2016-06-30
You can vote for one of the books below by going to the individual review--or nominate another book in the miniboard on this page. Your vote will be counted in the Beliefnet Best list located on the bottom of the Books page.

Common Boundary Magazine asked their editors and readers to select the most important spiritual books of the century. The following is a selection from their list:

The Mystery of
Being

by Gabriel Marcel

A Path With Heart
by Jack Kornfield

On Death and
Dying

by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

The Way of the Pilgrim
by Anonymous

The Varieties of Religious Experience
by William James

Psychology and Religion
by C.G. Jung

The Prophet
by Kahlil Gibran

The Healing Gifts of the Spirit
by Agnes Sanford

Siddhartha
by Herman Hesse

A Course in Miracles



Shambhala Sun: Shambhala Sun asked nine influential leaders including Sharon Salzberg, Michael McClure, Berdnard Glassman, Andrew Weil, Sam Bercholz, bell hooks, Pema Chodron, Tim McNeill, and Sam Hamill to select, in no particular order, the most important spiritual books of the century - the following is a selection from their lists:


Zen Mind,
Beginner's Mind

by Shunryu Suzuki

Be Here Now
by Ram Dass

Autobiography of a
Yogi

by Paramahansa Yogananda

The Gnostic Gospels
by Elaine Pagels

The Fruitful
Darkness

by Joan Halifax

Full Catastrophe Living
by Jon Kabat-Zinn

The Hero with a
Thousand Faces

by Joseph Campbell

Teachings of Don Juan
by Carlos Castenada

Zen Flesh, Zen
Bones

by Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps

The Inner Voice of Love
by Henri Nouwen

The Seven Storey
Mountain

by Thomas Merton

The Raft is Not the Shore
by Thich Nhat Hanh and Daniel Berrigan





The editors of World Magazine, selected the following as the ten best books of the century:

Mere Christianity
by C.S. Lewis

Orthodoxy
by G.K. Chesterton

The God Who Is
There

by Francis Schaeffer

The Fundamentals
by various authors from 1909-1915

The Gulag
Archipelago

by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Witness
by Whittaker Chambers

Christianity and
Liberalism

by J. Gresham Machen

Defense of the Faith
by Cornelius Van Til

The Lord of the
Rings

by J.R.R. Tolkien


The Collected Poems
by T.S. Eliot
Philip Zaleski, editor of The Best Spiritual Writing series (HarperSanFrancisco) compiled a list of the ten best spiritual books of the century. The list was compiled based on the nominations of a cast of religion and spirituality scholars and writers including Thomas Moore, Natalie Goldberg, Rodger Kamenetz, Harold Kushner, Lawrence Kushner, Christopher De Vinck, David Yount, Kabir Helminski, Helen Tworkov, Ron Hansen, Frederic Brussat, Joseph Bruchac, Huston Smith, Lawrence Cunningham, and John Wilson.


Black Elk Speaks
by Black Elk

Letters and Papers from Prison
by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I and Thou
by Martin Buber

Orthodoxy
by G.K. Chesterton

The Four Quartets
by T.S. Eliot

The Sabbath
by Abraham Joshua Heschel

Zen Mind,
Beginner's Mind

by Shunryu Suzuki

The Phenomenon of Man
by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Story of a Soul
by Therese of Lisieux

Waiting for God
by Simone Weil

more from beliefnet and our partners
Close Ad