In this volume, popular author Walter Brueggemann writes that the Sabbath is not simply about keeping rules but rather about becoming a whole person and restoring a whole society. Importantly, Brueggemann speaks to a 24/7 society of consumption, a society in which we live to achieve, accomplish, perform, and possess. We want more, own more, use more, eat more, and drink more. Keeping the Sabbath allows us to break this restless cycle and focus on what is truly important: God, other people, all life. Brueggemann offers a transformative vision of the wholeness God intends, giving world-weary Christians a glimpse of a more fulfilling and simpler life through Sabbath observance.

    Luce issues a revolutionary wake-up call to the church and home about the cultural battle for America's teens' hearts, minds, and souls.

    Here is a fitting contribution from a Marxist to the 2000th anniversary of one who was well aware that to practice love in our world is to bring in the sword and fire.

    Drawing on a broad range of disciplines, including history, literature, and philosophy—as well as the author's own experience of life on three continents—Cosmopolitanism is a moral manifesto for a planet we share with more than six billion strangers.

    Today, professing that Jesus Christ is the only way to approach God and receive his salvation may seem to some like a form of intolerance or arrogance. A growing number of Christian intellectuals, pastors, and leaders are favoring a more inclusive view of a person's path to salvation.But what does this mean in practice? Are there biblical or theological means of defending inclusivism or pluralism, or do these views simply pay tribute to modern ethical standards?The fact is that unity among Christians on this fundamental issue has disappeared. Many people of faith choose among three fundamentally different answers to the question, "Is Jesus the only Savior?" Stated succinctly, these answers are:No! (Pluralism)Yes, but... (Inclusivism)Yes, period! (Exclusivism)In Is Jesus the Only Savior?, Ronald Nash explores the divergent views of pluralism and inclusivism in depth, laying out the reasoning, history, and major supporters behind them; and making a resounding case for exclusivism based on firm theological standards.Christians of all walks of life will find their faith in Christ affirmed and strengthened by this vital treatise, written in accessible terms and a readable style.

    But too often he is viewed as an Americanized shepherd boy on a Sunday school felt board or a New Testament saint alongside the Virgin Mary. Not only does this neglect one of the Bible’s most complex stories of sin and redemption; it also bypasses the gritty life lessons inherent in the amazing true story of David.  Mark Rutland shreds the felt-board character, breaks down the sculpted marble statue, and unearths the real David of the Bible. Both noble and wretched, neither a saint nor a monster, at times victorious and other times a failure, David was through it all a man after God’s own heart.

    A populist rebellion against the established churches, it became the dominant religious force in the country.During the nineteenth century white evangelicals split apart dramatically, first North versus South, and then at the end of the century, modernist versus fundamentalist. After World War II, Billy Graham, the revivalist preacher, attracted enormous crowds and tried to gather all Protestants under his big tent, but the civil rights movement and the social revolution of the sixties drove them apart again. By the 1980s Jerry Falwell and other southern televangelists, such as Pat Robertson, had formed the Christian right. Protesting abortion and gay rights, they led the South into the Republican Party, and for thirty-five years they were the sole voice of evangelicals to be heard nationally. Eventually a younger generation of leaders protested the Christian right’s close ties with the Republican Party and proposed a broader agenda of issues, such as climate change, gender equality, and immigration reform.Evangelicals have in many ways defined the nation. They have shaped our culture and our politics. Frances FitzGerald’s narrative of this distinctively American movement is a major work of history, piecing together the centuries-long story for the first time. Evangelicals now constitute twenty-five percent of the American population, but they are no longer monolithic in their politics. They range from Tea Party supporters to social reformers. Still, with the decline of religious faith generally, FitzGerald suggests that evangelical churches must embrace ethnic minorities if they are to survive.

    Lovejoy points out the three principles - plenitude, continuity, and graduation - which were combined in this conception; analyzes their origins in the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and the Neoplatonists; traces the most important of their diverse ramifications in subsequent religious thought, in metaphysics, in ethics and aesthetics, and in astronomical and biological theories; and copiously illustrates the influence of the conception as a whole, and of the ideas out of which it was compounded, upon the imagination and feelings as expressed in literature.

