What I Want for Christmas: Classic Writings

What books have left a lasting impact on your life? Today, Stephen Nichols shares a curated list of classic literature and church history writings that have profoundly shaped him, titles we might want to add to our own libraries.

Welcome back to another episode of 5 Minutes in Church History. On this episode, I'm going to talk to you about my Christmas wish list. It's not actually my Christmas wish list because all of these things on my list I already have. I'm just offering them as suggestions to you, and they are some of my best friends, and they are books. So we love the number five, of course. So let's start with five books from literature. And the first one is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I love Frankenstein. There is a church history connection. The very first line of this wonderful novel is “I am by birth a Genovese.” So, there we have it, Calvin's Geneva and Dr. Frankenstein and his monster, and that wonderful book by Mary Shelley.

Next up, it’s my favorite novel. It's probably my favorite novel because it's not very long, and it's Earnest Hemingway's the Old Man and The Sea. It's right up there with Moby Dick as a classic sea and man against Nature book, but it's a lot shorter. So, Hemingway's the Old Man and The Sea. Let's stick with the sea theme for a moment and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. And recently I've actually listened to it on audiobooks, and that was fun too.

Well, we've got to include the Bard, and so we have Shakespeare's Hamlet, probably my favorite Shakespeare and so Hamlet. And then last on my list of literature is a poet, and it is George Herbert, and I have an addition that I absolutely love. It's in the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets, and it's just simply titled Herbert: Poems. So, there's some books of literature that you might want to consider for your Christmas list or someone else's.

Let's turn now to five books on church history. And so, starting off one of my favorite books. I remember reading this in college, and I found it very influential for me as aspiring to be a church historian, and it is George Marsden's book, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of 20th Century Evangelicalism, 1870-1925. Marsden walks us through those crucial years as modernity was coming to American culture, liberalism was coming into the church, and then how was the church responding through fundamentalism? And bit of a spoiler alert, Marsden tells us in that book that what we really have is fundamentalisms, so you can read the book and find out what's going on.

Let's go to the Reformation, and this is a book by a great church historian. He's actually the Regius Professor of Modern History Emeritus, Cambridge. How does one become a Regius Professor? Well, you get a phone call from, in his case, the Queen, and you get appointed Regius, as in the Monarch’s professor, at Cambridge. He's a first-rate historian, wrote a wonderful book simply entitled The Reformation: A History, and it is published in the Modern Library edition. It's a great book for helping us understand the full context of the Reformation, including the sociological issues and what was happening even in terms of the world of art and economics and domestic life, and how the Reformation is set against that backdrop. So, Patrick Collinson, The Reformation, nice little hardback book, lots of fun.

Let's stick with the Reformation and the English Reformation in particular and J.C. Ryle. He's a great writer in his books on the Christian life, and Scripture and doctrine are wonderful, but this is one of his church history books. And so, it's entitled Light From Old Times: Protestant Facts and Men by JC Ryle. And he introduces us to a dozen or so figures from the English Reformation. It's a nice hardback published by our friends over at the Banner of Truth Trust.

Hands down, best biography of all time in church history, Roland Baton, Here I Stand. Now, you won't be able to buy my copy. It's a hardback that's long out of print, but you'll find a great copy and read it, and you'll love it. And that brings us to our last book on church history. But you're going to have to wait till next week for that one. Those are some book suggestions for your Christmas list. And I'm Steve Nichols, and thanks for joining us for 5 Minutes in Church History.