* Collects the work of a prominent writer and serving bishop on the history of Christian theology and spirituality. * Brings together Rowan Williams' theological essays with studies of wider issues from a theological point of view. * Includes an introduction to his work by Bishop Williams.

    Because of the cultural distance between the biblical world and our contemporary setting, we often bring modern Western biases to the text. For example:When Western readers hear Paul exhorting women to "dress modestly," we automatically think in terms of sexual modesty. But most women in that culture would never wear racy clothing. The context suggests that Paul is likely more concerned about economic modesty--that Christian women not flaunt their wealth through expensive clothes, braided hair and gold jewelry.Some readers might assume that Moses married "below himself" because his wife was a dark-skinned Cushite. Actually, Hebrews were the slave race, not the Cushites, who were highly respected. Aaron and Miriam probably thought Moses was being presumptuous by marrying "above himselfWestern individualism leads us to assume that Mary and Joseph traveled alone to Bethlehem. What went without saying was that they were likely accompanied by a large entourage of extended family.Biblical scholars Brandon O'Brien and Randy Richards shed light on the ways that Western readers often misunderstand the cultural dynamics of the Bible. They identify nine key areas where modern Westerners have significantly different assumptions about what might be going on in a text. Drawing on their own crosscultural experience in global mission, O'Brien and Richards show how better self-awareness and understanding of cultural differences in language, time and social mores allow us to see the Bible in fresh and unexpected ways. Getting beyond our own cultural assumptions is increasingly important for being Christians in our interconnected and globalized world. Learn to read Scripture as a member of the global body of Christ.

    Josh McDowell's timeless examination of the true nature of Christ and his impact on our lives is one of the best-selling Christian books ever. Written by a former skeptic of Christianity, it is a hard-hitting book for those who doubt Jesus' deity and his purpose.

    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   “Breathtaking in its scope and controversial in its claims, God: A Human History shows how humans from time immemorial have made God in their own image, and argues that they should now stop. Writing with all the verve and brilliance we have come to expect from his pen, Reza Aslan has once more produced a book that will prompt reflection and shatter assumptions.”—Bart D. Ehrman, author of How Jesus Became God   “Reza Aslan offers so much to relish in his excellent ‘human history’ of God. In tracing the commonalities that unite religions, Aslan makes truly challenging arguments that believers in many traditions will want to mull over, and to explore further. This rewarding book is very ambitious in its scope, and it is thoroughly grounded in an impressive body of reading and research.”—Philip Jenkins, author of Crucible of Faith

    Edited by Hannah Arendt; Index. Translated by Ralph Manheim.

    Plainspoken and deeply inspirational, it gathers together five compelling essays that urge us to center our lives on God's presence, to find quiet and stillness within modern life, and to discover the deeply satisfying and lasting peace of the inner spiritual journey. As relevant today as it was a half-century ago, A Testament of Devotion is the ideal companion to that highest of all human arts-the lifelong conversation between God and his creatures.I have in mind something deeper than the simplification of our external programs, our absurdly crowded calendars of appointments through which so many pantingly and frantically gasp. These do become simplified in holy obedience, and the poise and peace we have been missing can really be found. But there is a deeper, an internal simplification of the whole of one's personality, stilled, tranquil, in childlike trust listening ever to Eternity's whisper, walking with a smile into the dark."

    So with pen in hand, she embarked on a journey that forever changed her—and many others around the world. In these powerful pages are the words and Scriptures Jesus lovingly laid on her heart. Words of reassurance, comfort, and hope.  Words that have made her increasingly aware of His presence and allowed her to enjoy His peace. Jesus is calling out to you in the same way. Maybe you share the author’s need for a great sense of “God with you”. Or perhaps Jesus seems distant without you knowing why. Or maybe you have wandered farther from Him that you ever imagined you would. Here is a year’s worth of daily readings from Young’s journals to bring you closer to Christ and move your time with Him from monologue to a dialogue. Each day is written as if Jesus Himself were speaking to you. Because He is. Do you hear Him calling?

    The evidence has long seemed incontrovertible: Life was merely a product of blind chance--a cosmic roll of an infinite number of dice across an eternity of time. Slowly, methodically, scientists supplied answers to mysteries insufficiently explained by theologians. Reason pushed faith off into the shadows of mythology and superstition, while atheism became a badge of wisdom. Our culture, freed from moral obligation, explored the frontiers of secularism. God was dead."Glynn's arguments for the existence of God put the burden of disproof on those intellectuals who think that the question has long since been settled." -- Andrew M. GreeleyBut now, in the twilight of the twentieth century, a startling transformation is taking place in Western scientific and intellectual thought. At its heart is the dawning realization that the universe, far from being a sea of chaos, appears instead to be an intricately tuned mechanism whose every molecule, whose every physical law, seems to have been design from the very first nanosecond of the big bang toward a single end--the creation of life. This intellectually and spiritually riveting book asks a provocative question: Is science, the long-time nemesis of the Deity, uncovering the face of God?Patrick Glynn lays out the astonishing new evidence that caused him to turn away from the atheism he acquired as a student at Harvard and Cambridge. The facts are fascinating: Physicists are discovering an unexplainable order to the cosmos; medical researchers are reporting the extraordinary healing powers of prayer and are documenting credible accounts of near-death experiences; psychologists, who once considered belief in God to be a sign of neurosis, are finding instead that religious faith is a powerful elixir for mental health; and sociologists are now acknowledging the destructive consequences of a value-free society. God: The Evidence argues that faith today is not grounded in ignorance. It is where reason has been leading us all along.

