Download or read book Seculosity written by David Zahl and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the heart of our current moment lies a universal yearning, writes David Zahl, not to be happy or respected so much as enough--what religions call "righteous." To fill the void left by religion, we look to all sorts of everyday activities--from eating and parenting to dating and voting--for the identity, purpose, and meaning once provided on Sunday morning. In our striving, we are chasing a sense of enoughness. But it remains ever out of reach, and the effort and anxiety are burning us out. Seculosity takes a thoughtful yet entertaining tour of American "performancism" and its cousins, highlighting both their ingenuity and mercilessness, all while challenging the conventional narrative of religious decline. Zahl unmasks the competing pieties around which so much of our lives revolve, and he does so in a way that's at points playful, personal, and incisive. Ultimately he brings us to a fresh appreciation for the grace of God in all its countercultural wonder.

Download or read book Zealot written by Reza Aslan and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-07-16 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A lucid, intelligent page-turner” (Los Angeles Times) that challenges long-held assumptions about Jesus, from the host of Believer Two thousand years ago, an itinerant Jewish preacher walked across the Galilee, gathering followers to establish what he called the “Kingdom of God.” The revolutionary movement he launched was so threatening to the established order that he was executed as a state criminal. Within decades after his death, his followers would call him God. Sifting through centuries of mythmaking, Reza Aslan sheds new light on one of history’s most enigmatic figures by examining Jesus through the lens of the tumultuous era in which he lived. Balancing the Jesus of the Gospels against the historical sources, Aslan describes a man full of conviction and passion, yet rife with contradiction. He explores the reasons the early Christian church preferred to promulgate an image of Jesus as a peaceful spiritual teacher rather than a politically conscious revolutionary. And he grapples with the riddle of how Jesus understood himself, the mystery that is at the heart of all subsequent claims about his divinity. Zealot yields a fresh perspective on one of the greatest stories ever told even as it affirms the radical and transformative nature of Jesus’ life and mission. Praise for Zealot “Riveting . . . Aslan synthesizes Scripture and scholarship to create an original account.”—The New Yorker “Fascinatingly and convincingly drawn . . . Aslan may come as close as one can to respecting those who revere Jesus as the peace-loving, turn-the-other-cheek, true son of God depicted in modern Christianity, even as he knocks down that image.”—The Seattle Times “[Aslan’s] literary talent is as essential to the effect of Zealot as are his scholarly and journalistic chops. . . . A vivid, persuasive portrait.”—Salon “This tough-minded, deeply political book does full justice to the real Jesus, and honors him in the process.”—San Francisco Chronicle “A special and revealing work, one that believer and skeptic alike will find surprising, engaging, and original.”—Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power “Compulsively readable . . . This superb work is highly recommended.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Download or read book God written by Reza Aslan and published by Random House. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of Zealot explores humanity’s quest to make sense of the divine in this concise and fascinating history of our understanding of God. In Zealot, Reza Aslan replaced the staid, well-worn portrayal of Jesus of Nazareth with a startling new image of the man in all his contradictions. In his new book, Aslan takes on a subject even more immense: God, writ large. In layered prose and with thoughtful, accessible scholarship, Aslan narrates the history of religion as a remarkably cohesive attempt to understand the divine by giving it human traits and emotions. According to Aslan, this innate desire to humanize God is hardwired in our brains, making it a central feature of nearly every religious tradition. As Aslan writes, “Whether we are aware of it or not, and regardless of whether we’re believers or not, what the vast majority of us think about when we think about God is a divine version of ourselves.” But this projection is not without consequences. We bestow upon God not just all that is good in human nature—our compassion, our thirst for justice—but all that is bad in it: our greed, our bigotry, our penchant for violence. All these qualities inform our religions, cultures, and governments. More than just a history of our understanding of God, this book is an attempt to get to the root of this humanizing impulse in order to develop a more universal spirituality. Whether you believe in one God, many gods, or no god at all, God: A Human History will challenge the way you think about the divine and its role in our everyday lives. Praise for God “Timely, riveting, enlightening and necessary.”—HuffPost “Tantalizing . . . Driven by [Reza] Aslan’s grace and curiosity, God . . . helps us pan out from our troubled times, while asking us to consider a more expansive view of the divine in contemporary life.”—The Seattle Times “A fascinating exploration of the interaction of our humanity and God.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “[Aslan’s] slim, yet ambitious book [is] the story of how humans have created God with a capital G, and it’s thoroughly mind-blowing.”—Los Angeles Review of Books “Aslan is a born storyteller, and there is much to enjoy in this intelligent survey.”—San Francisco Chronicle

Download or read book Faith written by Richard Steckel and published by Kids Can Press Ltd. This book was released on 2012-03 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating overview of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism that emphasizes shared values and tolerance. Illustrations.

