Books have been an important part of my faith journey. I set aside time each morning to read scripture, and devotional material, to meditate and pray. As I read about the experiences of others my faith increases and I know God better. As a writer I express my own faith through words and invite others to know God better by experiencing Him with time set aside in the mornings. More Love is part of a series of small books that I have created to give readers experiences to connect with God and to know His love.
Fred Buechner writes, “Listen to your life. All moments are key moments.” These 366 short writings taken from the works and books of Frederick Buechner are rich and deep. A few moments with a daily reading can shift my perspective from an earthly one to an eternal one. I come back to his books often to absorb his wisdom and the example of his faith. One of Buechner’s great strengths is his gift of storytelling which permeates the readings giving life to the words and wisdom.
Daily meditations taken from the works of an acclaimed novelist, essayist, and preacher who has articulated what he sees with a freshness and clarity and energy that hails our stultified imaginations.
Maitreyabandhu started attending classes at the London Buddhist Centre (LBC) in 1986. He was ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order in 1990 and given the name Maitreyabandhu. Since then he has lived and worked at the LBC, teaching Buddhism and meditation, and leading retreats. He has written three books on Buddhism, Thicker than Blood: Friendship on the Buddhist Path, Life with Full Attention: A Practical Course in Mindfulness, and The Journey and the Guide: A Practical Guide in Enlightenment. Maitreyabandhu is also a prize-winning poet having written three poetry collections with Bloodaxe Books. Maitreyabandhu founded PoetryEast in 2010 where he interviews well-known artists and writers, including Antony Gormley, Wendy Cope, and Colm Tóibín. He is the co-founder, with Dr. Paramabandhu Groves, of Breathing Space, the LBC’s health and wellbeing project.
More and more people are drawn to meditation but it’s easy to be confounded by all those books and online teachings. This book is a great way to start. A simple guide to Buddhist meditation – to what it means, and how to do it – it’s practical, clear, helpful, and short.
Provides traditional practices for the readers to learn how to exchange stress and anxiety for calm and clarity of mind, and transform anger and fear into kindness and self confidence. The author guides on meditation with anecdotes and tips, from his experience of teaching meditation of more than 15 years.
I believe that the most important questions one can possibly ask are, ‘Is there a God?’ and ‘Is Jesus God in human flesh?’ Since becoming a Christian at University in Cambridge the answers I have found to these questions have been the bedrock of my life. They have been confirmed by experience and I have wanted to share them. My academic work has been devoted to them. I am an astrophysicist as well as a priest and find, contrary to popular conceptions, that these vocations fit wonderfully neatly together. I am persuaded that there is a wealth of evidence for the truth of Christian beliefs, including from science itself.
The late John Polkinghorne was the leading figure in the modern dialogue between science and religion. He was Professor of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge, a position which he gave up to become a priest in the Church of England. In this startling volume, he discusses all the clauses of the Nicene Creed, thinking through this fundamental statement of Christian belief as a scientist. He persistently asks, ‘What is the evidence that makes you think this might be true?’ and shows that the evidence required to justify classically orthodox Christian belief is there to be had.
An attempt to apply scientific habits of thought to the core of Christian belief, and to examine in turn the central tenets of the creeds in the light of a thoroughly modern world-view. The result is an intellectual presentation of orthodox Christianity.
Pierce Taylor Hibbs (MAR, ThM Westminster Theological Seminary) has lived with an anxiety disorder for over fourteen years and offers a unique perspective on how anxiety and faith are interconnected. He is the award-winning Christian author of many books, including Struck Down but Not Destroyed: Living Faithfully with Anxiety. Other books he's written on anxiety include Still, Silent, and Strong: Meditations for the Anxious Heart and Finding Hope in Hard Things: A Positive Take on Suffering.
I found this book when I was at the end of my rope with anxiety, and the book was uplifting, to say the least! Though it didn’t address all my concerns as someone with an anxiety disorder, it did walk through Scripture and show me how God had an encouraging, fatherly response to our anxieties. It also reminded me that God is the only place of true rest for restless minds. If you’re looking for a biblically rooted resource for common anxieties, this book was just that.
