Reading Christian: "25 Books Every Christian Should Read"

November 30, 2011 by Greg Garrett

Continued from Page 1

I blush to say that I'm not familiar (beyond the title) with William Law's A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, which also offers correctives to American Christianity as it's usually lived out. As I pointed out in The Other Jesus, evangelical pollster George Barna is one of many current observers who argues that American spirituality is wide and shallow, consisting largely of church attendance and some opinions on moral issues. 25 Books notes Law's call to look beyond these narrow definitions of Christian life. If the gospels are about life, not church, church attendance is not the measure of Christian faith—religion, Law argues, teaches us how to be in the world and how to act toward each other. Prayer is the smallest part of devotion, Law suggests; "devotion is a life given to God." Charity and good works are an essential part of that devotion, and our resources are not our own, since we are to offer "generosity, care, and kindness to such that are in need of it."

While it's not the final work in 25 Books, I close with Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship, which I have been teaching for the past few years to priests and pastors in training at the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest in Austin. This book and Bonhoeffer's own life outline the public nature of our faith; following Jesus will not just affect our private devotion, but every aspect of our experience. In fact, Cost of Discipleship suggests that we must marry our private devotion and mystical submission to God with public action, that, in essence we must both believe and obey. If we are to follow Jesus's teaching that we must love God and our neighbor, then "we are called to action in the world." Private faith, at last, is not sufficient. Famously, Bonhoeffer argues that when Christ calls someone, he bids him come and die. That may not, like Bonhoeffer, mean actual physical death, thanks be to God. But it certainly means obedience, dropping everything to follow Jesus, giving away our lives in the service of others.

25 Books Every Christian Should Read has inspired me to explore several of its selections, which strikes me as exactly what it should do. If someone reads The Cost of Discipleship or The Institutes or The Sayings of the Desert Fathers because of their treatment here, then 25 Books has served its purpose.

I'd guess that it will serve that purpose many times over.

Visit the Patheos Book Club for more conversation on 25 Books Every Christian Should Read.**

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About Greg Garrett

Greg Garrett is (according to BBC Radio) one of America's leading voices on religion and culture. He is the author or co-author of over twenty books of fiction, theology, cultural criticism, and spiritual autobiography. His most recent books are The Prodigal, written with the legendary Brennan Manning, Entertaining Judgment: The Afterlife in Popular Imagination, and My Church Is Not Dying: Episcopalians in the 21st Century. A contributor to Patheos since 2010, Greg also writes for the Huffington Post, Salon.com, OnFaith, The Tablet, Reform, and other web and print publications in the US and UK.

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