Download or read book Faith Shift written by Kathy Escobar and published by Convergent Books. This book was released on 2014-10-21 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hope for spiritual refugees, church burnouts, and freedom seekers. After years of participating in a comfortable faith tradition, many find themselves in a spiritual wilderness, feeling disillusioned with church, longing for more freedom and less religion in their lives. If that describes you, you’re in good company. Countless men and women are in the middle of a shifting faith—and aren’t sure where to turn. But losing beliefs doesn’t mean you have to lose your faith. Pastor, friend, and spiritual director Kathy Escobar has journeyed with many who have experienced significant shifts in the faith they once considered unchangeable. Through their stories and her own, Kathy has discovered that growth and change are natural parts of life in our relationship with God. Filled with honest stories and practical insights, Faith Shift gives language to what many experience as their faith evolves. With an inviting blend of vulnerability and hope, it addresses the losses that come with spiritual shifts and offers tangible practices for rebuilding a free and authentic faith after it unravels. Includes personal reflection and group discussion questions at the end of each chapter.
Download or read book A Faith of Their Own written by Lisa Pearce and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-07 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adding to the contributions made by Soul Searching and Souls in Transition--two books which revolutionized our understanding of the religious lives of young Americans--Lisa Pearce and Melinda Lundquist Denton here offer a new portrait of teenage faith. Drawing on the massive National Study of Youth and Religion's telephone surveys and in-depth interviews with more than 120 youth at two points in time, the authors chart the spiritual trajectory of American adolescents and young adults over a period of three years. Turning conventional wisdom on its head, the authors find that religion is an important force in the lives of most--though their involvement with religion changes over time, just as teenagers themselves do. Pearce and Denton weave in fascinating portraits of actual youth to give depth to mere numerical rankings of religiosity, which tend to prevail in large studies. One teenager might rarely attend a service, yet count herself profoundly religious; another might be deeply involved in a church's social world, yet claim to be "not, like, deep into the faith." They provide a new set of qualitative categories--Abiders, Assenters, Adapters, Avoiders, and Atheists--quoting from interviews to illuminate the shading between them. And, with their three-year study, they offer a rich understanding of the dynamic nature of faith in young people's lives during a period of rapid change in biology, personality, and social interaction. Not only do degrees of religiosity change, but so does its nature, whether expressed in institutional practices or personal belief. By presenting a new model of religious development and change, illustrated with compelling personal accounts of real teenagers, Pearce and Denton offer parents, scholars, and religious leaders a new guide for understanding religious development in teens.
Download or read book Faith Shift written by Kathy Escobar and published by Convergent Books. This book was released on 2014-10-21 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hope for spiritual refugees, church burnouts, and freedom seekers. After years of participating in a comfortable faith tradition, many find themselves in a spiritual wilderness, feeling disillusioned with church, longing for more freedom and less religion in their lives. If that describes you, you’re in good company. Countless men and women are in the middle of a shifting faith—and aren’t sure where to turn. But losing beliefs doesn’t mean you have to lose your faith. Pastor, friend, and spiritual director Kathy Escobar has journeyed with many who have experienced significant shifts in the faith they once considered unchangeable. Through their stories and her own, Kathy has discovered that growth and change are natural parts of life in our relationship with God. Filled with honest stories and practical insights, Faith Shift gives language to what many experience as their faith evolves. With an inviting blend of vulnerability and hope, it addresses the losses that come with spiritual shifts and offers tangible practices for rebuilding a free and authentic faith after it unravels. Includes personal reflection and group discussion questions at the end of each chapter.
Download or read book Cosmic Shift written by Christopher Paul Carter and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-24 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Shift written by Colby Martin and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2020-04-21 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Christians are kicked out of their conservative churches or leave because they no longer feel at home, they embark on a journey of freedom and fear, love and loneliness, empowerment and pain. The movement from conservative to progressive Christianity is a serious shift. Colby Martin has traversed this treacherous territory, survived its hardships, and is now turning around to share what he's learned. This book is a friendly survival guide to help followers of Jesus navigate the strange and confusing landscape when shifting from conservative to progressive Christianity. This book will prepare progressive Christians (from long-time progressives to those just starting out) for the pitfalls awaiting them as they shift out of their conservative world, and it will equip them for a more abundant, thriving, and peace-filled spiritual life.
Download or read book Faith in the City written by Angela D. Dillard and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2007-04-30 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Spanning more than three decades and organized around the biographies of Reverends Charles A. Hill and Albert B. Cleage Jr., Faith in the City is a major new exploration of how the worlds of politics and faith merged for many of Detroit s African Americans a convergence that provided the community with a powerful new voice and identity. While other religions have mixed politics and creed, Faith in the City shows how this fusion was and continues to be particularly vital to African American clergy and the Black freedom struggle. Activists in cities such as Detroit sustained a record of progressive politics over the course of three decades. Angela Dillard reveals this generational link and describes what the activism of the 1960s owed to that of the 1930s. The labor movement, for example, provided Detroit s Black activists, both inside and outside the unions, with organizational power and experience virtually unmatched by any other African American urban community"--Publisher description.