In his new release, Running Scared, Edward T. Welch investigates the roots of fear in the human soul and the ramifications of living in the grips of anxiety, worry, and dread. Welch encourages readers to discover for themselves that the Bible is full of beautiful words of comfort for fearful people (and that every single person is afraid of something). Within the framework of thirty topical meditations, Welch offers sound biblical theology and moment-by-moment, thoughtful encouragement for life-saving rescue in the midst of the heart and mind battlefield of rampant panic-stricken responses.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by the hidden histories of everyday things, especially in media and popular culture. (Who were those people on TV laugh tracks? Where did Muzak records come from?) A career in broadcasting only sharpened this interest, informing two decades of writing and performing.
Having lived in Utah for several years, I went into this knowing a fair amount about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: its history, its leaders, its tangled (to put it mildly) relationship with polygamy, and its equally tangled dealings with the federal government. And still, Jon Krakauer's true-crime masterwork was (no pun intended) a revelation. It gripped me from its very first page.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of Into the Wild and Into Thin Air, this extraordinary work of investigative journalism takes readers inside America’s isolated Mormon Fundamentalist communities. Now an the acclaimed FX limited series streaming on HULU.
“Fantastic.... Right up there with In Cold Blood and The Executioner’s Song.” —San Francisco Chronicle
Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the renegade leaders of these Taliban-like theocracies are zealots who answer only to God; some 40,000 people still practice polygamy in these communities.
At the core of Krakauer’s book are brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty,…
By Kevin P. Spicer and Rebecca Carter-Chand
Author
Why are we passionate about this?
Kevin P. Spicer is a historian of twentieth-century Germany who investigates the relationship between church and state from 1918-1945. I'm fascinated by the choices of Christian leaders as they negotiated the challenges of living and leading under National Socialism. I seek to understand the connections between Christian antisemitism and National Socialist’s racial-based exclusionary ethnonationalism and antisemitism.Rebecca Carter-Chand is a historian of twentieth-century Germany who focuses on Christianity during the Nazi period. I'm particularly interested in the smaller Christian churches on the margins of the German religious landscape, many of which maintained ties with their co-religionists abroad. I seek to understand how religious communities navigate ethical and practical challenges of political upheaval and fascism.
Jantzen has produced a thoroughly engaging study of the German Lutheran pastors under National Socialism. By contrast to the traditional “top down” institutional narratives on the Kirchenkampf(German Church Struggle), Jantzen has produced a “bottom up” work that focuses on the choices made by ordinary parish pastors under Hitler’s rule. As his point of departure, he examines Lutheran pastors working in three Church districts: Nauen, located northwest of Berlin in Brandenburg; Pirna, in southeast of Dresden in Saxony; and Ravensburg, in southern Württemberg. Throughout his work, Jantzen convincingly compares the response of the clergy in these diverse geographic areas. Though there were notable exceptions among these pastors, Jantzen concludes that Protestant clergy “largely failed to resist or even critique the Nazi state.”
An informative glimpse into the world of German Protestantsin the difficult Hitler era, Faith and Fatherland approaches thehistory of the Church Struggle from the "bottom up," usingsources like pastors' correspondence, parish newsletters, localnewspaper accounts, district superintendents' reports, andlocal church statistics.
While Jantzen confirms the general understanding thatGerman Protestants failed to resist or even critique the Naziregime, he reveals a surprising diversity of opinion and varietyof action, including the successful efforts of some Lutheranpastors and parishioners to resist the nazification of theirchurches.
No matter how you read it, the Bible is a strange book. It weaves together beautiful narratives and deadly-dull genealogies; uplifting messages with passages that many today find ethically repulsive. Yet it gained an extraordinary authority, in a predominantly pre-literate society. The question of how this happened has been an intellectual and scholarly preoccupation of mine for decades, and as a professor at Brown University I seek to bring my students and readers into this very foreign world in order to open their eyes to new possibilities in the present.
James Kugel, a professor at Harvard and then Bar Ilan University in Israel, has been writing for years on how the Hebrew Bible was read and understood in antiquity.How to Read the Biblewill bring you on a remarkable journey through time. Kugel selectively goes through the Hebrew Bible, contrasting how those in antiquity read, understood, and interpreted biblical stories with how modern scholars do. The book is long, and can be read in sections. Kugel’s discussions of both the academic study of the Bible and the way he understands the Bible as both a critic and an Orthodox Jew, are outstanding.
James Kugel’s essential introduction and companion to the Bible combines modern scholarship with the wisdom of ancient interpreters for the entire Hebrew Bible.
As soon as it appeared, How to Read the Bible was recognized as a masterwork, “awesome, thrilling” (The New York Times), “wonderfully interesting, extremely well presented” (The Washington Post), and “a tour de force...a stunning narrative” (Publishers Weekly). Now, this classic remains the clearest, most inviting and readable guide to the Hebrew Bible around—and a profound meditation on the effect that modern biblical scholarship has had on traditional belief.
