Download or read book Strange Rites written by Tara Isabella Burton and published by Public Affairs. This book was released on 2022-01-18 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sparklingly strange odyssey through the kaleidoscope of America's new spirituality: the cults, practices, high priests and prophets of our supposedly post-religion age. Fifty-five years have passed since the cover of Time magazine proclaimed the death of God and while participation in mainstream religion has indeed plummeted, Americans have never been more spiritually busy. While rejecting traditional worship in unprecedented numbers, today's Americans are embracing a kaleidoscopic panoply of spiritual traditions, rituals, and subcultures -- from astrology and witchcraft to SoulCycle and the alt-right.As the Internet makes it ever-easier to find new "tribes," and consumer capitalism forever threatens to turn spirituality into a lifestyle brand, remarkably modern American religious culture is undergoing a revival comparable with the Great Awakenings of centuries past. Faith is experiencing not a decline but a Renaissance. Disillusioned with organized religion and political establishments alike, more and more Americans are seeking out spiritual paths driven by intuition, not institutions. In Strange Rites, religious scholar and commentator Tara Isabella Burton visits with the techno-utopians of Silicon Valley; Satanists and polyamorous communities, witches from Bushwick, wellness junkies and social justice activists and devotees of Jordan Peterson, proving Americans are not abandoning religion but remixing it. In search of the deep and the real, they are finding meaning, purpose, ritual, and communities in ever-newer, ever-stranger ways.
Download or read book On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art written by James Elkins and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-12-15 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can contemporary art say anything about spirituality? John Updike calls modern art "a religion assembled from the fragments of our daily life," but does that mean that contemporary art is spiritual? What might it mean to say that the art you make expresses your spiritual belief? On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art explores the curious disconnection between spirituality and current art. This book will enable you to walk into a museum and talk about the spirituality that is or is not visible in the art you see.
Download or read book Strange Religion written by Nijay K. Gupta and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2024-02-27 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A fresh and rigorously researched take on Christianity's founding."--Publishers Weekly The first Christians were weird. Just how weird is often lost on today's believers. Within Roman society, the earliest Christians stood out for the oddness of their beliefs and practices. They believed unusual things, worshiped God in strange ways, and lived a unique lifestyle. They practiced a whole new way of thinking about and doing religion that would have been seen as bizarre and dangerous when compared to Roman religion and most other religions of the ancient world. Award-winning author, blogger, speaker, and New Testament teacher Nijay Gupta traces the emerging Christian faith in its Roman context in this accessible and engaging book. Christianity would have been seen as radical in the Roman world, but some found this new religion attractive and compelling. The first Christians dared to be different, pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable, transformed how people thought about religion, and started a movement that grew like wildfire. Brought to life with numerous images, this book shows how the example of the earliest Christians can offer today's believers encouragement and hope.
Download or read book Roadside Religion written by Timothy Beal and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2006-05-01 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the summer of 2002, Timothy K. Beal loaded his family into a twenty-nine-foot-long motor home and hit the rural highways of America in search of roadside religious attractions-sites like the World's Largest Ten Commandments and Precious Moments Chapel. Roadside Religion tells of his attempts to understand the meaning of these places as expressions of religious imagination and experience, and to encounter faith in all its awesome absurdity.
Download or read book A Strange Freedom written by Howard Thurman and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2014-11-18 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A spiritual advisor to Martin Luther King, Jr.; the first black dean at a white university; cofounder of the first interracially pastored, intercultural church in the United States, Howard Thurman offered a transcendent vision of our world. This lyrical collection of select published and unpublished works traces his struggle with the particular manifestations of violence and hatred that mark the twentieth century. His words remind us all that out of religious faith emerges social responsibility and the power to transform lives.
Download or read book God s Strange Work written by David L. Rowe and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2008-08-20 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Miller was the founder of the modern American millennial tradition. Using various dates found in scripture, he sought to calculate the chronology of Christ's return to earth. Although his prediction that Christ would visibly return in 1843 failed spectacularly, followers reinterpreted his message and laid the basis for the modern Seventh-day Adventist Church. In this book, David L. Rowe utilizes the vast collection of Miller primary materials to reconstruct Miller's life. He relies on information found in correspondence. Rowe gives special attention to the Miller family connections and to Miller's personal identity struggles, documenting a deep tension between proclivities for both obedience and rebellion.
