Download or read book Spiritual but not Religious written by Robert C. Fuller and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2001-12-20 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly 40% of all Americans have no connection with organized religion. Yet many of these people, even though they might never step inside a house of worship, live profoundly spiritual lives. But what is the nature and value of unchurched spirituality in America? Is it a recent phenomenon, a New Age fad that will soon fade, or a long-standing and essential aspect of the American experience? In Spiritual But Not Religious, Robert Fuller offers fascinating answers to these questions. He shows that alternative spiritual practices have a long and rich history in America, dating back to the colonial period, when church membership rarely exceeded 17% and interest in astrology, numerology, magic, and witchcraft ran high. Fuller traces such unchurched traditions into the mid-nineteenth century, when Americans responded enthusiastically to new philosophies such as Swedenborgianism, Transcendentalism, and mesmerism, right up to the current interest in meditation, channeling, divination, and a host of other unconventional spiritual practices. Throughout, Fuller argues that far from the flighty and narcissistic dilettantes they are often made out to be, unchurched spiritual seekers embrace a mature and dynamic set of basic beliefs. They focus on inner sources of spirituality and on this world rather than the afterlife; they believe in the accessibility of God and in the mind's untapped powers; they see a fundamental unity between science and religion and an equality between genders and races; and they are more willing to test their beliefs and change them when they prove untenable. Timely, sweeping in its scope, and informed by a clear historical understanding, Spiritual But Not Religious offers fresh perspective on the growing numbers of Americans who find their spirituality outside the church.
Download or read book Belief Without Borders Inside the Minds of the Spiritual But Not Religious written by Linda A. Mercadante and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book When Spiritual but Not Religious Is Not Enough written by Lillian Daniel and published by Jericho Books. This book was released on 2013-01-15 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The phrase "I'm spiritual but not religious" has become a cliché. It's easy to find God amid the convenience of self-styled spirituality -- but is it possible (and more worthwhile) to search for God through religion? Minister and celebrated author Lillian Daniel gives a new spin on church with stories of what a life of faith can really be: weird, wondrous, and well worth trying. From a rock-and-roller sexton to a BB gun-toting grandma, a church service attended by animals to a group of unlikely theologians at Sing Sing, Daniel shows us a portrait of church that is flawed, fallible -- and deeply faithful. With poignant reflections and sly wit, Daniel invites all of us to step out of ourselves, dare to become a community, and encounter a God greater than we could ever invent. Humorous and sincere, this is a book about people finding God in the most unexpected of places: prisons, airports, yoga classes, committee meetings, and, strangest of all, right there in church.
Download or read book Being Spiritual But Not Religious written by William Barclay Parsons and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection speaks to what national surveys agree is a growing social phenomenon referred to as the "Spiritual but Not Religious Movement" (SBNRM). Each essay of the volume engages the past, present and future(s) of the SBNRM.
Download or read book Hearing God in Conversation written by Sam Williamson and published by Kregel Publications. This book was released on 2016-06-27 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I picked it up out of curiosity and I couldn’t put it down."--Eugene Peterson Christians are comfortable saying that Christianity is about a relationship with God. Yet many might also say that they sense little meaningful relationship with God in their own lives. After all, the foundation of good relationship is communication—-but conversation with God often seems to go only one way. We may sing of walking and talking with God in the garden, His voice falling on our ears, but few have heard that beloved voice themselves. Sam Williamson acknowledges the fundamental human longing to hear God’s voice and offers a hopeful supposition: God is always speaking—-we’ve just never been taught how to recognize His voice. Williamson handles this potentially heady topic with his characteristic straightforwardness and leavening humor. This book deftly bridges the gap between solid biblical theology and practical application, addressing topics such as how to truly pray without ceasing, how to brainstorm with God, how to navigate our emotions, how to answer God’s questions, and how to hear God’s voice for others. Hearing God in Conversation offers simple, step-by-step lessons on how to hear God. Williamson begins with Scripture meditation. He then expands the practice of listening for that voice everywhere—in the checkout line, on the job, in a movie theater, and even in silence. From there, he demonstrates how to hear God’s guidance when making any decision. By the end, readers’ eyes and ears will be opened to the limitless methods through which God speaks.
