Christian popular fiction abounds, but what if your tastes lean toward the literary, the historical, the apologetic, or the devotional? Here are eleven books that cater to the tastes of the thinking Christian.
The shelves of Christian bookstores are inundated withbestselling works of popular fiction, particularly Christian romance novels and end-times apocalyptic thrillers like Left Behind. But what if your tastes tend more toward the literary, the historical, the apologetic, or the devotional? Don't despair: there do exist books that will be of keen interest to the thinking Christian, although they are not always produced for the Christian market. Here's a look at eleven elevating titles.
Books for the Literary Christian
The following three books cater to the appetites of the literary Christian by describing the lives and works of Christian writers, exploring the Christian imagination, and describing the secular struggle against religion in literature.
Literary Converts
In Literary Converts (Ignatius Press, 2000, ISBN 0-89870-790-0), Joseph Pearce explores the spiritual lives of Christian converts. Some authors discussed in the book converted from Protestantism to Catholicism, others moved out of the world of atheism and agnosticism into the world of belief. These conversions, set against the backdrop of the 20th century (an age in which God was declared to be "dead" and in which humankind was attempting to manufacture the superhuman), and occurring in such rapid numbers among the most elite intellectuals of the time, are fascinating.
The book depicts great authors who, wishing to escape the overwhelming secular wasteland of their time, were drawn to Christianity. The author touches on the spiritual lives of numerous literary figures: Eliot, Tolkein, Lewis, Waugh, Knox, Sassoon, Sidwell, Chesterton, and Greene, to name but a few. Even Oscar Wilde makes an appearance, with a death bed conversion to Catholicism. Literary Converts is at once historical, biographical, literary, and religious in subject matter, and the variety enables the book to remain fascinating. So too does the author's liberal use of quotes from the letters, conversations, and writings of the literary figures themselves, which is so much more satisfying than mere narration.