Download or read book Strangers in a Strange Land written by Charles J. Chaput and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2017-02-21 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The archbishop of Philadelphia presents a hopeful treatise for Catholics on how to live the faith with confidence in today's post-Christian culture while evaluating the reasons behind declining Catholic numbers.
Download or read book Discipleship in Community written by Mark E. Powell and published by ACU Press. This book was released on 2020-06-16 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jesus said, “Go and make disciples.” So, what exactly are we doing? Western churches face a difficult future marked by numerical decline and evident signs of shrinking cultural influence. But Discipleship in Community wisely asks the church to go back to basics. What does it mean to follow Jesus? What does a life of discipleship look like? Trusted scholars Mark Powell, John Mark Hicks, and Greg McKinzie invite you to consider how good theology can lead to better, more intentional discipleship. In Discipleship in Community you will learn • how the language of Trinity matters to everyday disciples; • how God’s plan and mission is unfolding and how, as disciples, we can participate in that mission; • how the Bible is more than a book of facts and how it guides us into a relationship with God; • how baptism and the Lord’s Supper allow us to experience God’s saving power; and • how local churches can encourage intentional discipleship.
Download or read book Strange Gods written by Susan Jacoby and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2017-03-21 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a groundbreaking historical work that focuses on the long, tense convergence of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam with an uncompromising secular perspective, Susan Jacoby illuminates the social and economic forces that have shaped individual faith and the voluntary conversion impulse that has changed the course of Western history—for better and for worse. Covering the triumph of Christianity over paganism in late antiquity, the Spanish Inquisition, John Calvin’s dour theocracy, American plantations where African slaves had to accept their masters’ religion—along with individual converts including Augustine of Hippo, John Donne, Edith Stein, Muhammad Ali, George W. Bush and Mike Pence—Strange Gods makes a powerful case that nothing has been more important in struggle for reason than the right to believe in the God of one’s choice or to reject belief in God altogether.
Download or read book The Strange World of Human Sacrifice written by Jan N. Bremmer and published by Peeters Publishers. This book was released on 2007 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Strange World of Human Sacrifice is the first modern collection of studies on one of the most gruesome and intriguing aspects of religion. The volume starts with a brief introduction, which is followed by studies of Aztec human sacrifice and the literary motif of human sacrifice in medieval Irish literature. Turning to ancient Greece, three cases of human sacrifice are analysed: a ritual example, a mythical case, and one in which myth and ritual are interrelated. The early Christians were the victims of accusations of human sacrifice, but in turn imputed the crime to heterodox Christians, just as the Jews imputed the crime to their neighbours. The ancient Egyptians rarely seem to have practised human sacrifice, but buried the pharaoh's servants with him in order to serve him in the afterlife, albeit only for a brief period at the very beginning of pharaonic civilization. In ancient India we can follow the traditions of human sacrifice from the earliest texts up to modern times, where especially in eastern India goddesses, such as Kali, were long worshipped with human victims. In Japanese tales human sacrifice often takes the form of self-sacrifice, and there may well be a line from these early sacrifices to modern kamikaze. The last study throws a surprising light on human sacrifice in China. The volume is concluded with a detailed index
Download or read book Their Rock Is Not Like Our Rock written by Daniel Strange and published by Zondervan Academic. This book was released on 2015-02-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the West becomes more religiously diverse, Christians are aware of questions raised by proclaiming Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life. Can objections to Christian exclusivity be answered, and how should Christians understand other religions and their followers? Their Rock is Not Like Our Rock presents a theology of other religions.
Download or read book Making Faith Magnetic written by Daniel Strange and published by The Good Book Company. This book was released on 2021-10-01 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How to talk about Jesus in a way that connects with modern culture. As followers of Jesus, we know that the good news is deeply attractive. But we often fear that to those on the outside, it comes across as irrelevant or even repellent. Sometimes the Christian worldview feels so out of step with everything else going on that we don't know how to share our faith. However, author Daniel Strange wants to show you that the connections are there—in fact, the longings that our culture cannot help but express are the very ones that Jesus fulfils. Building on the work of theologian J.H. Bavinck, Dan reveals five recurring themes that our culture can’t stop talking about, or, as he puts it, the "five permanent ‘itches’ that in our work, rest, and play, we have to vigorously scratch." From TV to books to social media, these are the questions we can't stop asking and the tensions we can't stop wrestling with—and Jesus speaks powerfully into each one. This book will help you to spot these connections in our culture, excite you about how Jesus makes sense of humankind’s deepest questions and longings, apply them to your own life first and then equip you to speak of him to others in a way that is truly magnetic. "Dan Strange has written another terrific, down-to-earth book to help believers engage in fruitful conversations with friends about faith." Dr. Timothy Keller, who has also written the foreword to this book.
