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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.

Mere Christianity

The best case for the essentials of orthodox Christianity in print.

David S. Dockery

The Cost of Discipleship

Leaves you wondering why you ever thought complacency or compromise in the Christian life was an option.

Mark Buchanan

Church Dogmatics

Opened a new era in theology in which the Bible, Christ, and saving grace were taken seriously once more.

J. I. Packer

The Lord of the Rings (trilogy)

A classic for children from 9 to 90. Bears constant re-reading.

J. I. Packer

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

Orthodoxy

A rhetorically inventive exposition of the coherence of Christian truth.

David Neff

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

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

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

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

in alphabetical order by author

Things Fall Apart

(The Big Book of A.A.)

Here I Stand

The Epistle to the Romans

The Denial of Death

Habits of the Heart

The Diary of a Country Priest

Letters and Papers from Prison

Transforming Mission

The Prophetic Imagination

Truth as Encounter

The Plague

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April 24 2000, Vol. 44, No. 5