A reading list
The best Christian conversion & testimony books
The greatest testimonies ever written are old enough to be free — and they read better than almost anything published since. Here are the classic first-person conversion accounts worth your time, each free to read in the public domain and available as a clean, modern edition.
- 1
A Confession
Leo Tolstoy · 1882
Raised Orthodox but an unbeliever from his youth, Tolstoy spent decades as a rationalist at the summit of literary fame before a suicidal crisis over life's purpose turned him back toward faith in God — though a faith of his own radical, non-Orthodox making.
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- 2
A Daughter of the Samurai
Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto · 1925
Reared in the disciplined Confucian and Buddhist world of a samurai household, she converted to Christianity as a young woman and moved to America, carrying the values of her upbringing into a new faith and a new country.
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- 3
At the Master's Feet
Sadhu Sundar Singh · 1922
Born into a Sikh family in the Punjab — and so hostile that he once burned a Gospel — he was converted after a vision and baptized in 1905, becoming a wandering Christian sadhu who preached for some twenty-five years until he vanished heading into Tibet.
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- 4
An Authentic Narrative
John Newton · 1764
John Newton went from a profane seaman and slave-trade participant to an evangelical Anglican clergyman and hymn-writer; in later years he became an outspoken abolitionist.
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- 5
Baba Padmanji: An Autobiography
Baba Padmanji · 1892
Not a Brahmin but a brazier's son, he weighed Christianity over years, was baptized in 1854 at the cost of his family and caste, and became the foremost Marathi Christian author, ordained in the Free Church of Scotland in 1867.
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- 6
The Autobiography of John B. Gough
John B. Gough · 1858
From wandering, friendless drunkard to the age's most celebrated temperance lecturer, who pleaded with crowds for forty years.
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- 7
Christianity and Secularism
George Sexton · 1882
One of the leading platform advocates of Victorian secularism, Sexton renounced his unbelief for orthodox Christianity and spent his later years arguing the case for the faith he had once opposed.
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- 8
Confessio (The Confession of St. Patrick)
Patrick of Ireland · 450
A nominal Christian boy, enslaved among strangers, turned to God in his loneliness on the Irish hills — then chose to go back to his captors' country as their apostle.
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- 9
Confessions
Augustine · 397
Augustine was an ambitious teacher of rhetoric who chased worldly success and followed the Manichaean sect for some nine years. Under the influence of Bishop Ambrose at Milan he converted in 386, was baptized in 387, and became a priest and then Bishop of Hippo.
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- 10
The Confessions of J. Lackington
James Lackington · 1804
The wealthy bookseller whose earlier Memoirs had ridiculed religion turned, near the end of his life, to disown that scorn and profess the Christian faith he had mocked.
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- 11
Don Juan of Persia: A Shi'ah Catholic, 1560–1604
Oruj Beg Bayat (Don Juan of Persia) · 1926
A courtier and secretary to Shah Abbas's 1599 embassy, he converted to Catholicism in 1602 knowing apostasy meant death and that he could never return home; baptized at Valladolid in 1604, he was murdered in a street brawl there in 1605, a year after publishing.
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- 12
From the Devil to God (Du Diable à Dieu)
Adolphe Retté · 1907
Raised without faith and, by his own and his contemporaries' account, a militant atheist active among anti-religious circles, Retté passed through despair and suicidal impulses to convert to Catholicism in 1906 — the most literal atheist-to-Christian journey among our conversion narratives.
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- 13
Geschichte eines Muhammedaners, der Christ wurde
Johannes Avetaranian · 1905
A mullah who claimed descent from Muhammad, he was shaken by the drowning of twelve Turkish converts in Constantinople, embraced Christ despite the danger, and went on to produce the first Uyghur New Testament with the Swedish mission in Kashgar before running a Turkish-language Christian publishing ministry from Bulgaria until his death in 1919.
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- 14
Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners
John Bunyan · 1666
Bunyan was a tinker who, by his own account, lived a profane and irreligious young life. After his marriage he was convicted of his sin, converted, joined the Nonconformist Bedford meeting, and became a preacher, ultimately spending twelve years imprisoned for refusing to stop preaching.
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- 15
How I Became a Christian
Kanzo Uchimura · 1895
Raised in a samurai family in the practices of Shinto, Buddhism, and Confucian duty, he was baptized in 1877 and became a leading Japanese Christian author, pacifist, and founder of the indigenous Non-church (Mukyokai) movement.
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- 16
In the Cauldron of Russia
Ivan S. Prokhanov · 1933
Born to a Molokan dissenter family and trained as an engineer in St. Petersburg, Prokhanov was converted in 1887, gave up his career to preach, and went on to found and lead the All-Russian Union of Evangelical Christians through the last years of tsarism and the early Soviet period.
