As you’ve all figured out, I love to read. While these two recent books were not in our St. Dominic’s book club, I wanted to pass along the recommendations anyway.  Perhaps you have a long commute and listen to audiobooks in the car, you enjoy a great read on the weekend, or maybe have an avid reader in your life you’d like to surprise with a new recommendation.

I rerecently finished two books whose author’s converted to Catholicism or Christianity.  The first was entitled “Race with the Devil: My Journey from Racial Hatred to Rational Love” by Joseph Pearce.  Joseph grew up in nominal Anglican who became an international leader in the white supremacist movement.  When he started to read authors such as G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis he started to rethink his positions about God and religion.  Two prison terms also gave him ample time to contemplate what he was doing with his life. Then through a series of “coincidences” he found himself in the Catholic Church.

The second book is entitled “Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity” by Nabeel Qureshi.  Nabeel was raised in a very devout Muslim family and befriended an evangelical Christian in college.  Throughout college these two friends charitably challenged each other’s religious belief.  Nabeel came to believe that Christianity’s claim of Jesus Christ’s divinity, Crucifixion, and salvific death for the forgiveness of our sins were more historical and plausible than Islam’s claim of the reliability of the Koran and the moral character of Muhammad.  [The next step for Nabeel is the challenge the founding tenets of the Protestant reformation.  J]

Both books are fascinating reads of the conversion of two of the least likely people to become Catholic or Christian. I hope you find them as fascinating as I. God Bless.