Download or read book Our Faith and the Facts written by and published by . This book was released on 1927 with total page 830 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Our Faith and the Facts Religion s Story written by C. F. Donovan and published by . This book was released on 2022-10-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book God Grades and Graduation written by Ilana M. Horwitz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "It's widely acknowledged that American parents from different class backgrounds take different approaches to raising their children. Upper and middle-class parents invest considerable time facilitating their children's activities, while working class and poor families take a more hands-off approach. These different strategies influence how children approach school. But missing from the discussion is the fact that millions of parents on both sides of the class divide are raising their children to listen to God. What impact does a religious upbringing have on their academic trajectories? Drawing on 10 years of survey data with over 3,000 teenagers and over 200 interviews, God, Grades, and Graduation (GGG) offers a revealing and at times surprising account of how teenagers' religious upbringing influences their educational pathways from high school to college. GGG introduces readers to a childrearing logic that cuts across social class groups and accounts for Americans' deep relationship with God: religious restraint. This book takes us inside the lives of these teenagers to discover why they achieve higher grades than their peers, why they are more likely to graduate from college, and why boys from lower middle-class families particularly benefit from religious restraint. But readers also learn how for middle-upper class kids--and for girls especially--religious restraint recalibrates their academic ambitions after graduation, leading them to question the value of attending a selective college despite their stellar grades in high school. By illuminating the far-reaching effects of the childrearing logic of religious restraint, GGG offers a compelling new narrative about the role of religion in academic outcomes and educational inequality"--

Download or read book Families and Faith written by Vern L. Bengtson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-04 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Distinguished Book Award from American Sociology Association Sociology of Religion Section Winner of the Richard Kalish Best Publication Award from the Gerontological Society of America Few things are more likely to cause heartache to devout parents than seeing their child leave the faith. And it seems, from media portrayals, that this is happening more and more frequently. But is religious change between generations common? How does religion get passed down from one generation to the next? How do some families succeed in passing on their faith while others do not? Families and Faith: How Religion is Passed Down across Generations seeks to answer these questions and many more. For almost four decades, Vern Bengtson and his colleagues have been conducting the largest-ever study of religion and family across generations. Through war and social upheaval, depression and technological revolution, they have followed more than 350 families composed of more than 3,500 individuals whose lives span more than a century--the oldest was born in 1881, the youngest in 1988--to find out how religion is, or is not, passed down from one generation to the next. What they found may come as a surprise: despite enormous changes in American society, a child is actually more likely to remain within the fold than leave it, and even the nonreligious are more likely to follow their parents' example than to rebel. And while outside forces do play a role, the crucial factor in whether a child keeps the faith is the presence of a strong fatherly bond. Mixing unprecedented data with gripping interviews and sharp analysis, Families and Faith offers a fascinating exploration of what allows a family to pass on its most deeply-held tradition--its faith.

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 Living in the Balance of Grace and Faith written by Andrew Wommack and published by Destiny Image Publishers. This book was released on 2011-06-24 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Popular Bible teacher and host of the Gospel Truth broadcast, Andrew Wommack takes on one of the biggest controversies of the church, the freedom of God's grace verses the faith of the believer. Wommack reveals that God's power is not released from only grace or only faith. God's blessings come through a balance of both grace and...

Download or read book Flannery O Connor written by Angela Ailamo O'Donnell and published by Liturgical Press. This book was released on 2015-05-06 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Flannery O’Connor: Fiction Fired by Faith tells the remarkable story of the gifted young woman who set out from her native Georgia to develop her talents as a writer and eventually succeeded in becoming one of the most accomplished fiction writers of the twentieth century. Struck with a fatal disease just as her career was blooming, O’Connor was forced to return to her rural home and to live an isolated life, far from the literary world she longed to be a part of. In this insightful new biography, Angela Alaimo O’Donnell depicts O’Connor’s passionate devotion to her vocation, despite her crippling illness, the rich interior life she lived through her reading and correspondence, and the development of her deep and abiding faith in the face of her own impending mortality. She also explores some of O’Connor’s most beloved stories, detailing the ways in which her fiction served as a means for her to express her own doubts and limitations, along with the challenges and consolations of living a faithful life. O’Donnell’s biography recounts the poignant story of America’s preeminent Catholic writer and offers the reader a guide to her novels and stories so deeply informed by her Catholic faith. People of God is a series of inspiring biographies for the general reader. Each volume offers a compelling and honest narrative of the life of an important twentieth or twenty-first century Catholic. Some living and some now deceased, each of these women and men has known challenges and weaknesses familiar to most of us but responded to them in ways that call us to our own forms of heroism. Each offers a credible and concrete witness of faith, hope, and love to people of our own day.

