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Brother Lawrence

Best Christian Book of All Time: The Sweet Sixteen

After a frantic week of voting, our original field of 64 has been whittled down to the Sweet Sixteen! Check out the Round 2 scores below, download the official bracket, and then head to Facebook to begin voting for our next winners.

The Sweet Sixteen for the Best Christian Book of ALL TIME Tournament. Click for a larger image.

Round Two Results

Note: The official vote tallies were collected early Monday morning, so they may differ from what you currently see online.

Theology & Apologetics

In a battle of prolific Anglicans, C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity (1) defeated N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God (9) 90–25. [Read more…] about Best Christian Book of All Time: The Sweet Sixteen

Best Christian Book of All Time: Final First Round Results

Tournament Bracket
All of our Round 2 matches are now set! Who will make it to the Sweet Sixteen? (Click for a larger view)

The first round results for the Fiction & Poetry and Memoirs, Devotionals, & Spirituality brackets are in. Higher seeds mostly held serve, with one or two upsets to keep things interesting. Here’s the updated bracket for your office pools.

Vote for Round 2 on Facebook!

Results

Fiction & Poetry

Dante’s Divine Comedy (1) defeated The Collected Poetry of T.S. Eliot (16) 68-20. You knew this was a tough bracket when T.S. Eliot was the 16 seed! [Read more…] about Best Christian Book of All Time: Final First Round Results

Best Christian Book of All Time: Early Nominations

A potential dark horse for "best Christian book of all time"?
Shockingly, no one has yet nominated “How to Murder a Minister” by Pastor X.

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.