    Some are true--but many are false. James Bryan Smith believes those thoughts determine not only who we are, but how we live. In fact, Smith declares, the most important thing about a person is what they think about God. The path to spiritual transformation begins here. Turning to the Gospels, Smith invites you to put your ideas to the test to see if they match up with what Jesus himself reveals about God. Once you've discovered the truth in Scripture, Smith leads you through a process of spiritual formation that includes specific activities aimed at making these new narratives real in your body and soul as well as your mind. At the end of each chapter you'll find an opportunity for soul training, engaging in spiritual practices that reinforce the biblical messages on your mind and heart. Because the best way to make a complete and lasting change is to go through the material in community, small group discussion questions also accompany each chapter. Those who are leading apprentice groups will also find additional help and opportunities to interact with other leaders at the Apprentice website, www.apprenticeofjesus.com. This deep, loving and transformative book will help you discover the narratives that Jesus lived by--to know the Lord he knew and the kingdom he proclaimed--and to practice spiritual exercises that will help you grow in the knowledge of our good and beautiful God.

    One of the most important theologians of the twentieth century illuminates the relationship between ourselves and the teachings of Jesus in this classic text on ethics, humanism, and civic duty.What can the call to discipleship, the adherence to the word of Jesus, mean today to the businessman, the soldier, the laborer, or the aristocrat? What did Jesus mean to say to us? What is his will for us today? Drawing on the Sermon on the Mount, Dietrich Bonhoeffer answers these timeless questions by providing a seminal reading of the dichotomy between "cheap grace" and "costly grace." "Cheap grace," Bonhoeffer wrote, "is the grace we bestow on ourselves...grace without discipleship....Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the girl which must be asked for, the door at which a man must know....It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life."The Cost of Discipleship is a compelling statement of the demands of sacrifice and ethical consistency from a man whose life and thought were exemplary articulations of a new type of leadership inspired by the Gospel, and imbued with the spirit of Christian humanism and a creative sense of civic duty.

    When he and his wife lost their adored little girl, his trust in God turned to bitter anger. As he and his wife struggled to save their marriage and his faith, they discovered that home is more than just rooms and a roof. Home is a place where people are sometimes wounded or betrayed. Home is also where God is strong in the broken places. Woodlief takes readers through his house, room by room, showing that home is: • Where we cry out to God as we seek him in the small things • Where the sacred and the mundane meet • The place that makes us better than we could ever be on our own • More than the place where we eat and sleep…it is where we learn grace Woodlief’s heart-touching stories leavened with humor will appeal to a wide audience, especially those trying to reconcile the idea of a loving God in a broken world.

    For good and for evil, religion is the single greatest influence in the world. We accept as self-evident that competing economic systems (capitalist or communist) or clashing political parties (Republican or Democratic) propose very different solutions to our planet's problems. So why do we pretend that the world's religious traditions are different paths to the same God? We blur the sharp distinctions between religions at our own peril, argues religion scholar Stephen Prothero, and it is time to replace naÏve hopes of interreligious unity with deeper knowledge of religious differences. In Religious Literacy, Prothero demonstrated how little Americans know about their own religious traditions and why the world's religions should be taught in public schools. Now, in God Is Not One, Prothero provides readers with this much-needed content about each of the eight great religions. To claim that all religions are the same is to misunderstand that each attempts to solve a different human problem. For example: –Islam: the problem is pride / the solution is submission –Christianity: the problem is sin / the solution is salvation –Confucianism: the problem is chaos / the solution is social order –Buddhism: the problem is suffering / the solution is awakening –Judaism: the problem is exile / the solution is to return to God Prothero reveals each of these traditions on its own terms to create an indispensable guide for anyone who wants to better understand the big questions human beings have asked for millennia—and the disparate paths we are taking to answer them today. A bold polemical response to a generation of misguided scholarship, God Is Not One creates a new context for understanding religion in the twenty-first century and disproves the assumptions most of us make about the way the world's religions work.

    Refuting critics such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the "new atheist" crowd, Spufford, a former atheist and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, argues that Christianity is recognizable, drawing on the deep and deeply ordinary vocabulary of human feeling, satisfying those who believe in it by offering a ruthlessly realistic account of the grown-up dignity of Christian experience.Fans of C. S. Lewis, N. T. Wright, Marilynne Robinson, Mary Karr, Diana Butler Bass, Rob Bell, and James Martin will appreciate Spufford's crisp, lively, and abashedly defiant thesis.Unapologetic is a book for believers who are fed up with being patronized, for non-believers curious about how faith can possibly work in the twenty-first century, and for anyone who feels there is something indefinably wrong, literalistic, anti-imaginative and intolerant about the way the atheist case is now being made.

    Yet, while we hear these pleas, we're already functioning with existing beliefs—even if they are beliefs by default. So how do we choose what to believe—especially in the area of faith? Do we need to choose? In "Choosing Your Faith, " Mark Mittelberg encourages us, as Socrates does, not to lead an unexamined life. He invites us to examine why we believe what we believe. This examination will resonate with Christians and seekers alike.

    She quickly discovered lies she had believed that held her back from actually sharing God’s love. It turns out, believing lies that you’re not enough, your story doesn’t matter, and there’s no way for you to make an impact… that’s how not to save the world. Through faithfully studying God’s Word and fumbling through her own flawed progress, Hosanna uncovered what the Bible says about revealing God’s love in our everyday lives.With honesty and humor, Hosanna will help you:Embrace your unique story to naturally talk about Jesus through your real life and authentic relationships;Discover the three most effective steps to take when fighting for a loved one who is in a tough place;Overcome the lies that hold you back so you can step into your calling and empower people to encounter God.It turns out, you can naturally share God’s love in your everyday life. You can fight for those you love, and a world Jesus loves. There is a way for every person you know to realize how valuable they are to God. You’ve been created for it, equipped for it, and you’re ready for it. Let’s go!