Religious Freedom

Shari Franke’s childhood was a constant battle for survival. Her mother, Ruby Franke, enforced a severe moral code while maintaining a façade of a picture-perfect family for their wildly popular YouTube channel 8 Passengers, which documented the day-to-day life of raising six children for a staggering 2.5 million subscribers. But a darker truth lurked beneath the surface—Ruby’s wholesome online persona masked a more tyrannical parenting style than anyone could have imagined.

To understand the most contentious issues around religious liberty, this volume provides influential philosophical ideas from the US’ founding to the present day and key US Supreme Court judgements to ask how the two twin pillars of religious freedom - free exercise and the limit on religious establishment - unfold in daily life.

Religious freedom is a bitterly contested issue that spills over into political, public, and online spheres. It's an issue that's becoming ever more heated, and neither of the global political polarities is interested in protecting it. While the political left is openly hostile toward traditional religion, the political right seeks to weaponize it. How can we ensure that "religious freedom" is truly about freedom of one's religion rather than serving an ethno-nationalist agenda?

Becoming more like Christ is a lifelong endeavor that may seem overwhelming - especially to those who don't know the next steps. Whether you lead a group of people who have just begun their walk with Christ or those who want to go deeper, the Freedom in Christ curriculum will give you the simple, practical guidance to help others weave faith into every aspect of their lives.

It is a common assumption that in Israel, Jews have sovereignty, and in most other places where Jews live today, they have religious freedom instead. As Simon Rabinovitch shows in this original work, the situation is much more complicated. Jews today possess different kinds of legal rights in states around the world; some stem from religious freedom protections, and others evolved from a longer history of Jewish autonomy.

After Paul Stutzman lost his wife to breast cancer, he sensed a tug on his heart - the call to a challenge, the call to pursue a dream. With a mixture of dread and determination, Paul left his job, traveled to Georgia, and took his first steps on the Appalachian Trail. What he learned during the next four and a half months changed his life and can change yours as well. In Hiking Through, you'll join Paul on his remarkable 2,176-mile trip through 14 states in search of peace and a renewed sense of purpose.

All Americans, liberal or conservative, religious or not, can agree that religious freedom, anchored in conscience rights, is foundational to the US democratic experiment. But what freedom of conscience means, what its scope and limits are, according to the Constitution - these are matters for heated debate.

The Supreme Court has issued a decision, but that doesn't end the debate. Now that the Supreme Court has ruled, Americans face momentous debates about the nature of marriage and religious liberty. Because the Court has redefined marriage in all 50 states, we have to energetically protect our freedom to live according to conscience and faith as we work to rebuild a strong marriage culture.

The Gordon Riots marked a crucial turning point in the fight for Catholic emancipation. Over the next 50 years, factions battled to reform the laws of the land. Kings George III and George IV refused to address the “Catholic Question,” even when pressed by their prime ministers. But in 1829, through the dogged work of charismatic Irish lawyer Daniel O’Connell and the support of the great Duke of Wellington, the watershed Roman Catholic Relief Act finally passed, opening the door to the radical transformation of the Victorian age.

"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.

Throughout history the world’s greatest conquerors have made their mark not just on the battlefield, but in the societies they have transformed. Genghis Khan conquered by arms and bravery, but he ruled by commerce and religion. He created the world’s greatest trading network and drastically lowered taxes for merchants, but he knew that if his empire was going to last, he would need something stronger and more binding than trade. He needed religion.

His grandfather’s lynching in the deep South, the murders of his two older brothers, and his verbally harsh and absent father all worked together to form Jason Wilson’s childhood. But it was his decision to acknowledge his emotions and yield to God’s call on his life that made Wilson the man and leader he is today. As the founder of one of the country’s most esteemed youth organizations, Wilson explains the dangers men face in our culture’s definition of “masculinity” and gives listeners hope that healing is possible.

God’s people are hiding in plain sightTens of millions of Christians live in China today, leading double lives to hide from a government that relentlessly persecutes them. By day, Bob Fu was a teacher in a communist school; by night, he was a preacher in an underground house church network. This edge-of-your-seat book tells the true story of Fu’s conversion to Christianity, his arrest and imprisonment for starting an illegal house church, his harrowing escape, and his subsequent rise to prominence in the United States as an advocate for his oppressed brethren.

According to the establishment media, the intelligentsia, and our political chattering class, the greatest threat to American freedom lies in right-wing authoritarianism. We’ve heard that some 75 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump represent the rise of American fascism; that conservatives have allowed authoritarianism to bloom in their midst, creating a grave danger for the republic.

When a murderous psychopath goes on a killing spree, law enforcement officials and the media never make his religion the central issue - unless he happens to be a Muslim. Then it sets off another frenzied wave of commentary about the inherent evils that lurk within the Muslim faith. From Fox News talking heads, who regularly smear Muslim leaders as secret terrorists, to Bill Maher, who has made Islam a routine target, it has become widely acceptable to libel a religion with a following of over 1.5 billion people.

Deep down, most people think that happiness comes from having or doing something. Here, in Alan Watts’s groundbreaking third book (originally published in 1940), he offers a more challenging thesis: authentic happiness comes from embracing life as a whole in all its contradictions and paradoxes, an attitude that Watts calls the “way of acceptance.” Drawing on Eastern philosophy, Western mysticism, and analytic psychology, Watts demonstrates that happiness comes from accepting both the outer world around us and the inner world inside us,

Are you someone who was raised going to church every Saturday or Sunday? Were your religious beliefs conditioned by someone else, like your parents? Guardians? Family or friends?

Profiled on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, Iranian-born scholar Vali Nasr has become one of America's leading commentators on current events in the Middle East, admired and welcomed by both media and government for his "concise and coherent" analysis (Wall Street Journal). In this "smart, clear and timely" book (Washington Post), Nasr brilliantly dissects the political and theological antagonisms within Islam. He provides a unique and objective understanding of the 1,400-year bitter struggle between Shias and Sunnis, and sheds crucial light on its modern-day consequences—from the nuclear posturing of Iran's President Ahmadinejad to the recent U.S.-enabled shift toward Shia power in Iraq and Hezbollah's continued dominance in Lebanon.

Amid escalating nuclear tensions, Kim Jong-un and North Korea's other leaders have kept a tight grasp on their one-party state, quashing any nascent opposition movements and sending all suspected dissidents to its brutal concentration camps for "re-education". Kang Chol-Hwan is the first survivor of one of these camps to escape and tell his story to the world, documenting the extreme conditions in these gulags and providing a personal insight into life in North Korea.

In It's Dangerous to Believe, Mary Eberstadt documents how people of faith - especially Christians who adhere to traditional religious beliefs - face widespread discrimination in today's increasingly secular society. Eberstadt details how recent laws, court decisions, and intimidation on campuses and elsewhere threaten believers who fear losing their jobs, their communities, and their basic freedoms solely because of their convictions.