Religion Crisis

On a clear spring day in 1995, five members of a religious cult unleashed poison gas on the Tokyo subway system. In attempt to discover why, Haruki Murakmi talks to the people who lived through the catastrophe, and in so doing lays bare the Japanese psyche. As he discerns the fundamental issues that led to the attack, Murakami paints a clear vision of an event that could occur anytime, anywhere.

Bernard Lewis examines the historical roots of the frustrations and resentments that dominate the Islamic world today and that are increasingly being expressed in acts of terrorism. He looks at the theological origins of political Islam and tells us what the Islamic doctrine of jihad has meant at different times in history.

The Koran: It may be the most controversial book in the world. Some see it as a paean to peace, others call it a violent mandate for worldwide Islamic supremacy. How can one book lead to such dramatically different conclusions?

First Principles and First Values is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture.

The current prolonged season of war and worldwide economic crisis has created countless personal crises. Unemployment, foreclosures, threats, and fears loom, and Christians are not exempt. You can survive and even thrive during these times. Myles Munroe teaches how to overcome any crisis by applying the sure wisdom and the time-tested principles of the Kingdom of God.

In Pope Peter, Joe Heschmeyer says that papal flaws are an opportunity to understand what the papacy really means, not to abandon it (or the Church). Drawing deeply on the scriptural and historical witness, he offers a thorough but accessible defense of the papal office and an edifying picture of the extent—and limits—of its authority.

Jack Miles's book is a provocative and revisionary look at the life of Jesus, in which many of the most well-worn truths about Christ are recontextualized and revisited. It does not look for the historical Jesus, but takes the Gospels as the sole source about his life.

In a carefully choreographed propaganda video released in February 2015, ISIS militants behead twenty-one orange-clad Christian men on a Libyan beach. In the West, daily reports of new atrocities may have displaced the memory of this particularly vile event. But not in the world from which the murdered came. All but one were young Coptic Christian migrant workers from Egypt. Acclaimed literary writer Martin Mosebach traveled to the Egyptian village of El-Aour to meet their families and better understand the faith and culture that shaped such conviction.

Do you ever wonder how you woke up one day with all the responsibilities of a grown-up who secretly enjoys buying groceries in bulk, can no longer recognize the tween celebrities on the magazines at checkout, but is still surprised when a Starbucks barista calls you “ma’am” - because your inside self is frozen in time to about 20 years ago? So does Lisa-Jo Baker.

Acclaimed author, process-oriented therapist, and earlier Jungian analyst Arnold Mindell teaches us how to find the power to make our own choices and control our own lives. Drawing on his experiences with "witch-doctors" and shamans in Africa, Japan, Russia, and India, Mindell leads us on a "death walk" through our worst fears and deepest emotional crises to wake our inner shaman - which he calls our "dreamingbody." Methods for tapping the wisdom hidden in crises free our own internal sorcery for use in our daily lives. These methods enable us to become whole from within and to avoid the phantoms of unrealistic hopes and desires that limit our lives.

The CIA is looking for walking contradictions. Recruiters seek people who can keep a secret, yet pull classified information out of others; who love their country, but are willing to leave it behind to head into dangerous places; who live double lives, but can be trusted with some of the nation's most sensitive tasks. Michele Rigby Assad was one of those people. As a CIA agent, Michele soon found that working undercover was an all-encompassing job. The threats were real. The mission was a perilous one. Trained as a counterterrorism expert, Michele spent over a decade in the agency.

The Convenient Terrorist is the definitive inside account of the capture, torture, and detention of Abu Zubaydah, the first “high-value target” captured by the CIA after 9/11. But was Abu Zubaydah, who is still being indefinitely held by the United States under shadowy circumstances, the blue-ribbon capture that the Bush White House claimed he was?

Nearly two decades ago, Hank Hanegraaff's award-winning Christianity in Crisis alerted the world to the dangers of a cultic movement within Christianity that threatened to undermine the very foundation of biblical faith. In the 21st century, there are new dangers—new teachers who threaten to do more damage than the last. Christianity in Crisis: 21st Century exposes darkness to light, pointing us back to a Christianity centered in Christ.

Eugene England (1933–2001) — one of the most influential and controversial intellectuals in modern Mormonism — lived in the crossfire between religious tradition and reform. This first serious biography, by leading historian Terryl L. Givens, shimmers with the personal tensions felt deeply by England during the turmoil of the late 20th century.

On September 11, 2001, Lisa Beamer was thrust into the national spotlight after her husband, Todd, became an American hero by preventing terrorist hijackers from almost certainly flying United Flight 93 into the White House or the United States Capitol. Instead, Todd led a group of passengers to resist the hijackers, forcing the plane to crash into a Pennsylvania field. Todd and the other heroes of Flight 93 gave their lives so that untold others would be spared. Nothing could be more heroic. Lisa is now telling that story, and much more.

In The Truth about Muhammad, New York Times best-selling author and Islam expert Robert Spencer offers an honest and telling portrait of the founder of Islam - perhaps the first such portrait in half a century - unbounded by fear and political correctness, unflinching, and willing to face the hard facts about Muhammad's life that continue to affect our world today.

This book is a memoir of an unlikely relationship between the author, Karen Hall — a television writer and producer of hit shows like M*A*S*H, Hillstreet Blues, Moonlighting and The Good Wife — and conservative Jesuit biblical scholar Fr. Paul Mankowski, SJ, who died in September 2020. It exposes the silencing of Fr. Mankowski by his religious order for airing its dirty laundry and for upholding the two-thousand-year magisterium of the Catholic Church.

Most terrorism experts agree: it is not "if" we are attacked again, but "when." Yet the assault has already happened. A silent battle is being waged on our nation every day. Not with guns and bombs, but via covert sources: Islamic charities, the ACLU, even presidential candidates.

With the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright became generally acknowledged as one of our major journalists writing on terrorism in the Middle East. This collection draws on several articles he wrote while researching that book as well as many that he's written since, following where and how al-Qaeda and its core cultlike beliefs have morphed and spread.

There is nothing like a crisis to reveal the cracks in the walls of our soul. But God promises to redeem all things that come into our lives to make us more like Jesus. We are experiencing a unique crisis in our day and age, COVID-19. It has created fear, death, and will leave economic disaster in its wake. In this book, I don’t just want to talk about how we can survive this crisis, or how we can access the peace of God in tumultuous times. I want to talk about how God can redeem a crisis in our personal lives to take us deeper into maturity and intimacy with Christ.