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- 17
Kamil Abdul Messiah
Henry H. Jessup · 1898
A well-born Beirut Muslim, educated in Turkish and Arabic and bound for government service, he sought out the scriptures for himself, was baptized, and gave the rest of his short life to mission work among the Bedouin and in Arabia with Zwemer and Cantine — dying at his post, buried under Muslim rites.
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- 18
Kanamori's Life-Story Told by Himself
Paul M. Kanamori · 1921
After abandoning the ministry and drifting for years in unbelief, he came back to Christ and preached his celebrated three-hour gospel sermon across Japan, credited with winning some fifty thousand converts.
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- 19
A Letter to the Brahmos from a Converted Brahman of Benares
Nehemiah Goreh · 1868
He was a Chitpavan Brahmin and renowned Hindu apologist, author of a Sanskrit treatise against Christianity; baptized "Nehemiah" in 1848, he became an Anglican priest, a leading Indian Christian theologian, and finally a member of the Cowley Fathers.
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- 20
The Life of Joseph Barker, Written by Himself
Joseph Barker · 1880
The complete life story of a Methodist preacher who became one of his era's most active secularist lecturers and then returned to the Christian faith he had opposed.
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- 21
The Life of Thomas Cooper, Written by Himself
Thomas Cooper · 1872
From imprisoned Chartist and platform skeptic to a Christian lecturer who spent his last decades defending the faith.
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- 22
A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Müller, Written by Himself
George Müller · 1837
George Müller turned from a thieving, dissolute university student into a devout philanthropist who cared for thousands of orphans, trusting God for every provision rather than soliciting funds.
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- 23
Memoirs of the Life of Thomas Halyburton
Thomas Halyburton · 1715
As a young man Halyburton wrestled intellectually with deism and religious doubt. He returned to the evangelical Reformed faith of his Covenanter father and became a parish minister, divinity professor, and apologist defending Christian revelation.
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- 24
Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again
Joseph Barker · 1874
A former preacher who became one of the most active secularist lecturers of his generation, Barker passed through years of organized unbelief before returning to the Christian faith he had campaigned against.
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- 25
A Mohammedan Brought to Christ
Imad-ud-din Lahiz · 1885
He was a Sunni maulvi — a Muslim cleric and controversialist who debated against Christianity — and he became an ordained Church Missionary Society clergyman at Amritsar, honoured with a D.D. and serving as chaplain to the Bishop of Lahore.
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- 26
My Life in China and America
Yung Wing · 1909
Formed in the Chinese classics and then a mission school, he was converted to Christianity, graduated from Yale in 1854 as the first Chinese graduate of an American university, and devoted his life to bringing Chinese students west to be educated.
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- 27
A Rational Refutation of the Hindu Philosophical Systems
Nehemiah Goreh · 1862
A Sanskrit pandit of Benares who wrote against the Christian faith before embracing it, Goreh set down here the very reasoning that dismantled his own position — autobiographical in argument rather than narrative.
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- 28
A True and Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Mohammetans
Joseph Pitts · 1704
Pressed under torture into renouncing Christ, Pitts wrestled for years with a faith he believed he had betrayed — and his book is the testimony of a conscience that found its way back.
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- 29
The Arian Witness
Krishna Mohan Banerjea · 1875
A high-caste Bengali Brahmin and star pupil of the Hindu College, he was converted under Alexander Duff in 1832 — dismissed from his Hindu-funded teaching post for it — and became an ordained Anglican clergyman and one of India's leading Christian scholars, a genuine author who set out his own case in his own hand.
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- 30
The Convert; or, Leaves from My Experience
Orestes Brownson · 1857
A New England radical, labor agitator, and freethought editor who passed through nearly every 'ism' of his age before being received into the Catholic Church in 1844 — and spent the rest of his life defending the faith he had once attacked.
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- 31
The Failure (Un uomo finito)
Giovanni Papini · 1913
A celebrated anticlerical intellectual who edited journals dedicated to attacking Christianity, then converted to Catholicism and wrote a best-selling Life of Christ — the provocateur turned apologist.
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- 32
The Examination and the Return
George John Romanes · 1895
As a young man Romanes made the leading Victorian scientific case against belief; these two works, read in sequence, record how the same rigorous mind reasoned its way back toward Christian faith before his death.
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- 33
Transformed; or, The History of a River Thief
Jerry McAuley · 1876
From river thief and Sing Sing convict to founder of the McAuley Water Street Mission, who spent his life reaching the city's outcasts.
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- 34
Two Heroes of Cathay: An Autobiography and a Sketch
Fei Ch'i-hao · 1903
Converted as a young man in Shanxi, he lived through the Boxer violence of 1900 that martyred most of his missionary teachers and fellow Christians, and escaped to tell the story of the faith that carried him through.
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- 35
When I Was a Boy in China
Yan Phou Lee · 1887
Raised in traditional Chinese culture, he came to America with the Chinese Educational Mission, was converted to Christianity, and graduated from Yale in 1887 — the first Asian American to publish a book in English.
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Conversions from other faiths