Download or read book Religious but Not Religious written by Jason E. Smith and published by Chiron Publications. This book was released on 2020-12-12 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Religious but Not Religious, Jungian analyst Jason E. Smith explores the idea, expressed by C.G. Jung, that the religious sense is a natural and vital function of the human psyche. We suffer from its lack. The symbolic forms of religion mediate unconscious and ineffable experiences to the field of consciousness that infuse our lives with meaning and purpose. That is why we cannot be indifferent toward the decline of traditional religious observance so widely discussed today. The great religions house the accumulated spiritual wisdom of humankind, and their loss would be catastrophic to the human soul. As human beings, we hunger for spiritual experience. To be “spiritual but not religious” is one possible response, but it often doesn’t go far enough. All too easily it can become a kind of do-it-yourself spirituality, which lacks the capacity to effect the kind of growth and transformation that is the true goal of all the religious traditions. Smith argues that we need to be “religious but not religious.” We need an approach to religion that recognizes the essential importance of the individual spiritual adventure while also affirming the value of collective religious tradition. He articulates an understanding of religion as a participation in the symbolic life as opposed to a mere content of belief. By recovering our personal sensitivity for symbolic experience together with a symbolic understanding of religion, we facilitate a profound encounter with life and with the human condition through which one may be tested, tried, and transformed.
Download or read book Pillar of Fire Pillar of Truth written by Catholic Answers, Incorporated and published by Catholic Answers. This book was released on 1997 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book An Immovable Feast written by Tyler Blanski and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2018-03-27 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work is a winsome and beautifully written account of a modern spiritual journey. It tells the colorful and gripping story of one man's religious path from a fundamentalist Baptist childhood to an adolescence in emergent church spirituality. He moves on through hipster years as a house painter and a musician, then marries and enters a seminary in Wisconsin. After years of wearing a black cassock and preparing to be an Anglican priest, he boldly joins the Catholic Church. An Immovable Feast is a profound love story told with humor, wisdom, and bite. A fresh breeze blows through it as Tyler Blanski reminds us that the Catholic religion is not dead because it is not mortal. It is the festival of heaven on earth.
Download or read book Spiritual But Not Religious written by John Bartunek and published by Tan Books. This book was released on 2019-07-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More people than ever find themselves unfulfilled by merely material abundance and prosperity. More people than ever find their hearts yearning for some kind of satisfaction beyond swiping right or going viral. This is because the human soul was made for more than video games, social media, SMS messages, and flashy distractions. This book, written with the warmth, sincerity, and clarity characteristic of Father Bartunek's many popular books, opens the door to a rediscovery of the spiritual landscape present in every human heart.
Download or read book The New Metaphysicals written by Courtney Bender and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-07-15 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American spirituality—with its focus on individual meaning, experience, and exploration—is usually thought to be a product of the postmodern era. But, as The New Metaphysicals makes clear, contemporary American spirituality has historic roots in the nineteenth century and a great deal in common with traditional religious movements. To explore this world, Courtney Bender combines research into the history of the movement with fieldwork in Cambridge, Massachusetts—a key site of alternative religious inquiry from Emerson and William James to today. Through her ethnographic analysis, Bender discovers that a focus on the new, on progress, and on the way spiritual beliefs intersect with science obscures the historical roots of spirituality from its practitioners and those who study it alike—and shape an enduring set of modern religious possibilities in the process.
Download or read book White Utopias written by Amanda J. Lucia and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transformational festivals, from Burning Man to Lightning in a Bottle, Bhakti Fest, and Wanderlust, are massive events that attract thousands of participants to sites around the world. In this groundbreaking book, Amanda J. Lucia shows how these festivals operate as religious institutions for "spiritual, but not religious" (SBNR) communities. Whereas previous research into SBNR practices and New Age religion has not addressed the predominantly white makeup of these communities, White Utopias examines the complicated, often contradictory relationships with race at these events, presenting an engrossing ethnography of SBNR practices. Lucia contends that participants create temporary utopias through their shared commitments to spiritual growth and human connection. But they also participate in religious exoticism by adopting Indigenous and Indic spiritualities, a practice that ultimately renders them exclusive, white utopias. Focusing on yoga's role in disseminating SBNR values, Lucia offers new ways of comprehending transformational festivals as significant cultural phenomena.
