Download or read book Christianity Made Me Talk Like an Idiot written by Seth Andrews and published by Outskirts Press. This book was released on 2022-01-24 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seth Andrews wasn't an idiot during his thirty years as an evangelical Christian. He wasn't unintelligent, nor did his IQ shift when he ultimately left religion entirely. He considered himself thoughtful, moral, reasonable, and at least as smart as the average person. In other words, he wasn't an idiot. Yet strangely, he often sounded like one. In any other context, Christians would likely smirk, scoff, or recoil at many of their "normal" beliefs and practices: reenacted Easter crucifixions, eating monthly communion "flesh," singing hymns about being washed in blood, and the embrace of a Bible containing scripture verses about golden hemorrhoids, apocalypse dragons, and human sacrifice, So what gives? Are these notions embraced only because they're familiar? Do they make any sense? And do they cause otherwise reasonable people to sound like idiots? Seth Andrews admits that, for himself, the answer was a definite yes. For everyone else? Read the book and decide.
Download or read book Confessions of a Former Fox News Christian written by Seth Andrews and published by . This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seth Andrews idolized Rush Limbaugh. He listened to Glenn Beck. He read Ann Coulter. He watched Fox News. He was an evangelical Christian once tethered to right-wing media, which constantly warned of an attack on American values by liberals and secular humanists. Today, Seth is a liberal and secular humanist. This book explores the Fox News culture, which both reflects and informs American conservatism, shaping public opinion on important issues like religion, government, race, foreign policy, war, protest, LGBT rights, and the Constitution. It's an exposé of conservative media's "closed systems" which constantly feed on (and feed into) public outrage, ignorance, bigotry, and fear. It's also the story of one man's personal journey into a larger and better world.
Download or read book Deconverted written by Seth Andrews and published by . This book was released on 2019-08-17 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "...and then Noah loaded the dinosaurs onto the ark." Assertions like these seem comical until you realize that many Christian parents aren't kidding when they teach them to their children as facts. Every day, impressionable young minds are conditioned to blindly accept wild biblical tales of floating zoos, talking shrubbery, 900-year-old humans, the undead, curses, levitation, demon/human hybrids and men who obtain super-human strength from the length of their hair. Allegiance to these teachings is expected, often demanded. Curiosity is muted. Doubt is frowned upon as a sin. And for those who dare to raise a dissenting hand, the threat of Hell looms ominously. A former religious radio host raised in the cradle of Christianity, Seth Andrews battled his own doubts for many years. His attempts to reconcile faith and the facts led him to a conclusion previously unthinkable, and this once-true believer ultimately became the founder of one of the most popular atheist communities on the internet.
Download or read book The Bible Made Impossible written by Christian Smith and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2012-08-01 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biblicism, an approach to the Bible common among some American evangelicals, emphasizes together the Bible's exclusive authority, infallibility, clarity, self-sufficiency, internal consistency, self-evident meaning, and universal applicability. Acclaimed sociologist Christian Smith argues that this approach is misguided and unable to live up to its own claims. If evangelical biblicism worked as its proponents say it should, there would not be the vast variety of interpretive differences that biblicists themselves reach when they actually read and interpret the Bible. Far from challenging the inspiration and authority of Scripture, Smith critiques a particular rendering of it, encouraging evangelicals to seek a more responsible, coherent, and defensible approach to biblical authority. This important book has generated lively discussion and debate. The paperback edition adds a new chapter responding to the conversation that the cloth edition has sparked.
Download or read book God Spare the Girls written by Kelsey McKinney and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-06-22 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Read it for twists on twists, meditations on faith, and a deeply thoughtful treatment of an evangelical community." — Glamour, Beach Reads That Are Like Summer in a Book “A thoughtful and candid meditation on faith, family, and forgiveness . . . fabulous.” —Claire Lombardo, New York Times bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had Recommended by Good Housekeeping, Elle, Parade, Real Simple, Glamour,Refinery29,Bustle, Oprah Daily, The Millions, Shondaland, Yahoo!, Literary Hub, and more! A mesmerizing debut novel set in northern Texas about two sisters who discover an unsettling secret about their father, the head pastor of an evangelical megachurch, that upends their lives and community—a story of family, identity, and the delicate line between faith and deception. Luke Nolan has led the Hope congregation for more than a decade, while his wife and daughters have patiently upheld what it means to live righteously. Made famous by a viral sermon on purity co-written with his eldest daughter, Abigail, Luke is the prototype of a modern preacher: tall, handsome, a spellbinding speaker. But his younger daughter Caroline has begun to notice the cracks in their comfortable life. She is certain that her perfect, pristine sister is about to marry the wrong man—and Caroline has slid into sin with a boy she’s known her entire life, wondering why God would care so much about her virginity anyway. When it comes to light, five weeks before Abigail’s wedding, that Luke has been lying to his family, the entire Nolan clan falls into a tailspin. Caroline seizes the opportunity to be alone with her sister. The two girls flee to the ranch they inherited from their maternal grandmother, far removed from the embarrassing drama of their parents and the prying eyes of the community. But with the date of Abigail’s wedding fast approaching, the sisters will have to make a hard decision about which familial bonds are worth protecting. An intimate coming-of-age story and a modern woman’s read, God Spare the Girls lays bare the rabid love of sisterhood and asks what we owe our communities, our families, and ourselves. “A deeply felt book about love — love for family and community, for people who sustain you and people who disappoint you. And love for God, too, which Kelsey McKinney writes about with humane and incisive frankness.”—Linda Holmes, New York Times bestselling author of Evvie Drake Starts Over “The accomplishment of this canny novel is in positing coming of age itself as a loss of faith—not only in the church, but in our parents, our family, and the world as we thought we understood it.” — Rumaan Alam, New York Times bestselling author of Leave the World Behind and Rich and Pretty
Download or read book The Year of Living Biblically written by A. J. Jacobs and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-09-09 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Documents the author's quest to live one year in literal compliance with biblical rules, from being fruitful and multiplying to growing a beard and avoiding mixed-fiber clothing.
