Memoir Religion

When he first met the man who called himself David Koresh, David Thibodeau was drumming for a rock band that was going nowhere fast. Intrigued and frustrated with a stalled music career, Thibodeau gradually became a follower and moved to the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. He remained there until April 19, 1993, when the compound was stormed and burnt to the ground after a 51-day standoff. In this book, Thibodeau explores why so many people came to believe that Koresh was divinely inspired.

A former top insider reveals the nightmare world of violence and abuse at the highest levels of the Church of Scientology. One review states: "At home alone, a 14 year old girl takes a phone call from Scientology. This starts a quarter of a century journey of manipulation, betrayal and sexual, physical and mental abuse. This journey leads to the highest management echelon and one woman's courage to break free. A real page-turner." Mark P. Another writes: "Amy Scobee has written a book unlike any other expose of Scientology.

When Katie Davis Majors moved to Uganda, accidentally founded a booming organization, and later became the mother of 13 girls through the miracle of adoption, she determined to weave her life together with the people she desired to serve. But joy often gave way to sorrow as she invested her heart fully in walking alongside people in the grip of poverty, addiction, desperation, and disease.

From the young Vietnamese girl who turned down freedom in order to share the gospel in her Communist homeland, to the Australian missionary who spread the message of forgiveness and healing across India after her husband and sons were burned alive, these women overcame Extreme adversity to become leaders and ministers of the underground church in Pakistan, India, Romania, the former Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, Nepal and Indonesia.

Trump didn't just break America's political rules—he revealed them as illusions. This is an outsider's discovery of how an unlikely shaman transformed the world's most powerful nation. Trump follows ancient patterns of leadership that modern politics has forgotten. Through raw charisma and intuitive genius, he tapped into psychological forces that reshaped America's soul. This analysis reveals why millions found his message irresistible—and why his critics still don't understand what hit them.

An initiation signals a beginning: a door opens and you step through. Traditional Wiccan initiates are usually brought into the craft through a ceremony with a High Priestess. But even though Amanda Yates Garcia's mother, a practicing witch herself, initiated her into the earth-centered practice of witchcraft when she was 13 years old, Amanda's real life as a witch only began when she underwent a series of spontaneous initiations of her own.

As children we all had our imaginary friends and monsters in the closet. But for Suzan Saxman, those friends and monsters didn't go away--and they weren't imaginary. From an early age, Suzan knew instinctively that she had to hide her true self. She couldn't talk about the specters that haunted her, waking and dreaming. In bed with a childhood fever, rat-faced winged beings guarded her.

Alan Watts became famous first as a brilliant intellectual and then as a serious student of Buddhism and meditation. In the 1970s, the last years of his life, he retreated to a small, isolated cabin deep in the woods. He meditated every morning and then wrote. Still the Mind consists of several talks he gave in his later years, recorded and edited by his son, Mark Watts, and then published as a book. His speaking shows a maturity and wisdom that can only come after years of meditation.

The story begins as Colleen and Newell Cerak first learn the doubtful, then shocking news that their daughter, buried five weeks earlier, is still alive. Forming a backdrop to the reunion are the faces of the Van Ryn family, strangers to the Ceraks, who are just coming to terms with the harsh reality that the girl whose bedside they have been posted at for five weeks is not their daughter after all - and that their own daughter, Laura, has already been buried under the name of Whitney Cerak.

In 1979, a fiery preacher named Jane Whaley attracted a small group of followers with a promise that she could turn their lives around. In the years since, Whaley’s following has expanded to include thousands of congregants across three continents. Based on hundreds of interviews, secretly recorded conversations, and thousands of pages of documents, Pulitzer Prize winner Mitch Weiss and Holbrook Mohr’s Broken Faith is a terrifying portrait life inside the Word of Faith Fellowship, and the harrowing account of one family who escaped after two decades.

John Wesley was an 18th-century preacher, theologian, and cleric who helped found the Methodist movement with his brother, Charles. Arguably one of the most important Christian voices of his day, Wesley wrote in his journal on a daily basis, capturing his views, thoughts, feelings, and prayers on paper to share with the world. The journal contains 50 years' worth of this great man's reflections and experiences and is widely considered one of the great spiritual classics.

In this honest appraisal of his journey from believer to atheist, the author carefully explains the experiences and the reasoning process that led him to reject religious belief. The original edition of this book was published in 2006 and reissued in 2008. Since that time, Loftus has received a good deal of critical feedback from Christians and skeptics alike. In this revised and expanded edition, the author addresses criticisms of the original, adds new argumentation and references, and refines his presentation.

There are many editions of the writings of St. Francis, and many biographies about him, but here in one volume are both, plus the complete text of the late medieval work The Little Flowers, which did more to establish the legend of the man than any other work. This edition includes the complete Road to Assisi, Paul Sabatier's groundbreaking and foundational biography of the saint, first published in French in 1894; the complete Francis in His Own Words: The Essential Writings; and The Little Flowers, thus offering the best introduction to St. Francis yet available between two covers.

Women have been shamans since time immemorial, not only because women have innate intuitive gifts, but also because the female body is wired to more easily experience altered states, such as during the process of birth. Whether female or male, the altered states produced by psychedelics and ecstatic trance expand our minds to tap into and enhance our feminine states of consciousness as well as reconnect us to the web of life.

The First World War laid waste to a continent and brought about the end of innocence — and the end of faith. Unlike a generation of young writers who lost faith in the God of the Bible, however, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis found that the Great War deepened their spiritual quest. Both men served as soldiers on the Western Front, survived the trenches, and used the experience of that conflict to ignite their Christian imagination.

Josh Hamilton was the first player chosen in the first round of the 1999 baseball draft. He was destined to be one of those rare "high-character" superstars. But in 2001, working his way from the minors to the majors, all of the plans for Josh went off the rails in a moment of weakness. What followed was a four-year nightmare of drugs and alcohol, estrangement from friends and family, and his eventual suspension from baseball.

From the Swing Between Worlds, a realm of light where souls create the design for their lives, we see Mary Magdalene accept the challenges she will face as a visionary, healer, teacher and counterpart of Jesus Christ. As she looks into the future, she sees that in 2000 years the people will also remember their own light, their own divinity and choose to live in peace. Now is the time she has seen! Now is the time for Peace. From the Preface; Mary was not a harlot, powerless, following Christ.

At the core of this book is an appalling double murder committed by two Mormon Fundamentalist brothers, Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a revelation from God commanding them to kill their blameless victims. Weaving the story of the Lafferty brothers and their fanatical brethren with a clear-eyed look at Mormonism's violent past, Krakauer examines the underbelly of the most successful homegrown faith in the United States, and finds a distinctly American brand of religious extremism.

Johnny Cash: The Redemption of an American Icon dives deep into the singer’s inner demons, triumphs, and gradual return to faith. Laurie interviews Cash’s family, friends, and business associates to reveal how the singer’s true success came through finding the only Person whose star was bigger than his own.

Embrace your identity as God's beloved, step out of your own brokenness, and bring hope to a darkened world. You have a calling to fulfill. Are you ready to take the risk of moving past your past to fulfill it? Christine Caine faced hurdles that seemed insurmountable - abuse, abandonment, and the loss of a child. Yet she decided to answer God's call on her life no matter where it would lead her. Many times, the only thing that kept her going was knowing that she was God's beloved. She was God's chosen.