Religious Fundamentalism

Eye-opening accounts of heroic resistance to religious extremism. From Karachi to Tunis, Kabul to Tehran, across the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, and beyond, these trailblazers often risked death to combat the rising tide of fundamentalism within their own countries. But this global community of writers, artists, doctors, musicians, museum curators, lawyers, activists, and educators of Muslim heritage remains largely invisible, lost amid the heated coverage of Islamist terror attacks on one side and abuses perpetrated against suspected terrorists on the other.

Must you believe something to be saved? Does the kingdom of God include non-Christians? Is hell for real and forever? These are big questions. Hard questions. Questions that divide Christians along conservative and liberal lines. Conservatives love their beliefs and liberals believe in their love. Each pushes the other to opposite extremes. Fundamentalists imply that it doesn’t matter how we live as long as we believe in Jesus, while some Emergent Christians respond that it doesn’t matter what we believe as long as we live like him.

In the history of the Moody Bible Institute, founded in 1886 by shoe salesman turned revivalist Dwight Lyman Moody, Timothy Gloege finds an answer to why Christian ethics seem to go hand in hand with free-market capitalism.

We're made to look passive, dissociated, and defeated. If we're not pot-bellied beer drinkers or egoistic morons, no one wants to watch the broadcast. What happened to John Wayne, Matt Dillon, and G.I. Joe? Men who knew their strengths, understood their roles, believed in hard-nosed Christian values. Well, they're not dead; in fact, they're alive and well buried inside each one of us, waiting to emerge like the heroes they are. All they need is a reminder of what our God-given nature is. It's time for us to go back to the very beginning and dissect exactly who we are as men.

The Scarlet Virgins is a memoir of one woman's journey through the Christian Purity Movement. It wrestles with the experiences and temptations of her and her peers, including the temptation of apostasy, addiction, alcoholism, anorexia, depression, self-harm, and suicide. The author seeks to restore the truth to broken souls: It is Christ who makes us pure.

The Chinese New Year is certainly an interesting time of year, not just for those that celebrate it first-hand but for anyone to witness or observe as an important global phenomenon. The changing date of the holiday fluctuates from January to February on today's calendar because, as with all traditional Chinese holidays, it follows the lunar calendar. This tradition can be seen throughout parts of Asia and is not limited to just the mainland of China.

Have you cringed at the grisly sight of a chopped off right or left hand? Or perhaps you are someone who was taught to believe such actions are sanctioned by God or Allah? If so, where did you get this belief?