Religious Right

The modern conception of sacrifice is at once cast as a victory of self-discipline over desire and condescended to as destructive and archaic abnegation. But even in the Old Testament, the dual natures of sacrifice, embodying both ritual slaughter and moral rectitude, were at odds. In this analysis, Terry Eagleton makes a compelling argument that the idea of sacrifice has long been misunderstood. Pursuing the complex lineage of sacrifice in a lyrical discourse, Eagleton focuses on the Old and New Testaments, offering a virtuosic analysis of the crucifixion.

For too long the subject of religion has been politicized by the right and largely ignored by the left, as American churches have become increasingly more concerned with what people do with their bodies than with their souls. Now Kathleen Kennedy Townsend issues a spiritual call to arms to all those who feel that churches in America today, Catholic and Protestant alike, are failing America's faithful.

In this brilliantly analytical yet personal book, nondemocratic societies are put under a microscope to reveal the mechanics of tyranny that sustain them. In exposing the inner workings of a "fear society", the authors explain why democracy is not beyond any nation's reach, why it is essential for our security, and why there is much that can be done to promote it around the world.

New York Times best-selling author Carl Anderson has gathered together many of his most thought-provoking speeches, articles, and essays that lay bare the facts of the state's unjustified restriction of religious beliefs. The power of his words makes it clear that if nothing is done now, there will continue to be more erosion of these special freedoms set forth by our Founding Fathers.

In 1957, Melba Beals was one of the nine African American students chosen to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. But her story of overcoming didn't start - or end - there. While her white schoolmates were planning their senior prom, Melba was facing the business end of a double-barreled shotgun, being threatened with lynching by rope-carrying tormentors, and learning how to outrun white supremacists who were ready to kill her rather than sit beside her in a classroom. Only her faith in God sustained her.

Baptism, marriage, burial, hitting for the cycle. Portal to tomb. Assassinated seminary classmate, close friends with Watergate figures, African odyssey, divorce, remarriage, all in the shadow of inevitable, impending death. Does death make hash of all our efforts? Is there a dimension beyond what we know? Can normal people access it? As we burn down our culture's best achievements can we do something more useful than mourn? Come along on this holy roller coaster. You may recognize the highs and lows.

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.

These are the firsthand accounts of sisters Helen and Barbara Shores about growing up with their father, Arthur Shores, a prominent Civil Rights attorney, during the 60s in the Jim Crow south Birmingham district - a frequent target of the Ku Klux Klan. Between 1948 and 1963, some 50 unsolved Klan bombings happened in Smithfield where the Shores family lived, earning their neighborhood the nickname “Dynamite Hill.” Due to his work, Shores’ daughter, Barbara, barely survived a kidnapping attempt.

In 2009, the Good News Club came to the public elementary school where journalist Katherine Stewart sent her children. The Club, which is sponsored by the Child Evangelism Fellowship, bills itself as an after-school program of "Bible study." But Stewart soon discovered that the Club's real mission is to convert children to fundamentalist Christianity and encourage them to proselytize to their "unchurched" peers, all the while promoting the natural but false impression among the children that its activities are endorsed by the school.

This provocative audiobook addresses one of the most enduring puzzles in political philosophy and constitutional theory - why is religion singled out for preferential treatment in both law and public discourse? Why, for example, can a religious soup kitchen get an exemption from zoning laws in order to expand its facilities to better serve the needy, while a secular soup kitchen with the same goal cannot?

Religious-liberty lawyer Asma Uddin has long considered her work defending people of all faiths to be a calling more than a job. Yet even as she seeks equal protection for Evangelicals, Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, Native Americans, Jews, and Catholics alike, she has seen an ominous increase in attempts to criminalize Islam and exclude American Muslims from their inalienable rights. Somehow, the view that Muslims aren’t human enough for human rights or constitutional protections is moving from the fringe to the mainstream - along with the claim “Islam is not a religion.”

Throughout history, the war between good and evil has influenced humanity. Originally created in the image of the good father, mankind fell to sin because of the influence of the bad father of lies, Satan. Now as humanity approaches the second coming of Jesus Christ and the end of this war between good and evil, you must now make a decision either to follow the good father to eternal life, or the way of the bad father that leads to death.

Sixteen-year-old Jules Blaze, an heir of a Keeper, awakes one night to news of death. His beloved grandparents have drowned. His father is at war. And his mother has been kidnapped. When ravens attack him and his siblings, Jules suspect it is the beginning of the end of the normal life his people, the Elfies, have been used to. It is one thing to be cursed, reduced to be an inch tall, but when the Lord of Shadows, Gehzurolle, with his powerful agents, Whisperer and Rage, are out to destroy his loved ones.

So Help Me God relates the compelling story of Chief Justice Roy Moore, including his controversial Ten Commandments displays, his refusal to obey an unlawful order of a federal court, and why the critical legal and political question of our time is, 'Can the state acknowledge God?'

Fifteen-year-old Carolyn Maull McKinstry was just a few feet away when the Klan - planted bomb that killed four of her friends exploded in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. It was one of the seminal moments in the Civil Rights movement, a sad day in American history…and the turning point in a young girl's life.

How does the First Amendment really work? Is it a principle or a value? What is hate speech and should it always be banned? Are we free to declare our religious beliefs in the public square? What role, if any, should companies like Facebook play in policing the exchange of thoughts, ideas, and opinions? With clarity and power, Stanley Fish explores these complex questions in The First.

The Obama administration’s overreaching and pervasive secularist policies represent the greatest government-directed assault on religious freedom in American history. So argues conservative movement leader Phyllis Schlafly and journalist George Neumayr. In No Higher Power, Schlafly and Neumayr show how Obama is waging war on our religious liberties and actively working to create one nation under him rather than one nation under God.

In the wake of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Fuller Seminary theologian William Pannell decried the then-popular sentiment among White evangelicals that racism was no longer an urgent matter. In The Coming Race Wars? he meticulously unpacked reasons why our nation - and the church - needed to come to terms with our complicity in America's racial transgressions before we face a more dire reckoning. Critics in 1993 dismissed him as alarmist. Here, Pannell revisits his provocative message with an expanded edition that connects its message to current events.

Those seeking to lead a spiritual life, or just wondering how to become more spiritual may become inspired towards serving others, or giving Seva (selfless service). One might be left wondering, "Is service to humanity a higher means to make a donation - or should I simply donate to charity? What are the best charities to donate to, or to serve? How does Seva support my spiritual development? Is there spiritual power and spiritual transformation to be gained through it?"

Nuzi, Women's Rights and Hurrian Ethnicity And Other Academic Essays is the first book in the Hermit Kingdom Studies in Identity and Society series. The academic research publication series seeks to examine the question of identity and its relation to society. The research publication project promotes creative new approaches to thinking about identity as well as a combination of traditional academic methodologies.