Mother Teresa's Secret Fire: The Encounter That Changed Her Life, and How It Can Transform Your Own


Joseph Langford - 2007
    Published at Mother Teresa's personal request to share her message with the world, it contains personal stories, revealing insights and never-before-seen letters from Mother Teresa.

Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate


Terry Eagleton - 2009
    On the one hand, Eagleton demolishes what he calls the “superstitious” view of God held by most atheists and agnostics and offers in its place a revolutionary account of the Christian Gospel. On the other hand, he launches a stinging assault on the betrayal of this revolution by institutional Christianity.There is little joy here, then, either for the anti-God brigade—Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens in particular—nor for many conventional believers. Instead, Eagleton offers his own vibrant account of religion and politics in a book that ranges from the Holy Spirit to the recent history of the Middle East, from Thomas Aquinas to the Twin Towers.

Son of Man: The Mystical Path to Christ


Andrew Harvey - 1998
    . . a powerful expression of faith in the transforming power of Christ's love.--Publishers Weekly (starred review)Son of Man is Andrew Harvey's most basic statement on Christ, and it has already become a treasured work to readers interested in Christian mysticism. For the first time in any of his books, Harvey provides spiritual exercises--centuries-old rites previously available only to a few--that allow the reader direct experience with the mystical Christ. Son of Man also includes an easily accessible section of classic readings and meditations on the nature of Christ, making it the comprehensive experience in the Christ of the new millennium.

Wisdom of the Sadhu: Teachings of Sundar Singh


Kim Comer - 2000
    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.

A Secular Age


Charles Taylor - 2007
    This book takes up the question of what these changes mean—of what, precisely, happens when a society in which it is virtually impossible not to believe in God becomes one in which faith is only one human possibility among others.

Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism


Douglas Rushkoff - 2003
    As the religion stands on the brink of becoming irrelevant to the very people who look to it for answers, Nothing Sacred takes aim at its problems and offers startling and clearheaded solutions based on Judaism’s core values and teachings.Disaffected by their synagogues’ emphasis on self-preservation and obsession with intermarriage, most Jews looking for an intelligent inquiry into the nature of spirituality have turned elsewhere, or nowhere. Meanwhile, faced with the chaos of modern life, returnees run back to Judaism with a blind and desperate faith and are quickly absorbed by outreach organizations that—in return for money—offer compelling evidence that God exists, that the Jews are, indeed, the Lord’s “chosen people,” and that those who adhere to this righteous path will never have to ask themselves another difficult question again.Ironically, the texts and practices making up Judaism were designed to avoid just such a scenario. Jewish tradition stresses transparency, open-ended inquiry, assimilation of the foreign, and a commitment to conscious living. Judaism invites inquiry and change. It is an “open source” tradition—one born out of revolution, committed to evolution, and willing to undergo renaissance at a moment’s notice. But, unfortunately, some of the very institutions created to protect the religion and its people are now suffocating them.If the Jewish tradition is actually one of participation in the greater culture, a willingness to wrestle with sacred beliefs, and a refusal to submit blindly to icons that just don’t make sense to us, then the “lapsed” Jews may truly be our most promising members. Why won’t they engage with the synagogue, and how can they be made to feel more welcome?Nothing Sacred is a bold and brilliant book, attempting to do nothing less than tear down our often false preconceptions about Judaism and build in their place a religion made relevant for the future.From the Hardcover edition.

Welcome to the Wisdom of the World and Its Meaning for You: Universal Spiritual Insights Distilled from Five Religious Traditions


Joan D. Chittister - 2007
    Why was I born? What??'s important in life? How do I know the right thing to do? What does it mean to "make a difference"? What??'s wrong with me ? why can???t I change? Such questions are so deeply human that they transcend time and place, religions and cultures.In this inviting book Joan Chittister presents the insights of others from different cultures throughout history who have grappled with the same kinds of life questions that plague us here and now. Through stories and wisdom literature from major religious traditions ? Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam ? Chittister highlights practical, universal truths and deftly shows how each spiritual tradition brings a special gift to the art of living a meaningful, spiritually aware life.A rich exploration of spirituality, Welcome to the Wisdom of the World addresses some of our most challenging issues ? ambition, security, romance, abandonment, failure, and more ? acknowledging the truth we can find in the wisdom of our human past and the connections we can make through our differences. This is a book for anyone who wants to grow spiritually and to become more fully human.

Getting To Know Jesus


George MacDonald - 1980
    MacDonald stressed the necessity of salvation and the importance of combining Christian faith with obedience to Jesus' teachings. He also believed that God's universal grace would eventually save everyone. Though written in the mid-nineteenth century, these sermons, including "Mirrors of Christ," "Glorified through Trouble, "Salvation from Sin," and "The Giver of Rest," continue to provide contemporary followers with the spiritual guidance they seek. For those who wish to know Jesus better, this is a book you will want to hear.

