The 100 best books on religion and spirituality

No. 11 on this list. The Sickness Unto Death · Søren Kierkegaard · 1849

The Sickness unto Death appears on philosophy and theology syllabi at universities worldwide and is consistently listed among the essential texts of existentialism. It is among the most-taught works in continental philosophy, philosophy of religion, and existentialist theology — a standard fixture in any curriculum covering 19th-century thought. Wikipedia articles exist in over 40 languages, confirming global reach across academic traditions.

No. 12 on this list. Analects · Confucius · c. 479 BCE

Confucius's students recorded his sayings on ritual, filial piety, and the gentleman-scholar in terse dialogues that became the moral operating system for East Asian civilization. The examination system built on this text selected China's governing class for over a thousand years.

No. 13 on this list. Pensées · Blaise Pascal · 1670

Included in: Great Books of the Western World, UNESCO Collection of Representative Works

One of the masterpieces of French prose and a foundational text of modern religious philosophy. Read continuously since the seventeenth century.

No. 14 on this list. Fear and Trembling · Søren Kierkegaard · 1843

It is standard in philosophy of religion, existentialism and ethics courses, and one of Kierkegaard's most-assigned works. It is read across theology and philosophy curricula worldwide.

No. 15 on this list. The Bhagavad Gita · Vyasa · c. 200 BCE

The Gita—a 700-verse dialogue between the warrior prince Arjuna and his charioteer Krishna, who is an avatar of God—is embedded within the Mahabharata but has been read as a standalone scripture for centuries. On the eve of a catastrophic battle, Arjuna sees his kinsmen arrayed on both sides and refuses to fight. Krishna's response unfolds the central teachings of Hindu philosophy: karma yoga (the path of selfless action), bhakti yoga (the path of devotion), and jnana yoga (the path of knowledge). Krishna argues that Arjuna must act—not because the outcome matters but because action without attachment to results is the nature of dharma. The Gita's synthesis of duty and detachment, action and renunciation, has made it the most widely read scripture in Hinduism and one of the most influential philosophical texts in world literature. Gandhi called it his 'eternal mother'; Oppenheimer quoted it upon witnessing the first nuclear explosion. Its teachings on duty, selflessness, and the nature of consciousness continue to resonate across cultures and centuries.

No. 16 on this list. King James Bible · Anonymous

The King James Bible is the most widely distributed text in Western civilization and the single most influential book in the English literary tradition. The Book of Job appears on virtually every humanities syllabus touching religion, philosophy, or literature, and has been central to theology, literary study, and philosophical discourse for two millennia. Milton, Blake, Keats, Tennyson, Dostoevsky, Kafka, and Toni Morrison have all engaged directly with Job; the 1611 KJV translation shaped English prose style for four centuries.

No. 17 on this list. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad · Anonymous (Vedic Tradition)

No syllabus or Wikipedia-language data is tracked for this work in our database, but it is foundational to every academic course on Vedanta and Hindu philosophy — the oldest of the principal Upanishads and the source of the mahavakya 'Aham Brahmasmi.' Max Muller opened his Sacred Books of the East series in 1879 with a translation of it precisely because Indologists judged it indispensable.

No. 18 on this list. Samson Agonistes · John Milton · 1671

Included in: Great Books of the Western World

Samson Agonistes is required reading in virtually every English Renaissance and early modern literature course at the university level, paired with Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained as the triad of Milton's major late works. It appears on countless syllabi and is included in every major anthology of English literature. While less universally taught than Paradise Lost, it holds a firm place in the upper tier of the seventeenth-century canon.

No. 19 on this list. Gita Govinda · Jayadeva · 1200

Included in: UNESCO Collection of Representative Works

A required text in Sanskrit literature, Indian religious studies, and the history of dance, and part of daily ritual at the Jagannath temple in Puri.

No. 20 on this list. The Pilgrims Progress · John Bunyan · 1857

One of the most widely read books in the English language for over three centuries, second only to the Bible in many Protestant households. Standard reading in English literature courses worldwide, foundational text in studies of allegory, Puritan literature, and the English novel's origins. Available in over 200 languages, making it one of the most translated books in history.

No. 21 on this list. Paradise Regained · John Milton · 1671

Satan has fallen from Heaven, and Christ has been baptized in the Jordan. What comes next, in Milton's 1671 brief epic, is forty days in the wilderness and the most compressed philosophical argument in English verse. Satan does not simply offer bread and kingdoms. He offers Rome, with its full imperial apparatus; Athens, with its entire philosophical tradition from Socrates through Plato; and glory, defined in every form human ambition has devised. Christ refuses each in turn — not from weakness but from a clear-eyed account of what power, learning, and reputation are actually worth. The poem turns on a question Milton considered his career's central problem: what does true heroism look like, if it is not military conquest, political dominion, or classical education? His answer is patience, reason, and the rejection of everything Satan can plausibly offer. Written as a 'brief epic' in four books, Paradise Regained is spare where Paradise Lost is vast — no war in Heaven, no garden, no catastrophe. The drama is entirely verbal: two interlocutors debating the nature of kingship in a desert, one of them lying. The blank verse is the most concentrated Milton ever wrote. Each refusal Christ delivers is also a definition of the new heroism Milton believed the English Revolution had failed to produce.

