Religion: general Books

Atonement has been described as the central doctrine of Christianity and yet, surprisingly, the church has never insisted on a particular understanding of how redemption in Christ was achieved. Instead, a miscellany of metaphors has been employed, each...

New Creation introduces readers to the thrilling, biblically-based vision of a whole world created by and to be redeemed by God. Written at an eminently accessible level, it shows how endings (or eschatologies) animate our lives. It rehearses the...

Franz and Frederick Foltz examine how modern technology creates an environment that significantly affects Christianity by reducing the mysteries of faith to manageable techniques. The body of their work analyzes the effects of technology on the...

Are Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt, and Rob Bell ""yesterday's news,"" as many evangelicals seem to think? Truth and the New Kind of Christian (2005) tried to provide a balanced assessment of McLaren's and Jones's views. But, they seem to be...

This book tells a compelling story about love, friendship, and the Divine that took over a thousand years to unfold. It argues that mind and feeling are intrinsically connected in the thought of Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus; that Aristotle developed...

Forgiveness marks one of the most important issues of our time. If the enormous number of books and articles are a measure, then forgiveness--our forgiveness of others and forgiveness for ourselves--appeals to our deepest concern. It's a challenge to...

Why do we see so much fruitful good in unbelievers and so much evil in believers? What could it mean for a believer that the old is "gone," especially when it doesn't feel that way? What does it mean for humans who are simul iustus et peccator...

Dan Taylor was a leading English eighteenth-century General Baptist minister and founder of the New Connexion of General Baptists--a revival movement. This book provides considerable new light on the theological thinking of this important evangelical...

What do we mean when we say that something is? What is the meaning of human experience? These two most elementary philosophical questions have perplexed thinkers for thousands of years. Being and Intelligibility explores them from the simple premise that...

After twenty years, Stephen Faller shares his journey into seminary and ordained ministry. This book reveals the story of how someone with a lifelong disability, cerebral palsy, might find his way into ministry as a hospital chaplain; there is a certain...

The basic question, ""Where did Baptists come from and why?"" has two camps that offer differing explanations: (1) the English Separatist camp produced the ministries of foundational Baptists, John Smyth and Thomas Helwys, thus takes credit for Baptist...

It is well known that energy is a fundamental concept in physics. Much less well known is that it is also a key concept in Eastern Christian or Orthodox theology. This book from Dr. Stoyan Tanev--a physicist, innovation management scholar, and...

This is the story of Gordon Clark (1902-85), respected philosopher and prolific writer, who held that Christianity, as a logically coherent system, is superior to all other philosophies. Clark fought no wars and conquered no kingdoms. Yet he was a...

B. T. Roberts was born in a small farming community in western New York, on July 25, 1823. By the time of his death in 1893, he had made a profound impact on church and society. Roberts's writing, preaching, and ministry focused on true conversion, the...

Does the Messiah have to die to pay for his people's sins? Is the cross of Jesus an atoning sacrifice? In recent decades a burgeoning number of theologians have answered the aforementioned questions in the negative. In fact some, like Rene Girard, have...

William Desmond's original and creative work in metaphysics is attracting more and more attention from philosophers of religion. Putting Desmond in conversation with John D. Caputo, an important philosopher of religion from the Continental tradition,...

Pauline Dimech explores whether and to what extent we may attribute authority to the saints, but also how we may ensure that it is the saints, and not the scoundrels, whose influence persists and whose memory endures. The thing that drives her research...

Professor Brian V. Johnstone, CSsR, has been quietly and unobtrusively contributing to the intellectual life of Catholicism, especially in the field of moral theology, for nearly four decades. Having published numerous theological articles on many...

Is ""political reconciliation"" a new tool for peace-building and justice--in peace processes and other complex social reconstruction efforts-after dictatorship or civil wars? Or is it just another term for established practices like negotiation,...

We are often seeking answers to life’s most fundamental questions: Who am I? Where did I come from? What will happen to me when I die? When did the universe begin? Does God exist? What is my purpose? While both philosophy and religion can provide...

“The Muslim people must become acquainted with the fundamental ordinances of Islam. Ignorance exists on both sides, among the Sunnis and Shi‘is alike, and it is as a result of this ignorance that clashes and enmity have arisen” (Imām...