Download or read book My Spirit Is Not Religious written by Tina Sacchi and published by Morgan James Publishing. This book was released on 2013-05-01 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My Spirit Is Not Religious is divided into four parts: Part I: A Different Way to Feel God Part I explores the history of religious beliefs and stories and the ways they continue to be passed down through the generations, regardless of whether or not they make sense or have practical application for modern believers. Discussions include the issues, challenges, and negative impacts of such hand-me-down beliefs we have in today's world. Part II: To Come Out or Stay Inside the Spiritual Closet Part II Introduces the meaning of spiritual closet and explores the process of spiritual self-discovery. Readers are introduced to the concept of coming out of their closets and provided with guidelines and exercises to facilitate such a transformation. Part III: Tools for Moving Forward on Your Spiritual Journey and Eliminating Religious Guilt Part III offers practical guidance to help readers deal with the virtually inevitable guilt that accompanies leaving one's ancestral, familial, or cultural religious traditions. Readers will be comforted that they are not alone and will receive practical tools they can implement to better adjust to their newly adopted spiritual paths. Part IV: Staying on Spiritual Task...Spiritual Maintenance for a Spiritual Lifestyle Part IV deals with the challenges of growing and flourishing in one's newly chosen spiritual life. Discussions include advice for reaching out to spiritual guides, being patient with oneself, acknowledging the impermanence of this life, and living one's purpose.
Download or read book Faith Versus Fact written by Jerry A. Coyne and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-05-17 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A superbly argued book.” —Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion The New York Times bestselling author of Why Evolution is True explains why any attempt to make religion compatible with science is doomed to fail In this provocative book, evolutionary biologist Jerry A. Coyne lays out in clear, dispassionate detail why the toolkit of science, based on reason and empirical study, is reliable, while that of religion—including faith, dogma, and revelation—leads to incorrect, untestable, or conflicting conclusions. Coyne is responding to a national climate in which more than half of Americans don’t believe in evolution, members of Congress deny global warming, and long-conquered childhood diseases are reappearing because of religious objections to inoculation, and he warns that religious prejudices in politics, education, medicine, and social policy are on the rise. Extending the bestselling works of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens, he demolishes the claims of religion to provide verifiable “truth” by subjecting those claims to the same tests we use to establish truth in science. Coyne irrefutably demonstrates the grave harm—to individuals and to our planet—in mistaking faith for fact in making the most important decisions about the world we live in. Praise for Faith Versus Fact: “A profound and lovely book . . . showing that the honest doubts of science are better . . . than the false certainties of religion.” —Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith
Download or read book Victims and Sinners written by Linda A. Mercadante and published by Westminster John Knox Press. This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is for pastoral counselors, clergy, laypers-ons, and recovery group members wanting to reass-ess addiction recovery from a theological perspec-tive. It offers a wake-up call to the church to estab-lish recovery groups.
Download or read book Resurrecting Religion written by Greg Paul and published by NavPress. This book was released on 2018-02-02 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There’s lots of bad religion out there. But the answer isn’t no religion, it’s true religion: living out—publicly and communally—what we say we believe privately and individually. True religion puts flesh on the bones of faith. Resurrecting Religion offers an inspiring, stretching vision for finding our way back to the good news of our faith. At a time when most people practice their faith in the extremes—either extremely publicly, with a legalistic, combative tone that creates division, or extremely privately, to the point that our faith becomes functionally irrelevant—award-winning author Greg Paul offers a vision for religion that is good for us and good for the world.
Download or read book Perspectives on Coping and Resilience written by Venkat Rao Pulla and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perspectives on Coping and Resilience examines the interplay of individual, family, community and social factors of the human ability to 'bounce back' - a vital competency for success. The unique collection of trans-disciplinary writings on human coping and resilience is the collaboration of distinguished practitioners and academics in the diverse fields of psychology, management science, art, social work and spirituality. Perspectives on coping and Resilience is a pioneer effort of three practitioners academics: Venkat Pull from Charles Sturt University, Australia, Andrew Shatté from the College of Medicine at the University of Arizona, USA and Shane Warren from the International Resilience Institute Sydney, Australia / Hong Kong / Singapore.
Download or read book Dispirited written by David Webster and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2012-06-29 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dave Webster’s book is a counter-blast against the culturally accepted norm that spirituality is a vital and important factor in human life. Rejecting the idea of human wellbeing as predicated on the spiritual, the book seeks to identify the toxic impact of spiritual discourses on our lives. Spirituality makes us confused, apolitical and miserable - whether that spirituality is from conventional religious roots, from a new-age buffet of beliefs, or from some re-imagined ancient system of belief. Looking beyond this dismissal, the book looks towards atheistic existentialism, Theravada Buddhism and political engagement as a means to imagine what a post-spiritual world view could look like. ,
