Download or read book A Religion against Itself written by Robert W. Jenson and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2009-11-01 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Western religion today is as phony as an aluminum Christmas tree or a celluloid carnation. Our culture in its customs, laws, and creative arts no longer reckons seriously with supernatural realities--although it pretends to. According to Robert W. Jenson, the present epoch of phony religion gives the church the task and opportunity of making explicit the antireligious nature of the gospel. Indeed, Christian faith is antireligious religion. Dr. Jenson takes up the theme of religionless Christianity and works it out in relation to theology, worship, ethics, parish structure, missionary motivation, and faith. The final chapter consists of sermonic attempts to do what A Religion against Itself says must be done. Three excursuses show how the author's thought differs from that of Thomas J. J. Altizer, William Hamilton, and Harvey Cox. For Christians repelled by their own religion, here is a book that comes to grips with the "logic and music of our condition," in the hope of helping the church make sense of the gospel to itself and perhaps also to others.
Download or read book Religion Against the Self written by Isabelle Clark-Decès and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2000 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study, based on the author's fieldwork among rural Tamil villagers in South India, focuses on the ways in which people in this society interact with the supernatural beings who play such a large role in their personal and corporate lives. Isabelle Navokov looks at a spectrum of ritualized contexts in which the boundaries between the natural and spiritual worlds are penetrated and communication takes place. Throughout, Nabokov's meticulous analysis sheds new light on this hiterto almost unknown domain - and entire range of fascinating phenomena basic to South Indian religion as it is really lived.
Download or read book America Against Itself written by Richard John Neuhaus and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An even-tempered (if rather partisan) critique of the American soul as it exhibits itself on the different fronts of our culture war.'' Neuhaus (Unsecular America, 1986, etc.) traces the traumas of our social and political life back to their ontological roots and supplies a prognosis that will undoubtedly scandalize as many as it sways. A Catholic priest and scholar who presides over the Institute of Religion and Public Life, Neuhaus has concentrated his sociological efforts for some years now on the intersection between the political and the spiritual in American life. In doing so, he has run counter to prevailing notions of secularism--held only, he maintains, by an elite minority--that would, he says, collapse all religious impulses into an entirely private realm. Neuhaus skips over the more obvious examples of conflict--school prayer, Nativity scenes in public parks, etc.--and attempts in more theoretical terms to show that liberal democracy (in its American incarnation) requires a religious foundation if it is to succeed as a unifying social force. He draws on his experiences with the civil-rights movement to show how a religious vocabulary can be used--as it was by Martin Luther King--to bring together even the most mutually antagonistic groups. One might question Neuhaus's optimism in light of the increasing lack of cohesion in most mainline churches today, and parts of his argument display an inclination toward the sort of throne-and-altar'' alliance that has bedeviled European reactionaries for two hundred years--but his analysis of the seeming void around which the secular'' consensus is built, and the fragility of the social structures that depend upon that consensus, is challenging, prescient, and ominous. And his chapters on the abortion issue, while hardly impartial, are remarkably free of the usual cant. A trifle glib and overconfident, Neuhaus's tone can irritate. His thesis, however, is original enough to compel attention and forceful enough to provoke thought. -- Copyright (c)1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Download or read book God Against Religion written by Matthew Myer Boulton and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2008-01-29 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume outlines a Christian theology that takes worship as its basic framework, as the occasion of not only an approach toward God in piety but also separation from God in sin. Drawing on Luther, Calvin, and especially Karl Barth, Matthew Myer Boulton builds a Reformed liturgical theology, maintaining that the God of Jesus Christ is a "God against religion," one who saves human beings from religion by entering it, transforming it, and ultimately ending it.