Moving chapter by chapter, Harvard professor James Kugel…
I am a psychiatrist and medical ethicist—not a theologian or rabbinical scholar. And yet, for more than thirty years, I have had a kind of love affair with rabbinical ethics and have written several books on the topic. This is particularly ironic, since, in my youth, I rebelled against my own rabbi’s teachings and my father’s adherence to Orthodox Judaism. Much later in life, I took courses in Jewish ethics and studied briefly with a local rabbi. I eventually came to appreciate the deep psychological wisdom in so much of Jewish and rabbinical ethics.
Judaism is sometimes accused of being obsessed with rituals and laws, at the expense of interpersonal relationships. Rabbi Feldman’s insightful book debunks that charge, focusing in psychologically astute ways on human relationships. Topics include revenge, violence, love, and generosity. While scholarly in content, this book has a friendly, informal tone, such as the chapter titled, “One strike and you’re out: hitting and raising a hand in violence.”
In an effort to respond to the baseless criticism that Jewish law is overly preoccupied with religious ritual at the expense of issues having to do with interpersonal relationships, the author presents a detailed exploration of the vast attention that the masters of Jewish thought have given to relations between and among individuals. This book is not a legal guide to interpersonal relationships in Jewish life, nor is it a volume of moral exhortation. Rather, Rabbi Feldman aims to convey the importance of his subject by exhibiting its hallowed place within the structure of Jewish law and within the analysis…
I have been fascinated by the relationship between Christianity and the United States for decades. Much of my work in the area of Christian nationalism is the result of my personal religious history and experiences, as well as my work as a social scientist. I’ve always been fascinated by how religion influences and is influenced by its social context. Christian nationalism in the US is a clear example of how influential religious ideologies can be in our social world.
While history is important for showing us how we got to where we are, social science is indispensable in helping us understand what exactly is going on around us today.
This book is a must-read for those who want to know how Christian nationalism threatens democracy. The authors conclusively demonstrate the various anti-democratic beliefs and values held by Americans who strongly embrace Christian nationalism.
January 6th wasn’t an aberration, and this book helps us understand the threat we still face.
A bracing examination of a force that imperils American democracy
Most Americans were shocked by the violence they witnessed at the nation's Capital on January 6th, 2021. And many were bewildered by the images displayed by the insurrectionists: a wooden cross and wooden gallows; "Jesus saves" and "Don't Tread on Me;" Christian flags and Confederate Flags; even a prayer in Jesus' name after storming the Senate chamber. Where some saw a confusing jumble, Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry saw a familiar ideology: white Christian nationalism.
In this short primer, Gorski and Perry explain what white Christian nationalism is…
I started my career as a New York magazine editor and cynical journalist writing about art, celebrities, and show designers. Eventually I had an existential meltdown where I realized I was trapped in reductive materialism. I didn’t believe in a soul or a spirit or anything that wasn’t tangible. I decided to explore psychedelics and wrote my first book, Breaking Open the Head, after visiting indigenous cultures in Africa and South America where I took Iboga, ayahuasca, and mushrooms in initiation ceremonies. I learned we are facing an ecological and geo-political meta-crisis. I tried to find the roots of this, hoping to save humanity from extinction by unifying us around a mystical realization of oneness.
Edinger was a student of Carl Jung’s and this book picks up from Jung’s essential essay, “God’s Answer to Job”. Jung realized that God was in a dialectical relationship with his “Chosen People,” and when Job maintained his faith despite being subject to unspeakable cruelties, this compelled God to incarnate as Christ. Following Jung, Edinger believes we are currently living through the archetype of the Apocalypse. The word means “revealing” or “uncovering.” Psychologically, the Apocalypse is the “Coming of the self” into conscious realization. It is a point of maturity where we have gained the self-knowledge needed to integrate, rather than project, the Shadow. This portends a collective incarnation of God into our human world.
The collective belief in the End of the World, as described in the Biblical Book of Revelation, can be seen in public reaction to terrorist outrages such as those of Sept. 11, in the preoccupation with disasters, in the obsession with UFO's and the possibility of encountering extra-terrestrial life, and in the breakdown of social structures. Edinger argues that this very real psychological force is vitally important for our times, and he offers an alternative to catastrophe through understanding the meaning of these radiant scriptures.
