In recent years, we've become aware that our social media feeds are often echo chambers – just reflecting back to us the opinions we already hold. If we're honest, our reading lists can often be the same way.
It's possible to challenge ourselves through reading, though – and never was there a more important time for Christians to get out of their silos and learn from people outside their tradition or style.
Here are seven books to get you started...
1. The book to challenge you if you're conservative
Rob Bell – Velvet Elvis
These days, Bell is the bogeyman of conservative Christians. Famously cut off by conservative gatekeepers like John Piper ("Farewell, Rob Bell", he tweeted after Bell's book Love Wins was published.) It wasn't always this way. Once Bell was the darling of many evangelicals, especially at the younger end, for the dynamic and compelling way he taught the faith. Velvet Elvis is a lucid and compelling retelling of the Christian faith. For conservative readers is will challenge their preconceptions of man whose name has become a byword for heresy, but who actually has much to teach us.
2. The book to challenge you if you're liberal
GK Chesterton – Orthodoxy
Chesterton is one of the giants of 20<sup>th century literature. Spanning social criticism, theology and fiction, he remains a compelling figure. Like other authors whose work has gone on to be described as 'prophetic' (Orwell springs to mind) the clarity of his thought and its applicability is astonishing. Orthodoxy is the work of a man who really lived his own aphorism – "Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid."
3. The book to challenge you if you're Protestant
John Henry Newman - Apologia Pro Vita Sua
Many Protestants will never read works by theologians or thinkers from outside their own tradition. But there is much that can be learned from Roman Catholic thinkers (as well as Orthodox, of course). Newman, a towering figure of the Church in 19<sup>th century Britain, was a leading light in the Oxford Movement, which planted churches and sought to return the Church of England to its Catholic roots. He eventually converted to Roman Catholicism and was created a Cardinal, and is on the road to being declared a saint. The Apologia is his autobiography.
4. The book to challenge you if you're Roman Catholic
Alister McGrath - Christianity's Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution: A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First
McGrath is an academic scientist and theologian with a rare gift for boiling down complex history, theology and other concepts in to manageable chunks for the rest of us. In this comprehensive but relatively short review of Protestantism, he shows just why the Reformation happened and how it should be understood today by Christians of all stripes. Along with his work on the interface between science and faith, this is some of McGrath's most necessary work – he isn't a polemicist but a Christian thinker looking to teach the Church about its history, for the benefit of the present and future.
5. The book to challenge you if you're an intellectual
Paula Gooder – Body: Biblical spirituality for the whole person
There is, of course, nothing wrong with being an intellectual. To have knowledge, to learn about theology, to strive for an intelligent faith – these are all worthwhile goals. Yet in her recent book, Gooder outlines how we miss a huge part of the gospel if we only ever make it about 'head knowledge'. The good news applies not only to our heads but to our whole bodies – and Gooder demonstrates what a difference this makes. She is another highly skilled theologian who writes wonderfully at a popular level.
6. The book to challenge you if you've got God in a box
Julian of Norwich – Revelations of Divine Love
Julian was an anchoress, living a life of relative seclusion in a cell attached to a church. She had a series of vision which she wrote down as the Revelations, thought to be the first book written by a woman in English that we still have access to. It is full of inspiration as well as challenging theology. Julian's theology of sin is not uncontroversial, but her challenge is to those who have God boxed in and their theology finalised. An ideal point to dip into the mystic tradition that runs into the modern day through the likes of Thomas Merton and Richard Rohr.
7. The book to challenge you if you're a lazy reader
Diarmaid MacCulloch – A History of Christianity
OK, I'll admit it, I haven't actually read this giant tome. It sits on my bookshelves taunting me. Diarmaid MacCulloch is one of the leading scholars of the history of Christianity and the TV series which accompanied this book was exceptionally good. I fully intend to sit down and get started on it some time. It's just the 1,200 or so pages look a little intimidating...
Follow Andy Walton on Twitter @waltonandy