Download or read book The Atheist Who Didn t Exist written by Andy Bannister and published by Monarch Books. This book was released on 2015-07-17 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A breath, a gust, a positive whoosh of fresh air. Made me laugh, made me think, made me cry. " Adrian Plass In the last decade, atheism has leapt from obscurity to the front pages: producing best-selling books, making movies, and plastering adverts on the side of buses. There's an energy and a confidence to contemporary atheism: many people now assume that a godless scepticism is the default position, indeed the only position for anybody wishing to appear educated, contemporary, and urbane. Atheism is hip, religion is boring. Yet when one pokes at popular atheism, many of the arguments used to prop it up quickly unravel. The Atheist Who Didn't Exist is designed to expose some of the loose threads on the cardigan of atheism, tug a little, and see what happens. Blending humour with serious thought, Andy Bannister helps the reader question everything, assume nothing and, above all, recognise lazy scepticism and bad arguments. Be an atheist by all means: but do be a thought-through one.
Download or read book Are You There God It s Me Margaret written by Judy Blume and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001-04 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Margaret Simon has a lot of things to think about--making friends in a new school, boys and dances and parties, growing physically "normal" and choosing a religion. "With sensitivity and humor, Judy Blume has captured the joys, fears, and uncertainties that surround a girl approaching adolescence."--"Publishers Weekly." Great Stone Face Award winner. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
Download or read book Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God written by Andy Bannister and published by Inter-Varsity Press. This book was released on 2021-03-18 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are Islam and Christianity essentially the same? Should we seek to overcome divisions by seeing Muslims and Christians as part of one family of Abrahamic faith? Andy Bannister shares his journey from the multicultural streets of inner-city London to being a Christian with a PhD in Qur'anic Studies. Along the way, he came to understand that far from being the same, Islam and Christianity are profoundly different. Get to the heart of what the world's two largest religions say about life's biggest questions-and discover the uniqueness of Christianity's answer to the question of who God really is.
Download or read book Mere Creation written by William A. Dembski and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 1998-09-28 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book a team of expert academics trained in mathematics, engineering, philosophy, physical anthropology, physics, astrophysics, biology and more investigate the prospects for intelligent design. Edited by William Dembski.
Download or read book Take this Bread written by Sara Miles and published by Canterbury Press. This book was released on 2013-01-26 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of an unexpected and terribly inconvenient Christian conversion, told by a very unlikely convert, Take This Bread tells the story of a restaurant cook and writer who wandered into a church and found herself transformed, setting up a food pantry around the same altar where she first received the body of Christ.
Download or read book I Love Jesus But I Want to Die written by Sarah J. Robinson and published by WaterBrook. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compassionate, shame-free guide for your darkest days “A one-of-a-kind book . . . to read for yourself or give to a struggling friend or loved one without the fear that depression and suicidal thoughts will be minimized, medicalized or over-spiritualized.”—Kay Warren, cofounder of Saddleback Church What happens when loving Jesus doesn’t cure you of depression, anxiety, or suicidal thoughts? You might be crushed by shame over your mental illness, only to be told by well-meaning Christians to “choose joy” and “pray more.” So you beg God to take away the pain, but nothing eases the ache inside. As darkness lingers and color drains from your world, you’re left wondering if God has abandoned you. You just want a way out. But there’s hope. In I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die, Sarah J. Robinson offers a healthy, practical, and shame-free guide for Christians struggling with mental illness. With unflinching honesty, Sarah shares her story of battling depression and fighting to stay alive despite toxic theology that made her afraid to seek help outside the church. Pairing her own story with scriptural insights, mental health research, and simple practices, Sarah helps you reconnect with the God who is present in our deepest anguish and discover that you are worth everything it takes to get better. Beautifully written and full of hard-won wisdom, I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die offers a path toward a rich, hope-filled life in Christ, even when healing doesn’t look like what you expect.