Our present moment can no longer sustain a stable "us" defined against an alien "them." So say René Girard and Ivan Illich, radical critics of both Christianity and culture. If they are right, this makes our time an endtime. The end of us against them...

Burying the Sword: Counteracting Jihadism with Interfaith EducationThis book analyzes the historical and political context in which various forms of violent extremism (jihadism) have emerged in the Middle East, Europe, and in Africa since 9/11/2001. The...

God's daughter-servant, Maxine Rose Gladden, was born in Harlem, New York, February 11, 1954, to the late Samuel Herman Lee Gladden, her father, and the late Adeur Marie Elizabeth Snead Gladden, her beloved mother. Ms. Gladden was blessed to have a...

Everything that you do is affected by the attitude that you have. All that you do and say is being observed by others. The observation is being done when you are unaware. Someone is always watching you. Your example is so important. Godly attitudes lead...

The Purple Colored Church exposes the deception and betrayal of the mystery woman riding the beast in Revelation 17:3, who's religious doctrines may have led millions if not billions to the slaughter of Hell's fiery fury. Multitudes of people have been...

What matters most in life? Is it about taking on a "do what feels good today" mindset, or is itabout your thoughts and actions reflecting God's kingdom and the example of Jesus Christ?Author John Mathew sees that life, and life after, should be about...

Beginning with Jesus's ministry in the villages of Galilee and continuing over the course of the first three centuries as the movement expanded geographically and numerically throughout the Roman world, the Christians organized their house churches, at...

The idea of a state religion is seldom connected to religious freedom and liberal, modern, and democratic states. However, such a situation existed in Norway until 2012, when the Lutheran Church was the state church of Norway. A large majority of the...

The subject of this book is politics and religion, the relationship between Constantine and Christianity. Something happened in the reign of the Emperor Constantine that transformed both politics and religion in Europe, and anyone who seeks to understand...

The radical interdependency of justice, compassion, and solidarity of community working for the common good are ideals celebrated in the religious Ways of humanity. Human beings at all times and in all places have known what is good, but for reasons too...

Two rival analogies compete for our attention: the law of the jungle, and the sacred canopy. As for the former, life consists of the survival of the fittest. As for the latter, the divine mandates serve as a framework for social ethics. This is in...

John Nevin's vision of the church as ""one, holy, catholic, and apostolic"" grew out of his critique of the revivalism and sectarianism that prevailed throughout evangelical Christianity in the nineteenth century. He deepens his perception of catholicity...

Thanks to coded notes taken by the teenager John Pynchon, this volume transports the reader, virtually, back to Sundays in the seventeenth century, when the community gathered to listen to the Rev. George Moxon. The setting was Springfield,...

In Wo/men, Scripture, and Politics, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, brings to bear years of trailblazing scholarship of feminist thought and hermeneutics onto the current political and cultural landscape. In this book, she seeks to articulate and use...

Remarkable is how extensively in each parable Jesus provides a subtle but rich array of unexpected possibilities hidden within the hierarchies of power so commonplace in his world. By doing so he profoundly addresses the perils inherent in the...

This first full-scale study of the Evil Eye in the Bible and the biblical communities has traced in four volumes evidence of Evil Eye belief and practice in the ancient world from Mesopotamia (c. 3000 BCE) to Late Roman Antiquity (c. 600 CE). The fourth...

The nature miracle stories of Jesus--walking on the water or feeding thousands with a small amount of food, for example--are so spectacular that many find them a problem, whether historical, philosophical, or even theological. This is the first book to...

Not so long ago the world resisted change, often using religious-reasoning. Small wonder--the printing press, a sixteenth century disruptive device, split Christianity. Now the globe welcomes digital disruption, even praising it as a solution for...

Although forgotten until quite recently, Caryll Houselander, who died in 1954, was a sensitive and profound English Roman Catholic writer on Christian spirituality. In this critical edition of her 1949 book The Passion of the Infant Christ, Houselander...

U. C. Fate has only one little thing to do before he dies. That is, to kill God. The novel opens on the very day Fate has scheduled for this public execution. We are in Sri Lanka, at the Buddhist Temple of the Tooth during Esala Perahera (the sacred...