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.

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.

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.

"I'm deconstructing my faith." As any pastor can tell you, hearing these words is simply a regular feature of ministry these days. How we respond to those who are deconstructing will reveal the kind of church—and the kinds of Christians—we really are. Ian Harber knows the fear and grief of deconstruction firsthand. In this book, he tells the story of his own process of deconstruction and reconstruction over more than ten years and explores what is actually happening, both culturally and spiritually, when someone deconstructs their faith.

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?

Here are the devastating revelations that triggered a crisis within the Catholic Church. Here is the truth about the scores of abusive priests who preyed upon innocent children and the cabal of senior church officials who covered up their crimes. Here is the trail of "hush money" that the Catholic Church secretly paid to buy victims' silence - deeds that left millions of the faithful in the US and around the world shocked, angry, and confused.

In Faithful, Creative, Hopeful, Jesse Zink demonstrates the importance of the Christian gospel and its witness to the flourishing of human societies. Zink offers fifteen theses—echoing those of the church reformers—that together offer a vision for a renewed faith and a renewed church in this crisis-shaped world.

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 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 40 years ago, Ralph Martin's best-selling A Crisis of Truth exposed the damaging trends in Catholic teaching and preaching that, combined with attacks from secular society, threatened the mission and life of the Catholic Church. While much has been done to counter false teaching over the last four decades, today the church faces even more insidious threats from outside and within. In A Church in Crisis: Pathways Forward, Martin offers a detailed look at the growing hostility to the Catholic Church and its teaching.

Many words have been written about this period of life sometimes called middle age. What makes Hidden Blessings different is its unique blend of psychological and spiritual guidance to help us respond fully to the transformative invitation of midlife. That invitation is to step away from taking life literally -- and, perhaps, superficially -- to discover a deep and profound underlying existence.

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.

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.

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.

In the 1980s, a young adventurer and collector for a government library, Abdel Kader Haidara, journeyed across the Sahara Desert and along the Niger River, tracking down and salvaging tens of thousands of ancient Islamic and secular manuscripts that had fallen into obscurity. The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu tells the incredible story of how Haidara, a mild-mannered archivist and historian from the legendary city of Timbuktu, later became one of the world's greatest and most brazen smugglers.

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.

Writing in response to our current “constitutional crisis”, New York Times best-selling author and Christian activist Jim Wallis urges America to return to the tenets of Jesus once again as the means to save us from the polarizing bitterness and anger of our tribal nation.

Although Christian believers agreed with one another that the Bible was authoritative and that it should be interpreted through commonsense principles, there was rampant disagreement about what Scripture taught about slavery. Furthermore, most Americans continued to believe that God ruled over the affairs of people and nations, but they were radically divided in their interpretations of what God was doing in and through the war.

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.

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.