Showing titles in Essays & Commentary

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.

This audiobook includes all three volumes in the Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living series. A comprehensive manual for living a spiritual life, based on a verse-by-verse commentary on India’s timeless scripture - from the author of its best-selling translation. This audiobook includes all three volumes in this series. The Bhagavad Gita is set on the battlefield of an apocalyptic war between good and evil. Faced with a dire moral dilemma, the warrior prince Arjuna turns in anguish to his spiritual guide, Sri Krishna, for answers to the fundamental questions of life.

In Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart, Russ Ramsey examines what art can teach us about the wonder and struggle of being alive. He invites listeners to discover some of the world’s most celebrated artists and works, applying the beauty of the gospel in a way that speaks to the suffering and hope we all face. Each story from some of the history's most celebrated artists applies the beauty of the gospel in a way that speaks to the suffering and hope we all face.

As early as Primary, you may have absorbed this confusing message: "God loves us....but He's so disappointed in you". For a religion that preaches hope, the message of "do more" often seems to win out. With so many programs, assignments, callings, commandments, standards, and honor codes, how can you keep up? The adversary highlights the shame you feel when you constantly fall short. Do you feel only heaviness as you consider the Latter-Day Saint path to exaltation? How can God not be disappointed in someone like me?

For most of human history the world was a magical and enchanted place ruled by forces beyond our understanding. The rise of science and Descartes's division of mind from world made materialism our ruling paradigm, in the process asking whether our own consciousness—i.e., souls—might be illusions. Now the inexorable rise of technology, with artificial intelligences that surpass our comprehension and control, and the spread of digital metaphors for self-understanding, the core questions of existence urgently require rethinking.

In recent years, the theological—and, more specifically, Roman Catholic—question of the supernatural has made an astonishing return from seeming oblivion. David Bentley Hart's You Are Gods presents a series of meditations on the vexed theological question of the relation of nature and supernature. In its merely controversial aspect, the book is intended most directly as a rejection of a certain Thomistic construal of that relation, as well as an argument in favor of a model of nature and supernature at once more Eastern and patristic.

Have we been taught to discount the veracity and deeper meaning of our emotional resonance with the world around us? In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis looks at the curriculum of the English "prep school" and begins to wonder if this subliminal teaching has indeed produced a generation who discount such a nature.

«Si solo leemos una obra de Chesterton —debería avergonzarnos si así fuera— ha de ser Ortodoxia. Seguramente, nadie ha defendido la fe cristiana con argumentos tan sorprendentes y ejemplos tan deslumbrantes, como Chesterton lo hizo en Ortodoxia. Una obra maestra de retórica que (...) realmente constituye uno de los libros mejor escritos del siglo XX» (Dale Ahlquist, presidente y cofundador de la American Society Ches- terton ). Ortodoxia es el libro más importante de una personalidad excepcional.

In this anthology of 26 essays and other writings, Huxley discusses the nature of God, enlightenment, being, good and evil, religion, eternity, and the divine. Huxley consistently examined the spiritual basis of both the individual and human society, always seeking to reach an authentic and clearly defined experience of the divine.

Life Lessons covers topics of the heart and mind, often with related stories from the Scriptures. Ninety concise and to-the-point chapters speak to everyday topics we all may experience on any given day from dawn to bedtime.

The critic and essayist Meghan O'Gieblyn was born into an evangelical family, attended the famed Moody Bible Institute in Chicago for a time before she had a crisis of belief, and still lives in the Midwest, aka "Flyover Country". She writes of her "existential dizziness, a sense that the rest of the world is moving while you remain still", and that rich sense of ambivalence and internal division inform the 15 superbly thoughtful and ironic essays in this collection.  

Walter Brueggemann points us toward energizing hope for an alternative life of social equity and thriving. In Brueggemann's work, hope is not understood as easy optimism but as an honest facing of the unjust structures that human beings have created and a call to lean into the deep symbols of Scripture that imagine the alternative way of God, restoring solidarity and relationship that have been eroded by the violence of empire.

Some elections really are huge turning points—and 2024 is one of them. A must-listen for every Catholic American, For God, Country, & Sanity: How Catholics Can Save America offers 13 insightful chapters that take a deep dive into different aspects of the cultural, political, and religious landscapes of our rapidly declining country. Look no further to find exactly what you need to prepare you to take your place in the battle for America this election year.

Is Joseph - the deserted son of Jacob from the Old Testament - relevant in our modern age? For Madeleine L'Engle, the answer is a resounding yes; not solely because Joseph is an important historical character, but primarily because his experiences of disenfranchisement, tragedy, and profound betrayal resonate within our own society. These thoughtful meditations on obedience, prophecy, forgiveness, and compassion are masterfully woven to bridge gaps of belief, politics, education, and even faith.

When Brian Doyle passed away at the age of 60 after a bout with brain cancer, he left behind a cult-like following of devoted listeners who regard his writing as one of the best-kept secrets of the 21st century. Doyle writes with a delightful sense of wonder about the sanctity of everyday things, and about love and connection in all their forms: spiritual love, brotherly love, romantic love, and even the love of a nine-foot sturgeon.

The Walter Brueggemann Library brings together the wide-ranging and enlivening thought of popular biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann over his storied career. Each volume collects previously published work on a biblical theme that has deeply informed Brueggemann's scholarship.

Atheist? Believer? Uncertain? No matter: The Portable Atheist will engage you every step of the way. From the number one New York Times best-selling author of God Is Not Great, comes this provocative and entertaining guided tour of atheist and agnostic thought through the ages with original pieces by Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

In this unabridged audiobook of Walking in Wonder, John O’Donohue’s friend and frequent collaborator John Quinn collects a series of talks and essays from the poet-philosopher on humanity’s relationship with the land, the ache of absence, our place in an often mysterious universe, and the great adventure of death itself.

The daughter of an artist, Helen Tworkov grew up in the heady climate of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism; yet from an early age, she questioned the value of Western cultural norms. At the age of twenty-two, she set off for Japan, then traveled through Cambodia, India, and eventually to Tibetan refugee camps in Nepal. Set against the arresting cultural backdrop of the sixties and their legacy, this intimate self-portrait depicts Tworkov's search for a true home but also into the ways each of us can better understand and transform ourselves.

Written between A.D. 413 and 426, The City of God is one of the great cornerstones in the history of Christian thought, a book which is vital to the understanding of modern Western society. Augustine originally intended it to be an apology for Christianity against the accusation that the Church was responsible for the decline of the Roman Empire, which had occurred just three years earlier. Indeed, Augustine produced a great amount of evidence to prove that paganism was responsible for this event. However, by the time the work was finished, the book had taken on a larger theme.