Showing titles in Religious Studies

Changing Our Mind has helped thousands of families and congregations carefully and compassionately rethink traditional religious teachings about full LGBTQ inclusion. With growing scientific evidence, our wider society has taken big steps, but too many religious families and communities have not kept up. Dr. David Gushee offers a powerful, inspiring message of hope and healing by helping Christians to return to Bible study, prayer, and reflection in a way that creates a vision for a more inclusive church.

Mark Pegg offers a synthesis of the most innovative scholarship on the Middle Ages of the last thirty years. Interweaving the history of Muslims with the histories of Christians and Jews, the scholarly history is propelled by a narrative of the relationship of the human and the divine within individuals and their societies between 950 and 1550. In displaying the history of the Middle Ages to be no less than a history of the formation of Western culture, Pegg offers a rethinking of what it means to talk about the medieval world that is at once vital, compelling, and necessary.

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."

Whether you are skeptical of God's existence or seeking scientific support for your faith, The Creator and the Cosmos will enable you to see how the heavens do declare the glory of God (Ps. 19:1).

How did we get here? All cultures have a creation story, but a little over 150 years ago, Charles Darwin introduced a revolutionary new one. We, and all living things, exist because of the action of evolution on the first simple life form and its descendants. In How Evolution Explains Everything About Life, leading biologists and New Scientist take you on a journey of a lifetime, exploring the questions of whether life is inevitable or a one-off fluke and how it got kick-started.

Science and Christianity are often presented as opposites, when in fact the order of the universe and the complexity of life powerfully testify to intelligent design. With this comprehensive resource that includes the latest research, you'll witness how the findings of scientists provide compelling reasons to acknowledge the mind and presence of a creator.

There are 13 ancient history books that are mentioned and recommended by the Bible. The Ancient Book of Jasher is the only one of the 13 that still exists. It is referenced in Joshua 10:13; 2 Samuel 1:18; and 2 Timothy 3:8. This volume contains the entire 91 chapters plus a detailed analysis of the supposed discrepancies, cross-referenced historical accounts, and detailed charts for ease of use.

While many accounts of the Buddha’s life mix legend and history, this compelling new biography discriminates between fact and fiction to reveal Gautama, the remarkable human being behind the myth, and sheds new light on his teachings. Plunging us into the noises, smells and jostling streets of Gautama’s world, Vishvapani Blomfield brings the Buddha to life as a passionate and determined individual - a strikingly modern figure who rejected contemporary beliefs.

Religious fundamentalists and biblical literalists present any number of arguments that attempt to disprove evolution. Those with a sympathetic ear often fail to critically examine these creationist claims, leading to an ill-informed public and, perhaps more troubling, ill-advised public policy. As Aron Ra makes clear, however, every single argument deployed by creationists in their attacks on evolution is founded on fundamental scientific, religious, and historical falsehoods - all of them.

In this fascinating account of the surprisingly violent fifth-century church, Philip Jenkins describes how political maneuvers by a handful of powerful characters shaped Christian doctrine. Were it not for these battles, today's church could be teaching something very different about the nature of Jesus, and the papacy as we know it would never have come into existence. Jesus Wars reveals the profound implications of what amounts to an accident of history: that one faction of Roman emperors and militia-wielding bishops defeated another.

The Pharmacist of Auschwitz is the little-known story of Victor Capesius, a Bayer pharmaceutical salesman from Romania, who, at the age of 35, joined the Nazi SS in 1943 and quickly became the chief pharmacist at the largest death camp, Auschwitz. Based in part on previously classified documents, Patricia Posner exposes Capesius's reign of terror at the camp, his escape from justice, and how a handful of courageous survivors and a single brave prosecutor finally brought him to trial for murder 20 years after the end of the war.

Despite predictions of continuing secularisation, the 21st century has witnessed a surge of religious extremism and violence in the name of God. In this powerful and timely book, Jonathan Sacks explores the roots of violence and its relationship to religion, focusing on the historic tensions between the three Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

It was the early 1960s. The place, a far-off corner of the Himalayas long fabled in Tibetan tradition to be hiding a valley of immortality among its peaks and glaciers - a real-life Shangri-La. They waited generations for the prophesied lama to come, the one with the secret knowledge of how to "open" the Hidden Land. Then, one day, he came. His name was Tulshuk Lingpa.

In this highly accessible discussion, Bart Ehrman examines the most recent textual and archaeological sources for the life of Jesus, along with the history of first-century Palestine, drawing a fascinating portrait of the man and his teachings. Ehrman shows us what historians have long known about the Gospels and the man who stands behind them. Through a careful evaluation of the New Testament (and other surviving sources, including the more recently discovered Gospels of Thomas and Peter), Ehrman proposes that Jesus can be best understood as an apocalyptic prophet.

Despite considerable press coverage and a lengthy trial, the full story of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints has remained largely untold. Only one man can reveal the whole, astounding truth: Sam Brower, the private investigator who devoted years of his life to breaking open the secret practices of the FLDS and bringing Warren Jeffs and his inner circle to justice.

In these 12 captivating lectures, you'll explore the life of the Prophet of Islam as well as the Quran's five pillars, which govern the beliefs and behavior of Muslims everywhere. You'll learn how the incredible legacies of the great Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires still influence the Arab world, Iran, and South Asia. You'll also look at Islam in other parts of the world. The current Muslim struggle to preserve tradition in an age of globalization and ethnic and religious strife are examined in detail.

"Something here really stinks to high heaven," writes Erich von Däniken. "In Twilight of the Gods," says von Däniken, "I document precisely what it was that left the first visitors breathless as they stood before the mighty stone blocks some 400 years ago. I will show you what archeologists discovered hundreds of years ago and demonstrate how much has been destroyed over the centuries. Intentionally.

Would you like to improve your thoughts and feelings about the world around you? If so, then you will find Zoroastrianism and the Teachings of Zarathustra: The Zoroastrian Creed and Selected Sacred Hymns of Zoroaster with Prayers and Liturgies of the Faith in Modern-Day English richly rewarding. Referred to as Mazdayasna by its followers, Zoroastrianism is widely regarded as the world’s first monotheistic religion, meaning that it worships a single divine god.

Sometimes rumor, sometimes based on fact and often misunderstood, the tenets of Islamic law and dogma were not set in the religion's founding moments. They were developed, like in other world religions, over centuries by the clerical class of Muslim scholars. Misquoting Muhammad takes listeners back in time through Islamic civilization and traces how and why such controversies developed, offering an inside view into how key and controversial aspects of Islam took shape.

In 1937, the Shwartz family lived a calm life in their small village in Poland. Fifteen-year-old Rachel liked to sing and go out dancing at a local night club, while her older brother David was busy running a farm and raising a family with his wife Hinda. But all that changed when the war reached Butla. First, the Russians came and kicked them out of their house. Then, the Nazis came to cart them off. But the Shwartz family resisted. David decided that no matter what, his family would not be taken captive. Instead, he snuck his family out of their village and into Hungary.