Download or read book Faith Beyond Belief written by Margaret Placentra Johnston and published by Quest Books. This book was released on 2012-09-25 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Faith Beyond Belief gives a much-needed voice to the “good” people who have left their church but whose spirituality continues to mature. Johnston uses first-person stories as well as known spiritual authorities in describing various stages of religious growth. Some of these real-life accounts are by nonbelievers; others are by those among the growing numbers of the “spiritual but not religious.” All are thoughtful people with too much integrity to live what they consider a lie. The stories of the nonbelievers-including an ex-Catholic, a former Mormon, and a clandestine Muslim apostate who left his community after the attacks of 9/11-show how complete confidence in human reason can lead away from literal religious interpretation. But, while that step is a necessary one on the spiritual path, it is only intermediate. Her second set of stories are of people at the “mystic” level who can tolerate paradox and see truth and reality as multidimensional. Johnston’s book will help doubters to see things in a new light as well as those who are struggling to clarify their own spiritual vision. It also points beyond the atheist/believer controversy wrecking such divisive havoc in our culture today.
Download or read book Blood and Faith written by Damon T. Berry and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-26 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning with Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign, the term “religious right” entered the popular lexicon, coming to signify a politically and socially conservative form of Christianity that informs American conservatism to this day. Less well known are other ideologies that have influenced the far right since well before 1980, including Odinism, Creativity, and racialized atheism. The rising popularity of these extreme groups and their philosophical grounding in racial politics and religious bigotry has caused a shift away from—and often hostility toward—even racist forms of Christianity among American white nationalists. In Blood and Faith, Berry deftly explores the causes of this shift, rooted largely in response to racialized anxieties that are by no means exclusive to extremists in America. Focusing on the challenges these tensions pose for contemporary white nationalists seeking access to mainstream conservative politics, Berry also considers the recent rise of the so-called “alt-right” and the unifying issues of anti-multiculturalism and anti-immigration around which moderate and fringe groups have rallied. Blood and Faith is a provocative investigation of the complex, evolving role of white nationalism and an urgent reminder of the outsized influence of religion in American political life.
Download or read book Shifting Allegiances Networks of Kinship and of Faith written by Isabel Moyra Dale and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2016-07-13 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens when Muslim women gather together at the mosque to read the Qur'an, learn, and pray? How does family loyalty interact with mosque attendance for women? This book explores the growing Muslim women's piety movement through looking at one women's program in a Syrian suburban mosque. Community models shape individual behavior. The place and power of blessing help define the boundaries between orthodox and popular Islam. Modesty and shame, feasts and fasting, purity and prayer, interact to shape daily life possibilities for women involved in the mosque program. At the same time, the growing accessibility of religious teaching for women allows them to take up new places of authority in the Muslim ummah. Women read the Qur'an not just for blessing, but for what it has to say to issues of daily female and family life. And the words of communal dhikr devotion offer a window into the worshippers' consciousness of God and of Muhammad, Prophet of Islam. This detailed examination of a women's mosque program places it within the wider contemporary movement of piety and da'wa (mission) in Islam, offering an insight into the forces that are shaping communities and countries today.
Download or read book Resilient Faith written by Gerald L. Sittser and published by Brazos Press. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In our Western, post-Christendom society, much of Christianity's cultural power, privilege, and influence has eroded. But all is not lost, says bestselling author Gerald Sittser. Although the church is concerned and sobered by this cultural shift, it is also curious and teachable. Sittser shows how the early church offers wisdom for responding creatively to the West's increasing secularization. The early Christian movement was surprisingly influential and successful in the Roman world, and so different from its two main rivals--traditional religion and Judaism--that Rome identified it as a "third way." Early Christians immersed themselves in the empire without significant accommodation to or isolation from the culture. They confessed Jesus as Lord and formed disciples accordingly, which helped the church grow in numbers and influence. Sittser explores how Christians today can learn from this third way and respond faithfully, creatively, and winsomely to a world that sees Christianity as largely obsolete. Each chapter introduces historical figures, ancient texts, practices, and institutions to explain and explore the third way of the Jesus movement, which, surprising everyone, changed the world.
Download or read book Faith After Doubt written by Brian D. McLaren and published by St. Martin's Essentials. This book was released on 2021-01-05 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of A New Kind of Christianity comes a bold proposal: only doubt can save the world and your faith. ONE of the Best Spiritual Books of 2021—Spirituality & Practice "Will help you live fuller and breathe easier..” —Glennon Doyle Sixty-five million adults in the U.S. have dropped out of active church attendance and about 2.7 million more are leaving every year. Faith After Doubt is for the millions of people around the world who feel that their faith is falling apart. Using his own story and the stories of a diverse group of struggling believers, Brian D. McLaren, a former pastor and now an author, speaker, and activist shows how old assumptions are being challenged in nearly every area of human life, not just theology and spirituality. He proposes a four-stage model of faith development in which questions and doubt are not the enemy of faith, but rather a portal to a more mature and fruitful kind of faith. The four stages—Simplicity, Complexity, Perplexity, and Harmony—offer a path forward that can help sincere and thoughtful people leave behind unnecessary baggage and intensify their commitment to what matters most.