    His teachings and insights inspired much of Rumi’s poetry and are still celebrated today by all Sufi. Translated by two noted students of Sufi, Shams’ timeless teachings are presented here in their traditional order. Through the book, readers discover the teachings that made Rumi dance and gain access into Sufi traditions and the power of mystical love.

    In her most impassioned and personal book to date, Judith Butler responds in this profound appraisal of post-9/11 America to the current US policies to wage perpetual war, and calls for a deeper understanding of how mourning and violence might instead inspire solidarity and a quest for global justice.

    Unlike those organized Islamist activities that seek to seize or transform the state, this is a moral reform movement whose orthodox practices are commonly viewed as inconsequential to Egypt's political landscape. Saba Mahmood's compelling exposition of these practices challenges this assumption by showing how the ethical and the political are indelibly linked within the context of such movements.Not only is this book a sensitive ethnography of a critical but largely ignored dimension of the Islamic revival, it is also an unflinching critique of the secular-liberal principles by which some people hold such movements to account. The book addresses three central questions: How do movements of moral reform help us rethink the normative liberal account of politics? How does the adherence of women to the patriarchal norms at the core of such movements parochialize key assumptions within feminist theory about freedom, agency, authority, and the human subject? How does a consideration of debates about embodied religious rituals among Islamists and their secular critics help us understand the conceptual relationship between bodily form and political imaginaries? Politics of Piety is essential reading for anyone interested in issues at the nexus of ethics and politics, embodiment and gender, and liberalism and postcolonialism.

    Christianity does all this but who has ever looked to see if it is true? This is a fundamental question and no one has yet set out to prove or disprove Christianity. Until now. From inconsistencies, absurdities, errors, contradictions and adult make-believe this books shows how the bible is false and thus that Christianity cannot possibly be true. This book examines claims in the bible against fact, and it asks deep questions of how the bible mandates that we should live. If you have ever wondered how you could know that the earth is older than 6000 years, or that Noah's flood could not possibly happen, or that the biblical creation story and ten commandments have critical flaws then this book is for you. If you are a Christian and you have questions about your faith then this book is for you. It will set your mind at ease that you will not face judgement day and it will help free your mind from the shackles of indoctrination. If you debate with Christian friends then this is your kryptonite for Christians. If you are a woman or from a lifestyle minority then this book is for you too. Especially for you. Voices of reason, logic and compassion are ever more important in today's complex political landscape. Read this book and understand why humanity should call time on Christianity and why we will all be the better for it.

    His beggar-like existence, his intense devotion, his mystical encounters with Jesus, and his simple yet profound parables became the stuff of legends. No one who met him - including the thousands who flocked to hear him during his visits to Europe, the Far East, and the United States - remained unaffected.Known in his lifetime as India's most famous convert to Christianity, Sundar Singh would not approve of that characterization. He loved Jesus and devoted his life to knowing and following him, but he never accepted Christianity's cultural conventions, even as he embraced its stark original teachings.Wisdom of the Sadhu, a collection of anecdotes, sayings, parables, and meditations, brings together the best of Sundar Singh's teachings. Couched as they are in a distinctly Indian idiom, they probe the essence of the Gospels with unusual freshness and offer insights of great depth and value to every serious seeker.

    society—the National Center for Education Statistics recently reported that in the last decade it grew at twelve times the rate of public school enrollments. Yet information about this population is terribly incomplete. In this groundbreaking book, Robert Kunzman uses his unprecedented access to six conservative Christian homeschooling families to explore the subset of this elusive world that most influences public perception and rhetoric about the homeschooling movement, from its day-to-day life to its broader aspirations to transform American culture and politics.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    He traces the distinctive features of American religion while asking provocative questions about the role religion plays in American culture and in each American's concept of his or her relationship to God. Bloom finds that our spiritual beliefs provide an exact portrait of our national character.