
Philip Paul Hallie
Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed
Stanley Hauerwas
A Community of Character
Václav Havel
Living in Truth
Richard Hays
The Moral Vision of the New Testament
Carl F. H. Henry
God, Revelation, and Authority (six volumes)
John R. Hersey
Hiroshima
Abraham Heschel
The Prophets
Aldous Huxley
Brave New World
William James
The Varieties of Religious Experience
Franz Kafka
The Trial
Martin Luther King, Jr.
A Testament of Hope
Thomas S. Kuhn
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Harper Lee
To Kill a Mockingbird
Aldo Leopold
A Sand County Almanac
C. S. Lewis
The Chronicles of Narnia (especially The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) and The Screwtape Letters
J. Gresham Machen
Christianity and Liberalism
Alasdair C. MacIntyre
After Virtue
Malcolm X and Alex Haley
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
George M. Marsden
Fundamentalism and American Culture
FranÇois Mauriac
Viper’s Tangle
Jürgen Moltmann
The Crucified God
Richard John Neuhaus
The Naked Public Square
Lesslie Newbigin
The Gospel in a Pluralist Society
Reinhold Niebuhr
The Nature and Destiny of Man (two volumes)
H. Richard Niebuhr
Christ and Culture
Kathleen Norris
The Cloister Walk
Henri J. M. Nouwen
The Wounded Healer
Anders Nygren
Agape and Eros
Elizabeth O’Connor
Journey Inward, Journey Outward
Flannery O’Connor
A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories
Rudolf Otto
The Idea of the Holy
J. I. Packer
Knowing God
Alan Paton
Cry, the Beloved Country
Jaroslav Pelikan
Jesus Through the Centuries
Josef Pieper
The Four Cardinal Virtues
Michael Polanyi
Personal Knowledge
Chaim Potok
The Chosen
Walter Rauschenbusch
Christianity and the Social Crisis
Dorothy L. Sayers
The Mind of the Maker
Albert Schweitzer
The Quest of the Historical Jesus
Nevil Shute
On the Beach
Ronald J. Sider
Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
John R. W. Stott
Basic Christianity
Paul Tournier
The Meaning of Persons
A. W. Tozer
The Pursuit of God
Barbara Tuchman
The Guns of August
Evelyn Underhill
Mysticism
Miroslav Volf
Exclusion and Embrace
Gerhard von Rad
Old Testament Theology
Andrew F. Walls
The Missionary Movement in Christian History
Max Weber
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Simone Weil
Waiting for God
Elie Wiesel
Night
Charles Williams
Descent into Hell
Walter Wink
Engaging the Powers
Philip Yancey
The Jesus I Never Knew
Related Elsewhere
Most of these books are still in print and can be purchased at the Christianity Online bookstore and other book retailers.
Near the end of 1999, HarperCollins published a list of The 100 Best Spiritual Books of the Century. John Wilson, Editor at Large of Christianity Today and Editor of Books & Culture, was on the nominating committee.
Copyright © 2000 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