Download or read book Changing Faith written by Darren E. Sherkat and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2014-08-22 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than anywhere else in the Western world, religious attachments in America are quite flexible, with over 40 percent of U.S. citizens shifting their religious identification at least once in their lives. In Changing Faith, Darren E. Sherkat draws on empirical data from large-scale national studies to provide a comprehensive portrait of religious change and its consequences in the United States. With analysis spanning across generations and ethnic groups, the volume traces the evolution of the experience of Protestantism and Catholicism in the United States, the dramatic growth of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam, and the rise of non-identification, now the second most common religious affiliation in the country. Drawing on that wealth of data, it details the impact of religious commitments on broad arenas of American social life, including family and sexuality, economic well-being, political commitments, and social values. Exploring religious change among those of European heritage as well as of Eastern and Western European immigrants, African Americans, Asians, Latin Americans, and Native Americans, Changing Faith not only provides a comprehensive and ethnically inclusive demographic overview of the juncture between religion and ethnicity within both the private and public sphere, but also brings empirical analysis back to the sociology of religion.
Download or read book Experiencing the Knowing of Faith written by Sharon Warner and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2000 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is religious faith? And how does modern society view truth? Sharon Warner, in Experiencing the Knowing of Faith, discusses the understanding formed by "deep truth," or knowledge intrinsic to a person's self-identity. She critiques today's susceptibility to the paradigm of Cartesian dualities such as mind-body and subject-object, and in doing so utilizes the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and Michael Polanyi. Concluding with an exploration of the relevance of this theory for teaching faith, the work will be of great use to religious scholars and to philosophers.
Download or read book Faith and Beauty written by Edward Farley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Aesthetics' and 'theological aesthetics' usually imply a focus on questions about the arts and how faith or religion relates to the arts; only the final pages of this work take up that problem. The central theme of this book is that of beauty. Farley employs a new typology of western texts on beauty and a theological analysis of the image of God and redemption to counter the centuries-long tendency to ignore or marginalize beauty and the aesthetic as part of the life of faith. Studying the interpretation of beauty in ancient Greece, eighteenth-century England, the work of Jonathan Edwards, and nineteenth and twentieth-century philosophies of human self-transcendence, the author explores whether Christian existence, the life of faith, and the ethical exclude or require an aesthetic dimension in the sense of beauty. The work will be of particular interest to those interested in Christian theology, ethics, and religion and the arts.
Download or read book Future Faith written by Wesley Granberg-Michaelson and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2018-03-23 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Future Faith: Ten Challenges Reshaping the Practice of Christianity, author Wesley Granberg-Michaelson provides a lucid view of how the top ten winds of change blowing through global Christian faith are reshaping the practice of Christianity today. He is uniquely qualified to identify and interpret connection points between global Christian trends and the American church. Drawing on the stories, examples, and personalities of pastors and congregations from throughout the U.S. as well as those from Africa, Asia, Latin America, who are the faces of Christianity's future, Future Faith is designed to inform and empower followers of Jesus to seek new ways of becoming the face of Christ to a rapidly changing world. Leaders and practitioners in church growth, renewal, and planting will be a primary audience for this book. Students of religion from Catholic, evangelical, Pentecostal, and historic Protestant streams will find this book an informative and stimulating resource for pondering together the future of their faith. Small groups engaged in congregational nurture and growth will find in the author a welcome companion for guiding them through the multi-cultural landscape of contemporary faith.
Download or read book Ecology at the Heart of Faith written by Denis Edwards and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In a world born of the "big bang," Edwards shows that humanity and the world are together being made into the image of God. The heart of faith is an ecological communion that holds together and grows in love toward the fullness of life imaged in the Resurrection of Jesus. Denis Edwards helps the general reader, the preacher, the spiritual director, the student, and the theologian tear down the walls that too often separate mysticism, theology, prophecy, poetry, and science." -- Book jacket.
Download or read book A Disruptive Faith written by Tozer A. W. and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2011-07-13 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The word ''faith'' is common these days, but placing one's faith in God is a weighty action, uncommonly fraught with consequence and, by His design, inconvenience. Faith in God is reassuring and comforting only insofar as believers trust Him - and that depth of trust is the mark of a mature Christian who has allowed faith to intrude on his life and shift his gaze away from his own aims, needs and desires. This is nothing if not a painful and disturbing process. A Disruptive Faith is A. W. Tozer's never-before-published teaching on what he termed ''faith that perturbs'' - faith that contradicts the unbelieving man and threatens the complacency of the Christian. The renowned pastor and teacher insists in these pages that genuine faith breeds dissatisfaction with this life, by God's design; it weans us from this temporary life and prepares us for the life to come. Readers will learn to be content with this faith-inspired discontent and to experience a fresh hope for eternity with God.