Download or read book Man Enough written by Frank Pittman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1994-10-01 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does a boy learn to be a man? A man learns masculinity primarily from his father. But generations of boys who grow up without caring fathers or male mentors to emulate are left to guess what "men" are really like. They rely on cultural icons--larger-than-life images--as models of masculinity. As a result, they grow up mirroring overblown myths of manhood. Obsessed with being "man enough," they become philanderers, controllers, and competitors--constantly overcompensating for their loss of a true role model, yet sorely unprepared for family life. In Man Enough, psychiatrist and family therapist Frank Pittman explores what it is like to grow up male today. With great poignancy, humor, and candor, he weaves together case studies from his practice, examples from literature and films, plus personal vignettes from his own experiences as a father to examine these hyper-masculine men and to illustrate how they developed and how they can change. Dr. Pittman asserts that men can move past proving their masculinity and start practicing it by striving with the other guys rather than against them, achieving equality and intimacy with their mates--and by fathering. A man raises himself as he raises children and learns to understand and forgive his parents as he becomes one. An important book for men and women, Man Enough offers a new approach to issues of commitment, caring and control and creates a positive model for the fathers of tomorrow's men.

Download or read book From Jesus to Christ written by Paula Fredriksen and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Magisterial. . . . A learned, brilliant and enjoyable study."—Géza Vermès, Times Literary Supplement In this exciting book, Paula Fredriksen explains the variety of New Testament images of Jesus by exploring the ways that the new Christian communities interpreted his mission and message in light of the delay of the Kingdom he had preached. This edition includes an introduction reviews the most recent scholarship on Jesus and its implications for both history and theology. "Brilliant and lucidly written, full of original and fascinating insights."—Reginald H. Fuller, Journal of the American Academy of Religion "This is a first-rate work of a first-rate historian."—James D. Tabor, Journal of Religion "Fredriksen confronts her documents—principally the writings of the New Testament—as an archaeologist would an especially rich complex site. With great care she distinguishes the literary images from historical fact. As she does so, she explains the images of Jesus in terms of the strategies and purposes of the writers Paul, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John."—Thomas D’Evelyn, Christian Science Monitor

Download or read book Gospel Centered Discipleship written by Jonathan K. Dodson and published by Crossway. This book was released on 2012-03-31 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reflecting on the practice of disciple making in young adult, college, graduate, and local church contexts, Jonathan Dodson has discerned some common pitfalls. For many, discipleship is reduced to a form of religious performance before God. For others, it devolves into spiritual license and a loose adherence to spiritual facts. Both approaches distort biblical motivations for Christian obedience and are in need of reform. By explaining various motivations for discipleship, Dodson charts a biblically faithful, grace-driven alternative. Additionally, he provides a practical model for creating gospel-centered discipleship groups—small, reproducible, missional, gender-specific groups of believers that fight for faith together. This book blends both theology and practice to inspire and equip Christians to effectively fight sin, keep Jesus central, and make gospel-centered discipleship a way of life. Both new and growing Christians will learn to trust the gospel in community as they fight together for holiness as well as how to start gospel-centered community groups in any local church.

Download or read book The Transformation of American Religion written by Alan Wolfe and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2005-04 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this astounding account, a leading sociologist demonstrates that religion in America has become so tamed and softened that it hardly serves any of its original functions.

Download or read book Prison to Praise written by Merlin Carothers and published by . This book was released on 2010-09-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In PRISON TO PRAISE Merlin Carothers describes how his life was transformed by finding faith in Christ. Using many stories from his own experience as a US army chaplain, he issues a radical challenge to praise God in all circumstances. 'Miracles, power and victory will all be part of what God does in our lives when we learn to rejoice in all things,' he promises.

Download or read book Sharing Your Faith with Friends and Family written by Michael Green and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2005-03 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Practical guidance on how Christians can share their faith with friends and loved ones.