The nominations are coming in for our Best Christian Book of All Time Tournament (BCBATT for short). So far, more than 140 different books have been nominated, ranging from the 2nd to the 21st centuries.
Here are a few of the books receiving multiple nominations:
- Augustine, Confessions
- Augustine, City of God
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The Cost of Discipleship
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
- John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress
- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion
- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
- Dante, The Divine Comedy
- Thomas á Kempis, Imitation of Christ
- Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God
- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
- C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia
- J.I. Packer, Knowing God
- Dorothy L. Sayers, The Mind of the Maker
- John Stott, The Cross of Christ
We also have one nomination in the running for longest title: William Wilburforce’s A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. (No one has yet put forth William Carey’s An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens, In Which the Religious State of the Different Nations of the World, the Success of Former Undertakings, and the Practicability of Further Undertakings, Are Considered. There must be something about long titles and 18th century British Christians named “William.”)
It’s not too late to nominate your favorite book. We’ll continue taking nominations until Saturday, March 9. The tournament bracket will be announced on March 17, and the voting will begin that week.
The Brackets
I’m currently thinking of dividing the books into 4 categories:
- Classical and Medieval
- Reformation Era (including pre-Reformation)
- Modern
- Poetry and Fiction
If you have other suggestions for ways to divide the books, I’d love to hear them.
Interested in Helping?
Once we’re down the final books, there will also be a special series of posts with capsule summaries of the remaining books. If you’re interested in helping write those or helping to seed the tournament brackets, let me know.
The former Associate Director for the Emerging Scholars Network, Micheal lives in Cincinnati with his wife and three children and works as a web manager for a national storage and organization company. He writes about work, vocation, and finding meaning in what you do at No Small Actors.
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