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Books That Have Rescued My Faith

I am reading a moving book by Father Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest and founder of Homeboy Industries, which works to educate and employ gang members in Los Angeles. Boyle’s book, Tattoos on the Heart, is a beautiful testament to what the kingdom of God can look like in the twenty-first century.
In the book, Boyle sprinkles his heartful stories with quotes from various Christian writers. Reading these quotes, all gathered in one place and in such a spiritually powerful context, I realized how much these same writers have done to rescue Christian faith for me, sometimes gently and sometimes forcefully retrieving it from the confines of the fundamentalist package in which I originally received it and giving it new life and meaning.
Yesterday, as I read another of these quotes from Boyle’s book, a surge of gratitude welled up in my chest. I lifted my face and thanked God for these beloved teachers, without whom my relationship with the religion of my childhood, of my culture, would be dead.
Here is a selected list of the authors, my Christ-haunted brothers and sisters, who have rescued and are rescuing my faith:
Philip Yancey: Soul Survivor
Marcus Borg: The Heart of Christianity, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time
Anne Lamott: Traveling Mercies, Plan B, Grace (Eventually)
Frederick Buechner: The Sacred Journey, Now and Then, Telling Secrets, The Eyes of the Heart
Gregory Boyle: Tattoos on the Heart
Barbara Brown Taylor: Leaving Church
Rachel Held Evans: Searching for Sunday
Kathleen Norris: The Cloister Walk
Gary Wills: What Jesus Meant
N.T. Wright: Simply Jesus
Richard Rohr: Falling Upward
Madeleine L’Engle: A Circle of Quiet
Dorothy Day: All the Way to Heaven
Joan Chittister: Called to Question
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