Showing titles in Religious Studies

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is the story of a dramatic year in Virginia's Roanoke Valley, where Annie Dillard set out to chronicle incidents of "beauty tangled in a rapture with violence."

Many American Christians are struggling to find places of worship which reflect their core conservative beliefs. Today, many Evangelical leaders are pushing their members to “whisper” about sexual sins, reconsider abortion, lament the effects of climate change, and repent of “perpetuating systemic racism.” Meanwhile, America’s largest Evangelical denominations are fraught with division over issues like critical race theory, and many ministries are now promoting social justice rather than Scripture.

Recruited into the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement as a young wife, Tia Levings learned that being a good Christian meant following a list of additional life principles—a series of secret, special rules to obey. Being a godly and submissive wife in Christian Patriarchy included strict discipline, isolation, and an alternative lifestyle that appeared wholesome to outsiders. Women were to be silent, “keepers of the home.” A Well-Trained Wife is an unforgettable memoir about a woman's race to save herself and her family and details the ways that extreme views can manifest in a marriage.

Nine essential works by C. S. Lewis in one deluxe audio edition: Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, Miracles, The Problem of Pain, A Grief Observed, The Abolition of Man, The Weight of Glory, and George MacDonald.

One of the most popular and beloved introductions to the concept of faith ever written, Mere Christianity has sold millions of copies worldwide. This audiobook brings together C. S. Lewis' legendary radio broadcasts during the war years, in which he set out simply to "explain and defend the belief that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times."

As Koestler points out, the Khazars were the Third World of their day. They chose a surprising method of resisting both the Western pressure to become Christian and the Eastern to adopt Islam. Rejecting both, they converted to Judaism. Mr. Koestler speculates about the ultimate faith of the Khazars and their impact on the racial composition and social heritage of modern Jewry. He produces detailed research to support a theory which could make the term 'anti-Semitism' become void of meaning.

Nephi puts us on notice in his very first sentence that The Book of Mormon was written by temple worshippers and for temple worshippers. He and the other prophets of The Book of Mormon, who called themselves the visionary men and the peaceable followers of Christ, knew and practiced a mystery, an ordinance by which they ascended through the temple and entered into the presence of God. This ordinance was embodied in a dramatic representation of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden and their return to it, in which initiates played the roles of Adam and Eve or their descendants.

For years as an award-winning war reporter, Sebastian Junger traveled to many front lines and frequently put his life at risk. And yet, the closest he ever came to death was the summer of 2020 while spending a quiet afternoon at the New England home he shared with his wife and two young children. Crippled by abdominal pain, Junger was rushed to the hospital by ambulance. Once there, he began slipping away. As blackness encroached, he was visited by his dead father, inviting Junger to join him.

Retracing his own spiritual journey from atheism to faith, Lee Strobel, former legal editor of the Chicago Tribune, cross-examines a dozen experts with doctorates from schools like Cambridge, Princeton, and Brandeis who are recognized authorities in their own fields. Strobel challenges them with questions like: How reliable is the New Testament? Does evidence for Jesus exist outside the Bible? Is there any reason to believe the resurrection was an actual event?

In Counterfeit Christs, Trent looks at eighteen phony versions of Jesus that we encounter today. Some are the creation of non-Christians: like skeptics who dismiss Jesus as a fictional composite of ancient myths, secular humanists who think he was just a Nice Man, or adherents of other religions who claim him as a prophet or guru in their own tradition.

The Christian faith is a call to adventure. Be inspired by these thirty-two saints and give thanks for their faithful stories. Now go and do likewise where God has put you.

Evangelical Christians are perhaps the most polarizing—and least understood—people living in America today. In his seminal new book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, journalist Tim Alberta, himself a practicing Christian and the son of an evangelical pastor, paints an expansive and profoundly troubling portrait of the American evangelical movement.

The Crusades is an authoritative, accessible single-volume history of the brutal struggle for the Holy Land in the Middle Ages. Thomas Asbridge - a renowned historian who writes with "maximum vividness" (Joan Acocella, The New Yorker) - covers the years 1095 to 1291 in this big, ambitious, listenable account of one of the most fascinating periods in history.

Transform your life with this revolutionary and accessible seven-step guide - grounded in energy medicine, neurobiology, and quantum physics - to awaken your true health and potential through energy healing.

In December 1975, the Lutz family moved into their new home on suburban Long Island. George and Kathleen Lutz knew that, one year earlier, Ronald DeFeo had murdered his parents, brothers, and sisters in the house, but the property - complete with boathouse and swimming pool - and the price were too good to pass up. This is the shocking true story of an American dream that turned into a nightmare beyond imagining for the Lutz family, who were forced to flee their new home in terror.

I have done my own research, including traveling to and touring the modern locations of each of these seven churches.

Shrouded in myth and conspiracy, the history of the Knights Templar is little understood. Geordie Torr pulls fact from fiction, revealing the astonishing tale of this military-religious order that dominated the politics of the medieval Middle East. Clearly and chronologically written, this book brings to life the legacy of this secretive order and the characters who defined the era, making it an informative and enjoyable read.

When Misty was six years old, her family started to live and dress like the Amish. Misty and her sister were kept as slaves on a mountain ranch where they were subjected to almost complete isolation, sexual abuse, and extreme physical violence. When Misty reached her teens, her parents feared she and her sister would escape and took them to an Amish community where they were adopted and became baptized members. Misty was devastated to once again find herself in a world of fear, animal cruelty, and sexual abuse.

Nothing is new or original in Christianity. That is the important thesis demonstrated in Christianity Before Christ. The least important features, as well as the most important components, were all well developed in cultures that flourished before the time that Christ is alleged to have walked the parched paths of Roman Palestine.

Fully revised with forty thousand new words that take the listener up to present-day India, John Keay’s India: A History spans five millennia in a sweeping narrative that tells the story of the peoples of the subcontinent, from their ancient beginnings in the valley of the Indus to the events in the region today.