The God Delusion


Richard Dawkins - 2006
    He eviscerates the major arguments for religion, and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being. He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry, and abuses children, buttressing his points with historical and contemporary evidence.The God Delusion makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just wrong, but potentially deadly. It also offers exhilarating insight into the advantages of atheism to the individual and society, not the least of which is a clearer, truer appreciation of the universe's wonders than any faith could ever muster.

Competing Spectacles: Treasuring Christ in the Media Age


Tony Reinke - 2019
    Maybe we don't want to ask it. But viral videos, digital images, and other spectacles surround us in every direction--competing for our time, our attention, our lust, and our money. So we let our lazy eyes feed on whatever comes our way. As a result, we never stop to consider the consequences of our visual diet on our habits, desires, and longings.Journalist Tony Reinke asked these hard questions himself--critiquing his own habits--and now invites us along to see what he discovered as he investigated the possibilities and the pitfalls of our image-centered world. In the end, he shares the beauty of a Greater Spectacle--capable of centering our souls, filling our hearts, and stabilizing our gaze in this age of the digital spectacle.

An Other Kingdom: Departing the Consumer Culture


Peter Block - 2015
    We need to depart a kingdom that creates isolation, polarized debate, an exhausted planet, and violence that comes with the will to empire. The abbreviation of this empire is called a consumer culture. We think the free market ideology that surrounds us is true and inevitable and represents progress. We are called to better adapt, be more agile, more lean, more schooled, more, more, more. Give it up. There is no such thing as customer satisfaction. We need a new narrative, a shift in our thinking and speaking. An Other Kingdom takes us out of a culture of addictive consumption into a place where life is ours to create together.  This satisfying way depends upon a neighborly covenant—an agreement that we together, will better raise our children, be healthy, be connected, be safe, and provide a livelihood. The neighborly covenant has a different language than market-hype. It speaks instead in a sacred tongue. Authors Peter Block, Walter Brueggemann, and John McKnight invite you on a journey of departure from our consumer market culture, with its constellations of empire and control. Discover an alternative set of beliefs that have the capacity to evoke a culture where poverty, violence, and shrinking well-being are not inevitable—a culture in which the social order produces enough for all. They ask you to consider this other kingdom. To participate in this modern exodus towards a modern community. To awaken its beginnings are all around us. An Other Kingdom outlines this journey to construct a future outside the systems world of solutions.

Reflections on the Existence of God: A Series of Essays


Richard E. Simmons III - 2019
    Each essay can be read in less than 10 minutes. In the end it is important to know whether God exists or He does not exist. There is no third option. What I am seeking to do in this book is to determine which of these beliefs is true and which one is not. —Richard E. Simmons III

God and the State


Mikhail Bakunin - 1882
    Born into the Russian nobility, he renounced his hereditary rank in protest against Czarist oppression and fled to Western Europe. A colorful, charismatic personality, Bakunin quickly became central to the anarchism movement, and everyone involved either built upon or reacted to his ideas. Yet Bakunin, despite the power of his ideas, was primarily a man of action, and he wrote little. His only major work, God and the State, remained unfinished, although it is the torso of a giant.God and the State has been a basic anarchist and radical document for generations. It is one of the clearest statements of the anarchist philosophy of history: religion by its nature is an impoverishment, enslavement, and annihilation of humanity. It is the weapon of the state. It must be smashed, according to Bakunin, before the right of self-determination can be possible. As an introduction to anarchist thought, a manifesto of atheism, or as a summing-up of the thoughts of Bakunin, God and the State remains a mind-opening experience, even for those basically unsympathetic to its premise.

Book of Mormon Gospel Doctrine Teacher's Manual


The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - 1999
    

The Sign of the Cross: The Fifteen Most Powerful Words in the English Language


Francis de Sales - 1892
    Francis de Sales' heroic efforts to bring Calvinists back to the Faith comes this succinct, eloquent defense of the age-old Catholic practice of making the Sign of the Cross, which 16th century Calvinists denounced as a Popish invention and many Protestants scorn even today. Along with St. Francis's other lucid explanations of the Catholic Faith and his undaunted love even for those who hated him, this modest book helped restore to their native Catholic faith tens of thousands of people who not long before were intent on killing him.As they did for the Calvinists in St. Francis's day, so in our day these ably translated pages will bring you a better understanding of and a renewed love for the Sign of the Cross, that brief and lively exterior prayer by which, from time immemorial, God has been invoked by serious Christians before all of their endeavors.