catapult magazine

definitely. jack kerouac, at least through his early stuff—On the Road, Dharma Bums—, always challenges my energy and excitement for life. also, several political books have had a profound impact on my faith and my politics (i’m a politics kind of guy), such as Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by dee brown and Against Empire by michael parenti. i’m sure there are more, but i can’t think of them off the top of my head.

What books have most affected your life as a Christian? Here are some of the ?religious? ones that have meant a lot to me:
?Mere Christianity? by C. S. Lewis – because Lewis presented a message that even a hard-bitten scientifically trained person like me couldn?t reject or refute; and because he showed me that Jesus was either a charlatan, a nutcase, or exactly who he said he was.
?In His Steps? by Charles Sheldon – because, even though I find the book very shallow and mechanical now, it got me thinking about how we translate our faith into the way we live our lives.
?What Would Jesus Do?? by Glenn Clark – this 1950 update of the ?In His Steps? story is much more powerful than the original, and gets far beyond the platitudes and pat answers of Sheldon?s book and into tough, real life situations.
?The Taste of New Wine? and ?In His Steps? by Keith Miller – the first really personal books about Christianity that I ever read.
?Rees Howells, Intercessor? by Norman Grubb – It got me thinking seriously about the promise and the power of prayer.
?How to Live Like a King?s Kid? by Harold Hill – Another book that got me wondering if (stealing the words of another author) my God wasn?t too small.
?Joshua? by Joseph Girzone – Amidst recent years? religious best-sellers full of demons and pat answers to all life?s questions, a nice refreshing look at what I think the Christian life really ought to be.

I’ve been on a big Anne Lamott kick lately. I find Traveling Mercies one of the best books I’ve ever read. She seems to be a very “outside-the-box” Christian. I like that.
There has been quite a bit of Fiction that has also helped me out.
“I Am One of You Forever” by Fred Chappell (Southern nouveau)
“Demian” by Hermann Hesse —believe it or not. Nothing to wake up your Christian walk than some Mystical Buddhist Existentialism.
Short stories by Ellen Gilchrist are fantastic. Often they highlight the Christ figure and move from experience to innocence, which is very atypical.

Ann Lamott has been one of my favorite writers since I read Travelling Mercies a couple of years ago. her insight and honesty as a christian and as a person is very reassuring, and she is really funny, and she swears. She is an incredibly talented writer.

It is kind of odd for a Christian to love and Existentialist so much, but I have been enthralled with Albert Camus for the last few years. His stories are always bleak and sad, but I think his characters, and he himself, are always in pursuit of some greater truth that just seems out of their reach. Camus, in the last few years of his life, came so close to accepting Christianity, but just couldn’t make that leap of faith. His books, especially The Plague and The Stranger, reflect this search for truth in a world that he felt was basically absurd and without order. So, his books aren’t necessarily inspiring, but I think we can still learn from his searching.

That is enough for now.

I must admit that I have trouble reading some of our respected Christian fiction writers, and non-fiction writers. I know there are several good ones I haven’t read yet, but many of them just don’t appeal to me.

Maybe it’s because the Christian publishing houses seem to push books of support and “encouragement” only. Looking at what’s on the Family Bookstore shelves recently, Christian writing appears to be reduced to “spiritual” self-help guides and manuals on how to recognize God’s presence everywhere you go, in the trees and the flowers (I was surprised to get this from Annie Dillard), in your fellow human beings, even in the occasional struggles etc. That’s fine and good for Believers who are still on the milk bottle (I don’t mean to say only that Christian bookstores need to be more academic), but these Christian bookstores offer very little meat, offer very few books that engage the spirits of the age in battle, that approach problems of and with the Christian community itself (books like The Challenge of Our Age, Hendrik Hart; Rainbows for the Fallen World, Calvin Seerveld; Anything by Flannery O’Connor)

Books that have been influential in my Christian growth include these and also that book about U2’s Zoo TV tour; Calvin’s Institutes; Of Spirit, by Jacques Derrida; and more recently the fiction of Maurice Blanchot.

Fiction:Flannery O’connor has had a major influence on me. I reread her short stories constantly. Wise Blood is my favorite novel of hers. Fydor Doestchevsky- Crime and punishment and Brothers karamosov.

Non Fiction: RJ Rushdooney – Institues of biblical law. Probably the single most influencial book I’ve ever read. This and David Chilton’s Prosperous Christians in an age of guilt manipulators transformed the way I live my life and view christianity.

oops one other: Thomas Khun’s Of Scientific Revolution

Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger by Ron Sider, The Long Loneliness and Loaves and Fishes by Dorothy Day, and Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol have all had a profound impact on my faith. they have all, in one way or another, challenged me to realize that what we do for the least of these, we are doing for Christ.

yeah, i like non-fiction.

well, let’s start in junior high…

The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt: (by Patricia McLachlan) explores the difference between fact and truth, helped me pay attention to and love the details of life, to see the interconnectedness of all things, to perceive the existence of an inner life.

Amazing Grace: (by Jonathan Kozol) exposed a world of injustice and the reality of the cycle of poverty, how we should care for the poor if only for the sake of the children.

Major Barbara: (play by George Bernard Shaw) opened me up the plight of the spiritually starved. There’s a whole untouched mission field in the comfortable middle/upper-middle class.

“Faith”: (essay by Frederich Buechner in The Longing for Home) helped me understand the nature of paradox and to see the necessity of doubt, its inevitability since the Fall.

Soul Survivor: How my Faith Survived the Church : (by Philip Yancey) incidentally, a book in which he does (in more depth) what we are doing here. He outlines those who have taught and sustained him along the way, telling their stories and his own simultaneously. Inspiring to me as a Christian and as a writer. also incidentally, he questions the nature of Christian bookstore literature that Grant is talking about, saying, “Writing books that appear only in Christian bookstores to be read only by church people requires very little cunning.” but, being a respected Christian author himself, you can find his book in your local Christian bookstore.

I always come back to the book Generation X by Douglas Coupland. I’ve probably read that more times than any other novel. I think it’s the only book that’s ever made me cry. Which is weird because it’s not a sad book and I don’t cry easily.

Wait, are we talking about books that have affected our lives as Christians?

Okay, that’s still my answer.