Download or read book Putting God Second written by Donniel Hartman and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2017-02-14 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why have the monotheistic religions failed to produce societies that live up to their ethical ideals? A prominent rabbi answers this question by looking at his own faith and offering a way for religion to heal itself. In Putting God Second, Rabbi Donniel Hartman tackles one of modern life’s most urgent and vexing questions: Why are the great monotheistic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—chronically unable to fulfill their own self-professed goal of creating individuals infused with moral sensitivity and societies governed by the highest ethical standards? To answer this question, Hartman takes a sober look at the moral peaks and valleys of his own tradition, Judaism, and diagnoses it with clarity, creativity, and erudition. He rejects both the sweeping denouncements of those who view religion as an inherent impediment to moral progress and the apologetics of fundamentalists who proclaim religion’s moral perfection against all evidence to the contrary. Hartman identifies the primary source of religion’s moral failure in what he terms its “autoimmune disease,” or the way religions so often undermine their own deepest values. While God obligates the good and calls us into its service, Hartman argues, God simultaneously and inadvertently makes us morally blind. The nature of this self-defeating condition is that the human religious desire to live in relationship with God often distracts religious believers from their traditions’ core moral truths. The answer Hartman offers is this: put God second. In order to fulfill religion’s true vision for humanity—an uncompromising focus on the ethical treatment of others—religious believers must hold their traditions accountable to the highest independent moral standards. Decency toward one’s neighbor must always take precedence over acts of religious devotion, and ethical piety must trump ritual piety. For as long as devotion to God comes first, responsibility to other people will trail far, far behind. In this book, Judaism serves as a template for how the challenge might be addressed by those of other faiths, whose sacred scriptures similarly evoke both the sublime heights of human aspiration and the depths of narcissistic moral blindness. In Putting God Second, Rabbi Hartman offers a lucid analysis of religion’s flaws, as well as a compelling resource, and vision, for its repair.
Download or read book The End of Religion written by Bruxy Cavey and published by Tyndale House. This book was released on 2014-02-27 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The End of Religion, Bruxy Cavey shares that relationship has no room for religion. Believers and seekers alike will discover anew the wondrous promise found in our savior. And Christ’s eternal call to walk in love and freedom will resonate with readers of all ages and denominations.
Download or read book Catholicism Against Itself written by Orlando Clayton Lambert and published by . This book was released on 1963-01-01 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book My God My God written by Michael P. Jensen and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2013-06-14 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once upon a time, it was not so difficult to believe. Believing in God was like breathing. It was a second sense of which people were hardly aware. But in an age when our faith is mainly in science and technology, is it possible to believe anymore? Michael P. Jensen takes a searching look at what makes us believe--or not believe--in God in this contemporary world. He converses with troubled souls, cranks, crackpots, and conspiracy theorists, and even with the devil himself. This entertaining and stimulating journey through the underworld of our beliefs will have you wondering whether things are always what they seem.
Download or read book Religious Reading written by Paul J. Griffiths and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1999-05-13 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What social conditions and intellectual practices are necessary in order for religious cultures to flourish? Paul Griffiths finds the answer in "religious reading" --- the kind of reading in which a religious believer allows his mind to be furnished and his heart instructed by a sacred text, understood in the light of an authoritative tradition. He favorably contrasts the practices and pedagogies of traditional religious cultures with those of our own fragmented and secularized culture and insists that religious reading should be preserved.
Download or read book Losing My Religion written by William Lobdell and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-03-06 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Lobdell's journey of faith—and doubt—may be the most compelling spiritual memoir of our time. Lobdell became a born-again Christian in his late 20s when personal problems—including a failed marriage—drove him to his knees in prayer. As a newly minted evangelical, Lobdell—a veteran journalist—noticed that religion wasn't covered well in the mainstream media, and he prayed for the Lord to put him on the religion beat at a major newspaper. In 1998, his prayers were answered when the Los Angeles Times asked him to write about faith. Yet what happened over the next eight years was a roller-coaster of inspiration, confusion, doubt, and soul-searching as his reporting and experiences slowly chipped away at his faith. While reporting on hundreds of stories, he witnessed a disturbing gap between the tenets of various religions and the behaviors of the faithful and their leaders. He investigated religious institutions that acted less ethically than corrupt Wall St. firms. He found few differences between the morals of Christians and atheists. As this evidence piled up, he started to fear that God didn't exist. He explored every doubt, every question—until, finally, his faith collapsed. After the paper agreed to reassign him, he wrote a personal essay in the summer of 2007 that became an international sensation for its honest exploration of doubt. Losing My Religion is a book about life's deepest questions that speaks to everyone: Lobdell understands the longings and satisfactions of the faithful, as well as the unrelenting power of doubt. How he faced that power, and wrestled with it, is must reading for people of faith and nonbelievers alike.
