Religion Crisis

For five years, Jessica Stern interviewed extremist members of three religions around the world: Christians, Jews, and Muslims. She traveled extensively (to refugee camps in Lebanon, religious schools in Pakistan, prisons in Amman, Ashqelon, and Pensacola) and discovered that the Islamic jihadi in the mountains of Pakistan and the Christian fundamentalist bomber in Oklahoma have much in common.

Acclaimed author Karen Swallow Prior examines evangelical history, both good and bad. By analyzing the literature, art, and popular culture that has surrounded evangelicalism, she unpacks some of the movement's most deeply held concepts, ideas, values, and practices to consider what is Christian rather than merely cultural. The result is a clearer path forward for evangelicals amid their current identity crisis—and insight for others who want a deeper understanding of what the term "evangelical" means today.

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?

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.

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.

"I first met al-Qaeda before there was an al-Qaeda, way back in the winter of 1984. It was an encounter that came within a split second of costing me my life." So begins Rob Schultheis's gripping account of his journey into the heart of one of the world's most dangerous places, on the trail of the world's most wanted man. A veteran war correspondent, Schultheis offers a first-hand look at how the seeds of al-Qaeda were planted by foreign jihadists in the 1980s, before most Americans knew what the word "jihad" meant.

With research and insight, Charles Eisenstein details how the quantification of the natural world leads to a lack of integration and our “fight” mentality. With an entire chapter unpacking the climate change denier’s point of view, he advocates for expanding our exclusive focus on carbon emissions to see the broader picture beyond our short-sighted and incomplete approach. This refocusing away from impending catastrophe and our inevitable doom cultivates meaningful emotional and psychological connections and provides real, actionable steps to caring for the Earth.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A riveting audiobook about the dramatic changes that will transform the world as we know it. Americans are anxious about the future - the world's and their own. Rosenberg explains the enormous political, economic, and spiritual changes that are underway in the world's most important countries. He answers why these changes are happening, what they mean, and provides insights from exclusive interviews with world leaders.

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.

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.

On November 20, 1979, worldwide attention was focused on Tehran, where the Iranian hostage crisis was entering its third week. The same morning, the first of a new Muslim century, hundreds of gunmen stunned the world by seizing Islam's holiest shrine, the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Armed with rifles that they had smuggled inside coffins, these men came from more than a dozen countries, launching the first operation of global jihad in modern times.