Download or read book Plugged In written by Dan Strange and published by Live Different. This book was released on 2019-05 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enjoy culture in a way that feeds your faith and helps you share it with others
Download or read book The Importance of Religion written by Gavin Flood and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-12-27 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Importance of Religion reveals the significance of religion in modern times, showing how it provides people with meaning to their lives and helps guide them in their everyday moral choices Provides readers with a new understanding of religion, demonstrating how in its actions, texts and world views religion is enduring and vividly engages with the mystery of the world Offers striking arguments about the relationship of religion to science, art and politics Engagingly written by a highly respected scholar of religion with an international reputation
Download or read book Crazy Faith written by Michael Todd and published by WaterBrook. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Relationship Goals . . . Will you be remembered as a person who claimed to follow God but liked to play it safe? Or as a person who lived your life out on the limb and trusted God enough to live in crazy faith? Noah looked crazy when he started building the ark . . . until it started raining. It was crazy for Moses to lead a nation of people into the desert away from Egypt . . . until the Red Sea parted. It was crazy to believe that a fourteen-year-old virgin would give birth to the Son of God . . . until Mary held Jesus in her arms. There are many things that seem normal or average today that at one point in time seemed absolutely crazy. Smartphones, Wi-Fi, and even the electric light bulb were all groundbreaking, history-making inventions that started out as crazy ideas. Our see-it-to-believe-it generation tends to have a hard time exercising true faith—one that steps out, takes action, and sees mountain-moving results. Many of us would rather play it safe and stand on the sidelines, but it’s crazy faith that helps us see God move and reveals His promises. In Crazy Faith, Pastor Michael Todd shows us how to step out in faith and dive into the purposeful life of trusting God for the impossible. Even if you have to start with baby faith or maybe faith, you can become empowered to let go of your lazy faith, trust God through your hazy faith, and learn to live a lifestyle of crazy faith. With powerful stories of modern-day faith warriors who take their cues from biblical heroes, Michael Todd equips you to • believe for the impossible • choose hope over fear • be alert to the voice of God • cope with loss and doubt • develop a deeper level of trust in God • speak faith-filled declarations • inspire crazy faith in others God’s not looking for somebody to give Him all the reasons why His plans can’t happen. He’s looking for somebody to believe they will happen. In fact, He has so much He wants to do through you. The question is, Are you crazy enough to believe it?
Download or read book The Book of Strange New Things written by Michel Faber and published by Hogarth. This book was released on 2014-10-28 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A monumental, genre-defying novel that David Mitchell calls "Michel Faber’s second masterpiece," The Book of Strange New Things is a masterwork from a writer in full command of his many talents. It begins with Peter, a devoted man of faith, as he is called to the mission of a lifetime, one that takes him galaxies away from his wife, Bea. Peter becomes immersed in the mysteries of an astonishing new environment, overseen by an enigmatic corporation known only as USIC. His work introduces him to a seemingly friendly native population struggling with a dangerous illness and hungry for Peter’s teachings—his Bible is their “book of strange new things.” But Peter is rattled when Bea’s letters from home become increasingly desperate: typhoons and earthquakes are devastating whole countries, and governments are crumbling. Bea’s faith, once the guiding light of their lives, begins to falter. Suddenly, a separation measured by an otherworldly distance, and defined both by one newly discovered world and another in a state of collapse, is threatened by an ever-widening gulf that is much less quantifiable. While Peter is reconciling the needs of his congregation with the desires of his strange employer, Bea is struggling for survival. Their trials lay bare a profound meditation on faith, love tested beyond endurance, and our responsibility to those closest to us. Marked by the same bravura storytelling and precise language that made The Crimson Petal and the White such an international success, The Book of Strange New Things is extraordinary, mesmerizing, and replete with emotional complexity and genuine pathos.
Download or read book Strange Jeremiahs written by Carole Lynn Stewart and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stewart studies the writings of three American authors who all helped define civil religion through their expressions of the tradition of the jeremiad, or prophetic judgment of a people for backsliding from their destiny.