Download or read book Religion of Peace written by Gregory M. Davis and published by WND Books. This book was released on 2006 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Virtually every contemporary Western leader has expressed the view that Islam is a peaceful religion and that those who commit violence in its name are fanatics who misinterpret its tenets. This widely circulated claim is false. Relying primarily on Islam's own sources, "Religion of Peace? Islam's War Against the World" demonstrates that Islam is a violent, expansionary ideology that seeks the subjugation and destruction of other faiths, cultures, and systems of government. Further, it shows that the jihadis that Westerners have been indoctrinated to believe are extremists, are actually in the mainstream.
Download or read book What Are We Doing Here written by Marilynne Robinson and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2018-02-20 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New essays on theological, political, and contemporary themes, by the Pulitzer Prize winner Marilynne Robinson has plumbed the human spirit in her renowned novels, including Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Gilead, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith. Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America like Emerson and Tocqueville inform our political consciousness or discussing the way that beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson’s peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display. What Are We Doing Here? is a call for Americans to continue the tradition of those great thinkers and to remake American political and cultural life as “deeply impressed by obligation [and as] a great theater of heroic generosity, which, despite all, is sometimes palpable still.”
Download or read book Religion Against the Self written by Isabelle Nabokov and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2000-09-21 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a holistic description of Hinduism, showing how different types of Hinduism form a "total" or systematic cosmology and repeat crucial values through different symbols. Looking at Tamil religious practices, Isabelle Nabokov reveals that Tamil religion is primarily concerned with transformations of identity and subjectivity, both in this world and in the hereafter.
Download or read book Religion without God written by Ronald Dworkin and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 71 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his last book, Ronald Dworkin addresses questions that men and women have asked through the ages: What is religion and what is God’s place in it? What is death and what is immortality? Based on the 2011 Einstein Lectures, Religion without God is inspired by remarks Einstein made that if religion consists of awe toward mysteries which “manifest themselves in the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, and which our dull faculties can comprehend only in the most primitive forms,” then, he, Einstein, was a religious person. Dworkin joins Einstein’s sense of cosmic mystery and beauty to the claim that value is objective, independent of mind, and immanent in the world. He rejects the metaphysics of naturalism—that nothing is real except what can be studied by the natural sciences. Belief in God is one manifestation of this deeper worldview, but not the only one. The conviction that God underwrites value presupposes a prior commitment to the independent reality of that value—a commitment that is available to nonbelievers as well. So theists share a commitment with some atheists that is more fundamental than what divides them. Freedom of religion should flow not from a respect for belief in God but from the right to ethical independence. Dworkin hoped that this short book would contribute to rational conversation and the softening of religious fear and hatred. Religion without God is the work of a humanist who recognized both the possibilities and limitations of humanity.
Download or read book Catholicism Against Itself written by O. C. Lambert and published by Lambert Book House. This book was released on 1956-01-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Theology Against Religion written by Tom Greggs and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2011-12-29 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A constructive approach from a theological perspective about the category of religion in Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth.
Download or read book Christian Science Against Itself Classic Reprint written by Miram W. Gifford and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2018-02 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Christian Science Against Itself There probably has not sprung up In the last two thousand years a popular her esy that has so widely fastened itself in the public mind, and so seriously threatened the life Of the Churches, as that recent fanatical movement known as Christian Science. No fanaticism, perhaps, in Six thousand years, has been built on more absurd and self-con tradictory tenets than this same system of so-called Science and Health, promulgated by one Mrs. Eddy, who lays claim to having discovered the secret Of perpetual youth. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
