I am writing an essay for a University application which has asked for a theological book (s) that has helped to shape my understanding of my faith and the vocation to which I am called. I am an avid reader, so naming just a few influential theological books is difficult, but here are my current top three:
One foundational book for me is Henri Nouwen’s Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life. Reading this book over 40 years ago gave me a strong personal foundation in how loneliness becomes solitude, hostility becomes hospitality and illusion leads to prayer. I have given this book as a gift many times hoping that it would be as helpful in someone’s spiritual life as it was for me.
More recently as I was engrossed in what seemed like thousands of books and articles in my seminary studies, I found two other books to be monumental, Walter Brueggemann’s 1978 The Prophetic Imagination, and Stanley Hauerwas’s Jesus Changes Everything. Brueggemann argues that prophetic ministry evokes an alternative community that stands in contrast to the dominant culture of social and economic oppression. The book inspires me when I guest preach to be bold in words and stories that energize people to see hope that defies any regime that oppresses others. Although an Old Testament professor, Brueggemann holds up Jesus as the ultimate witness against royal power and the hope of a new future. Hauweras’s latest book from 2025 inspires me to genuinely follow Jesus in my daily life not by lamenting a lack of political and cultural power but instead to live my life to the fullest as a radical outsider. There are other inspiring books, but these would be at the top of my list.
What are the top three books that have inspired your faith? And what is at the top of your “to-be-read” list?
Blessings, my friend,
Agatha