Download or read book Caught in the Pulpit written by Daniel C. Dennett and published by Pitchstone Publishing (US&CA). This book was released on 2015-05-01 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is it like to be a preacher or rabbi who no longer believes in God? In this expanded and updated edition of their groundbreaking study, Daniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola comprehensively and sensitively expose an inconvenient truth that religious institutions face in the new transparency of the information age—the phenomenon of clergy who no longer believe what they publicly preach. In confidential interviews, clergy from across the ministerial spectrum—from liberal to literal—reveal how their lives of religious service and study have led them to a truth inimical to their professed beliefs and profession. Although their personal stories are as varied as the denominations they once represented, or continue to represent—whether Catholic, Baptist, Episcopalian, Methodist, Mormon, Pentecostal, or any of numerous others—they give voice not only to their own struggles but also to those who similarly suffer in tender and lonely silence. As this study poignantly and vividly reveals, their common journey has far-reaching implications not only for their families, their congregations, and their communities—but also for the very future of religion.
Download or read book The Triumph of Christianity written by Bart D. Ehrman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-02-22 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did Christianity become the dominant religion in the West? In the early first century, a small group of peasants from the backwaters of the Roman Empire proclaimed that an executed enemy of the state was God’s messiah. Less than four hundred years later it had become the official religion of Rome with some thirty million followers. It could so easily have been a forgotten sect of Judaism. Through meticulous research, Bart Ehrman, an expert on Christian history, texts and traditions, explores the way we think about one of the most important cultural transformations the world has ever seen, one that has shaped the art, music, literature, philosophy, ethics and economics of modern Western civilisation.
Download or read book Being a Christian Without Being an Idiot written by Brad Stine "God's Comic" and published by Fidelis Books. This book was released on 2020-12-08 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jesus said, “The truth shall set you free,” which, by implication, must mean, “The false will imprison you.” From personal experiences in his ministry through comedy, Brad Stine has chosen eleven concepts to consider as a Christian, like: • All “true” Christians will be offended by the same things and • Sinners are worse people than I am. Are they really true, or do we just believe them to be credible—even though there’s no biblical support for them? More importantly, how does the belief in their veracity affect non-believers if we’re wrong? Brad has carefully considered these ideas, as well as lived many of them. Some of you reading this may disagree with some of his conclusions, but if this book causes you to reevaluate what your faith means to you and in what shape it can come to you, then it has done its job. Christians are different from each other in our theology, denominations, and social interactions, and you know what? That’s AS IT SHOULD BE! Christians who have taken the “If you don’t all behave exactly like me, then you’re not really a Christian” road have done the greatest disservice to furthering the Gospel! “Brad Stine is a treasure! He delivers hard-hitting truth while being insanely funny, as though George Carlin had been filled with the Holy Ghost! We need much more of his voice in our culture.” — Eric Metaxas, #1 New York Times Bestselling author of Bonhoeffer and host of the nationally-syndicated Eric Metaxas Show
Download or read book The 5 Masculine Instincts written by Chase Replogle and published by Moody Publishers. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Don’t trust your instincts—there is a better path to becoming a better man. It’s no secret: today’s men face a dilemma. Our culture tells them that their instincts are either toxic or salvific. Men are left with only two options: deconstruct and forfeit masculine identity or embrace it with wild abandon. They’re left to decide between ignoring their instincts or indulging them. Neither approach helps them actually understand their own masculine experiences nor how those experiences can lead them to become better men of God. The Bible doesn’t shy away from the reality of masculine instincts nor all of the ways those instincts can lead to destruction. Examining the lives of five men of the Bible, The 5 Masculine Instincts shows that these men aren’t masculine role models or heroes but are men who wrestled with their own desires and, by faith, matured them into something better. Through this book you’ll discover your own instincts are neither curse nor virtue. They are the experiences by which you develop a new and better instinct—an instinct of faith. By exploring sarcasm, adventure, ambition, reputation, and apathy, The 5 Masculine Instincts shows you how to better understand yourself and how your own instincts can be matured into something better. This is the path by which we become better men.
Download or read book That All Shall Be Saved written by David Bentley Hart and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stunning reexamination of one of the essential tenets of Christian belief from one of the most provocative and admired writers on religion today “A scathing, vigorous, eloquent attack on those who hold that that there is such a thing as eternal damnation.”—Karen Kilby, Commonweal The great fourth-century church father Basil of Caesarea once observed that, in his time, most Christians believed that hell was not everlasting, and that all would eventually attain salvation. But today, this view is no longer prevalent within Christian communities. In this momentous book, David Bentley Hart makes the case that nearly two millennia of dogmatic tradition have misled readers on the crucial matter of universal salvation. On the basis of the earliest Christian writings, theological tradition, scripture, and logic, Hart argues that if God is the good creator of all, he is the savior of all, without fail. And if he is not the savior of all, the Kingdom is only a dream, and creation something considerably worse than a nightmare. But it is not so. There is no such thing as eternal damnation; all will be saved. With great rhetorical power, wit, and emotional range, Hart offers a new perspective on one of Christianity’s most important themes.
