Losing My Religion – Influences June 11, 2009
Posted by Matt in Losing My Religion.Tags: influential books, spiritual journey
trackback
In case you are interested, these are a few of the books I have read in recent years that helped me and continue to help me on my spiritual journey.
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
By Marcus Borg
Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers in Exile
Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture
A New Christianity for a New World: Why Traditional Faith is Dying and How a New Faith is Being Born
By John Shelby Spong
The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
By Shane Claiborne
Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality
By Donald Miller
Mere Discipleship: Radical Christianity in a Rebellious World
By Lee Camp
The Politics of Jesus
By John Howard Yoder
The Cost of Discipleship
By Dietrich Bonhoeffer
God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer our Most Important Question – Why we suffer.
By Bart D. Ehrman
A Generous Orthodoxy
Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope
By Brian McLaren
Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard and Foucalt to Church
By James K. A. Smith
The Future of Faith
by Harvey Cox
Great, great books. I have read all of them except the last one.
Borg is one of my favorite authors and I plan on going back and reading that one again soon. His “The Heart of Christianity” is indispensable.
I would recommend The Rebirth of Orthodoxy by Thomas C. Oden.
Scott, I’ve been meaning to pick up more of Borg’s books, but haven’t gotten to it yet. I’ll be sure to grab that one when I do.
Mark, I’ve know of Oden, but haven’t read that one, either. I’ll check it out when I have the chance.
P.S. I’ll continue my series next week when I have time.
very good list, matt. shelby’s “rescuing the bible from fundamentalism” and “liberating the gospels: seeing the bible through jewish eyes” really helped show me HOW to ask questions of the bible and christianity.
i also think the last week and the first christmas by borg and crossan are two safe books for evangelical christians to get their feet wet. they allow people to see the complexities of scripture and still be able to value their literalistic beliefs about jesus.
and for those who really want to read some fire…hitchens “god is not great” and dawkins “god delusion” are pretty spirited critiques of christianity and religion in general.
oops…rob bell’s velvet elvis is a great gateway drug for any/all of these books. it helps bridge literalism and contextualism.
and honestly, the books that really opened my eyes were the lee strobol case for christ/faith/creation/real jesus. you name em…i read em. all of those books made me question my beliefs more critically because, for me, the logic and explanations were horrible. just plain unbelievable. i have too many examples to list. but my favorite one is in “a case for faith” where some dude tried to explain god mauling the little children with a divine bear (elijah?) by exegiting the hebrew scripture to make it sound like the kids were military age men who were undermining the supreme authority of god. sad sad sad. it’s enough that in other places god told the isrealites army to keep “all the women for themselves” (we know what that means) when gthey won a military victory…but to try and rationalize it? beyond the pale.
I’ve read the Dawkins’ book and thought it was good, even though his dismissive tone did turn me off a bit.
I never read any of Strobel’s other books and I’m okay with that…