No. 22 on this list. Gravity and Grace · Simone Weil · 1947

Recognized as a 20th-century mystical classic. T.S. Eliot called Weil 'a kind of genius akin to that of the saints'; André Gide named her 'the best spiritual writer of this century.' The book is taught across philosophy, theology, and literature programs worldwide.

No. 23 on this list. The Poetic Edda · Anonymous

The primary source for nearly everything modern readers know as 'Norse mythology,' taught across medieval studies, mythology, and world-literature curricula. No syllabus or Wikipedia data was returned for this record, but its status is comparable to Beloved or Infinite Jest in required-reading terms — a cornerstone rather than a periphery text.

No. 24 on this list. The Hero with a Thousand Faces · Joseph Campbell · 1949

Joseph Campbell opens with a Freudian reading of an Arapaho folktale and never looks back. A woman falls through a hole in the sky while digging up a buffalo plant. An Aztec prince descends into the underworld to retrieve the bones of the dead. A Polynesian hero is swallowed by a whale. Campbell lines up hundreds of these stories from six continents and argues they are all the same story: a hero ventures from the ordinary world into a region of supernatural wonder, wins a decisive victory, and returns transformed. He calls this the monomyth — departure, initiation, return — and maps each stage with taxonomic precision: the Call to Adventure, the Belly of the Whale, the Meeting with the Goddess, the Apotheosis. The comparative method is relentless. A Navaho vision quest illuminates the Buddha's meditation under the Bo Tree, which rhymes with Christ's temptation in the desert. Campbell reads all of it through Jung and Freud, treating gods as projections of the psyche and mythic journeys as metaphors for psychological maturation. The second half widens from the individual hero to the cosmos itself — creation, virgin birth, the dissolution of worlds. The prose is mid-century academic, formal but clear, carried by the momentum of one extraordinary story after another. Readers who want to know why myths from unrelated cultures keep telling the same story will find Campbell's answer here, built from the evidence itself.

No. 25 on this list. The Way of the Bodhisattva · Śāntideva · 2003

No syllabus or Wikipedia data came back in ReadingRate's own signals check, but this is one of the core texts of the Tibetan Geshe curriculum, studied continuously in Nalanda-tradition monastic colleges for over a millennium, and it anchors university Buddhist Studies and Asian philosophy courses worldwide through standard translations from Oxford World's Classics, Shambhala, and Snow Lion. Its canonical standing within the Buddhist tradition is comparable to a foundational scriptural commentary rather than a novel on a 'great books' list.

No. 26 on this list. Waiting for God · Simone Weil · 1950

One of the most important spiritual works written in the 20th century.

No. 27 on this list. The Cost of Discipleship · Dietrich Bonhoeffer · 1937

Dietrich Bonhoeffer opens with a distinction that splits the book in two. 'Cheap grace' is forgiveness sold on the cheap — grace without the cross, Christianity without Christ. 'Costly grace' is the real thing: the call that compelled Levi to leave his tax booth, that sent the disciples from their nets into unknown territory. Bonhoeffer wrote this in 1937, as a Lutheran pastor running an underground seminary while the German church bent its knee to the Nazi state. The stakes were not theoretical. What follows is a sustained reading of the Sermon on the Mount as a set of commands meant to be obeyed, not admired from a distance. The Beatitudes are not comforts for the passive; they describe what happens to people who actually follow Christ into the world. Bonhoeffer then builds outward from individual obedience to the visible church — a community that bears the form of the crucified Christ in its own body. Baptism is death. The Body of Christ is not a metaphor. The reader who expects gentle devotional prose will find instead a theologian making demands: that faith without obedience is not faith, that the church without costly commitment is not the church. The final chapters on the image of God carry the argument to its conclusion — to follow Christ means to be remade entirely, conformed to the image of the one who suffered.

No. 28 on this list. The Interior Castle · Teresa of Ávila · 1588

A foundational text of Christian mysticism, standard in theology, religious-studies and Spanish literature curricula worldwide.

No. 29 on this list. The Courage to Be · Paul Tillich · 1952

The Courage to Be is one of the most widely assigned texts in university theology, philosophy of religion, and religious studies courses worldwide, and has been in continuous print since 1952. It is considered a foundational text in 20th-century existentialist theology and appears on syllabi across North America, Europe, and beyond. Its canonical status is secure within academic theology and philosophy of religion, though it does not occupy the same cross-disciplinary position as Butler's Gender Trouble or a major literary work.

No. 30 on this list. I Ching: The Book of Changes · Anonymous (Chinese Classical)

The first of the Five Classics and the oldest book in the Chinese canon, standard in Chinese philosophy syllabuses and permanently in print in Princeton's Wilhelm-Baynes edition.