harperone

25 Books Every Christian Should Read (and I Agree!)

This is a sponsored post and part of the Patheos Book Club. Check out the Book Club for more posts on this book and for responses from the editors.

When I got this book — 25 Books Every Christian Should Read: A Guide to the Essential Spiritual Classics — in the mail, I was looking to pick a fight. There was no way I was going to agree with all 25, probably not even half. In fact, I’d say that the content of this book is right in my wheelhouse. I had to come up with just such a list for the first year of the D.Min. course I’m teaching at Fuller Seminary, though my list is closer to 50 books.

So I got the book, and opened the front cover, ready to argue with the choices, ready to point out the obvious and not-so-obvious theological biases that went into the compilation of the list.

But I’m happy to report that, as well as admiring the editorial board that compiled this list, I really like their list. Here it is:

Remember how I said that, on the one hand, the Calvinistas have been waiting for enough evidence to throw Rob Bell (the Jason Bourne of Christianity) into the outer darkness (even if Rob doesn’t believe in an outer darkness )? And, on the other hand, I predicted that Rob would not take the bait? Those both seem to be holding true, at least for now.

There’s another player in this story, too. That’s HarperOne, the publisher of Rob’s new book. While I don’t know Rob, I do know the people at HarperOne. They are not underhanded marketers. I am guessing that the marketing copy they wrote, which has been widely quoted (and which you can read on the Amazon page for the book), was meant to be provocative. But I don’t think they were so calculating as to think that they were poking a sharp stick in John Piper’s eye. In fact, their back cover copy on Rob’s book isn’t out-of-step with what they’ve used to promote Brian McLaren’s latest books.

What I’m saying is that I part ways with many other bloggers on this subject — I do not think that HarperOne was attempting to stir up controversy in releasing a provocative paragraph of marketing copy and a promotional video for Rob’s book. But that copy and video, and a couple leaked chapters of the book were enough to hook Justin Taylor, who blogged about it over the weekend. Then John Piper decided that he’d promote Rob’s book with a link to Taylor’s blog and a simple three-word tweet:

Piper’s tweet was, as you can see, retweeted scores of time. That drove traffic to Taylor’s blog, to be sure. But it also drove interest in the book. Here’s how the phrase, “rob bell” has trended on Google over the past 30 days: