The Children of Men by P. D. James — a chilling vision of state-sponsored euthanasia — and Radical Then, Radical Now. The Legacy of the World’s Oldest Religion by Jonathan Sacks, a challenging analysis of what we need to do to prevent James’s fiction from becoming a reality.

I will also read Roll Back the Stone of Fear, Prayer-Poems and Letters from the Suffering Church in Sudan by Cardinal Gabriel Zubeir Wako (edited by John Pontifex) produced by the charity Aid to the Church in Need.

Chris Bain, director of Cafod

Out of the Ashes, a series of reflections by six contributors who include the Abbot of Worth Abbey in Sussex and a priest from Bamenda, Cameroon. Each contributor takes a week during Lent and using the Bible passages for each day, writes a short reflection for others to ponder. As Brendan Walsh says in the introduction: “We begin by thinking Lent is about preaching and we discover it is about learning. We begin by thinking it is about generosity and we discover it is also about our need to be forgiven. We think it is about our need to give and we find it is about our need to receive. Lent is never what we expect it to be.”

The Very Rev Dom Cuthbert Brogan, OSB, Prior of the Benedictine monastery of Farnborough, Hampshire

I shall be re-reading Cardinal Basil Hume’s Searching for God. The cardinal compares the interior tug-of-war in each of us between activity and stillness, the market place and the desert, and reminds us with his characteristic gentleness that we are at home in neither unless we are at home in both.

Steve Chalke, founder of Faithworks

God at War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict by Gregory Boyd is really about understanding evil. If you believe that the world has been created by a good God, how do we make sense of evil or disasters like the tsunami? It is very relevant to this moment.

Luke Coppen, editor of the Catholic Herald

The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor — her letters cut to the heart of things, stripping away the sentimentality and self-deception that blight the modern world. She writes that “there is nothing harder or less sentimental than Christian realism” — Lent is a time to rediscover this.

Baroness Cox, president of Christian Solidarity Worldwide UK

The Miracles of Exodus: A Scientist’s Discovery of the Extraordinary Natural Causes of the Biblical Stories by Colin J. Humphreys. His meticulous account of the flight of the Israelites from Egypt will inspire me to contemplate anew the mystery of suffering and the power of God’s redeeming grace.

The Rev Joel Edwards, general director of the Evangelical Alliance

Christianity and the Social Order by Archbishop William Temple, a great advocate of the Church’s role in society, is a Lenten challenge to church-in-community. Lent is not so much about giving things up, it’s also about adding value to our communities.

Dr Alison Elliot, Moderator of the General Assembley of the Church of Scotland

For daily meditations, I’ve chosen The Harmony of Heaven by Gordon Giles; each day has a Bible passage plus commentary on a related piece of music and a prayer. Timothy Radcliffe’s Seven Last Words provides plenty to ponder: each chapter reflects on a word said by Christ on the Cross. I also look forward to reading Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel by Dr Rowan Williams. I recently visited India and Sri Lanka and the tsunami is on my mind, so I shall also be reading Voices from the South, the study guide developed by the churches in Scotland with material on poverty, health and empowerment.

Ram Gidoomal, chairman of City Life

Bloody Foreigners by Robert Winder is about immigration. As a refugee myself, I know how every time a politician speaks if you are a refugee on the street you are vulnerable. Jesus himself was a refugee . . . This is a community which needs our love and prayers at this time.

Diana Greenfield, Church Army officer and nightclub chaplain

Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth by Richard Foster will remind me how to fast properly for one day a week, and I will be reading Incarnate God by John V. Taylor, an extremely inspirational author.

The Rev Nicky Gumbel, Vicar, Holy Trinity Brompton

The Orthodox Church by Bishop Kallistos Ware is a beautiful account of Orthodox theology and the Church’s history. I am also keen to read Sant’Egidio, Rome and the World by Andrea Riccardi who founded the Sant’Egidio community devoted to caring for the poor.

The Rev Joanna Jepson, Curate, St Michael’s, Chester

True Wilderness by Father Harry Williams — and amid the general Lenten abstinence I’m going to feast on the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke.

J. John, preacher, writer and motivational speaker

Finishing Well by Bob Buford; his first book, Half-Time, was one of the best I have read. I also like the book’s subtitle: “What People who Really Live Do Differently”.

Dr Daleep Mukarji, director of Christian Aid

For a Culture of Life: Transforming Globalisation and Violence by Konrad Raiser. Reading his vision of a world of justice, peace and the protection of the environment helps us to see how we can change our priorities and values so that we can work with others to make “life” a reality for all people.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Archbishop of Westminster

The Essence of Christianity by Bruno Forte. The author, an archbishop and prominent theologian, asks passionate questions about life and death and the human adventure in search of the countenance of God. It is a demanding book, well suited to prayerful meditation. I hope it will help me to reflect on what it is to live the Christian faith in modern Europe, which is one of the great questions facing the Church.

The Rev Will Murray, President of the Methodist Conference

Other Temptations of Jesus: Lenten Studies for Adventurous Christians by John Henson. I have been deaf since the age of 19. Several years ago I gained a cochlear implant which permits me reasonable hearing. For Lent I will switch it off for half an hour a day in order to be able to identify with the experience of loss that befalls so many in our world.

William Oddie, writer, former editor of the Catholic Herald

I will be reading G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. I’m writing a book on Chesterton and it is a useful read during Lent — the point at which he arrives at the Christian faith.

The Very Rev June Osborne, Dean of Salisbury Cathedral

We are very conscious that this Easter will be celebrated with the sorrow of the tsunami still fresh in our minds, and that influenced my decision to read A Brief History of Death by Douglas J. Davies.

The Rev Dr Stephen Plant, senior tutor, Wesley House, Cambridge

They Would Never Hurt a Fly: War Criminals on Trial in The Hague by Slavenka Drakulic. It is very much a book about temptation — the Balkan wars remind us how little it takes for an ordinary person to slip into brutality and terror.

Timothy Radcliffe, OP, former Master of the Dominican Order

Dante’s Divina Commedia — If I manage a couple of cantos a day I shall be well into Paradise by the time we get to Easter Sunday. T. S. Eliot wrote: “The majority of poems one outgrows and outlives, as one outgrows and outlives the majority of the human passions. Dante’s is one of those which one can only just hope to grow up to at the end of life.” I disagree about the passions but not about the poem and its hopeful pilgrimage.

Piers Paul Read, novelist

I am reading two books by Hans Urs von Balthasar, who is said to be the Pope’s favourite theologian: The Moment of Christian Witness and Dare We Hope: “That All Men be Saved?”: With a Short Discourse on Hell.

The Right Rev Dr Geoffrey Rowell, Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe

Some 25 years ago I spent two months in St Macarius Monastery in the Egyptian desert called Shihet by the Copts meaning “the place of the weighing of the soul”. Ever since I have valued the monastic writers of Egypt known as the Desert Fathers for their sharp spiritual discernment and capacity to challenge a complacent Christian faith. So my Lenten reading is In the Heart of the Desert: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers by John Chryssavgis. It includes a first English translation of the 5th-century Reflections of Abba Zosimas.

Mgr Roderick Strange, Rector of the Pontifical Beda College, Rome

In Lent I strive to live as I wish to live throughout the year, faithful to the time set aside for prayer and including an element of penance, especially something quite slight, which reminds me how difficult I find it to do even small things well. I hope to reflect on Herbert McCabe’s sermons, God, Christ and Us; to ponder Paul Murray’s poems, These Black Stars; and to explore Sebastian Barker’s sonnets, Damnatio Memoriae: Erased from Memory.

The Very Rev Alan Webster, Dean Emeritus of St Paul’s

Yes to God by Alan Ecclestone is the classic book of prayer for our generation: Ecclestone will not allow us to be at ease with our faith, and his chapter on spirituality and sexual love is especially needed by the churches today. His teaching on prayer fights the low levels of corporate concern with our fellow human beings which should be brought to the notice of believers. And I shall be using the Christian Aid Count your Blessings prayer guide which keeps our eyes on our global neighbourhood.

Ann Widdecombe, MP

Who Moved the Stone? by Frank Morrison. Written to disprove the Resurrection, the book instead converted its author to the truth of Our Lord’s rising from the dead.

John Wilkins, former editor, The Tablet

I shall dip into one of my most treasured possessions, The Mind of Cardinal Newman, a booklet of extracts from his writings compiled for the Catholic Truth Society in 1974.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams

My Archbishop’s Book this Lent is The Wounds of Jesus by Christina Baxter. We sometimes forget that Jesus truly was a physical being. What he was as a material body was part of what God said, what God communicated, in his whole identity. Baxter’s meditations on the wounds of Christ direct us again and again to what is said in the physical concreteness of Jesus’s body. She brings us very close to that body, so that we can listen to God’s communication and find ourselves met and touched as bodily beings ourselves.