Sociology Religion

It's not your imagination: civilized human society is collapsing. Communities no longer work toward a common good; children are no longer our first priority; businesses no longer value hard work; arts and skills have been lost; and gender is decided by the individual, not biology. We cannot reverse national and global trends, says professor Anthony Esolen, but we can build communities that live up to humanity's promise and responsibility.

Gazing at the stars, falling in love, or listening to music, we sometimes feel a transcendent connection with a cosmic unity and things larger than ourselves. But these experiences are not easily understood by science, which holds that all things can be explained in terms of atoms and molecules. Is there space in our scientific worldview for these spiritual experiences?

Taking America Back for God points to the phenomenon of "Christian nationalism," the belief that the United States is - and should be - a Christian nation. At its heart, Christian nationalism demands that we must preserve a particular kind of social order, an order in which everyone - Christians and non-Christians, native-born and immigrants, whites and minorities, men and women - recognizes their "proper" place in society.

The religious right taught America to misread the Bible. Christians have misused Scripture to consolidate power, stoke fears, and defend against enemies. But people who have been hurt by the attacks of Christian nationalism can help us rediscover God's vision for faith in public life. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove explores how religious culture wars have misrepresented Christianity at the expense of the poor, and how listening to marginalized communities can help us hear God's call to love and justice in the world.

If the Oceans Were Ink is Carla Power's eye-opening story of how she and her longtime friend, Sheikh Mohammad Akram Nadwi, found a way to confront ugly stereotypes and persistent misperceptions that were cleaving their communities. Their friendship - between a secular American and a madrasa-trained sheikh - had always seemed unlikely, but now they were frustrated and bewildered by the battles being fought in their names.

Lords of Chaos focuses on the scene surrounding the extreme heavy metal subgenre black metal in Norway in the early 1990s, with a focus on the string of church burnings and murders that occurred in the country around 1993.

Sharing his more than three decades of research into the afterlife and paranormal phenomena, award-winning documentary filmmaker Daniel Drasin shows that the continuity of human consciousness beyond the physical body and after death constitutes a legitimate area of scientific inquiry and that it can be objectively demonstrated. Drasin begins by revealing how our belief in materialism—through its effects on our social norms, taboos, and even language—has deeply constrained our civilization’s understanding of the nature of space, time, life, death, and consciousness.

These are crazy times, people. We are more agitated than ever. We’re fighting. Wrestling with big issues. Less connected than ever to one another and to God. It’s a perfect storm: debilitating anxiety, crashing relationships, and forgetting what it feels like to, well, be human. In How to Human, author, speaker, and social-media personality Carlos Whittaker offers a fresh vision for becoming the best versions of ourselves. We can refuse to let disagreements define us. We can say no to becoming upset, rage-filled humans and say yes to fuller, happier lives.

Virus of the Mind is the first popular work devoted to the science of memetics, a controversial new field that transcends psychology, biology, anthropology, and cognitive science. Memetics is the science of memes, the invisible but very real DNA of human society. Here, the author carefully builds on the work of scientists Richard Dawkins, Douglas Hofstadter, Daniel Dennett, and others who have become fascinated with memes and their potential impact on our lives.

In this provocative book one of the most brilliant scholars of religion today dismantles distorted religious "histories" offered up by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and other contemporary critics of religion and advocates of atheism. David Bentley Hart provides a bold correction of the New Atheists’s misrepresentations of the Christian past, countering their polemics with a brilliant account of Christianity and its message of human charity as the most revolutionary movement in all of Western history.

The debate between science and religion is never out of the news: Emotions run high, fueled by polemical best sellers like The God Delusion and, at the other end of the spectrum, high-profile campaigns to teach "Intelligent Design" in schools. Yet there is much more to the debate than the clash of these extremes. As Thomas Dixon shows in this balanced and thought-provoking introduction, many have seen harmony rather than conflict between faith and science.

If you caught a glimpse of heaven, would you choose to comeback to life?

Investigative journalist Judy Bachrach has collected accounts of those who died and then returned to life with lucid, vivid memories of what occurred while they were dead, and the conclusions are astonishing. Clinical death - the moment when the heart stops beating and brain stem activity ceases - is not necessarily the end of consciousness, as a number of doctors are now beginning to concede.

Through in-depth conversations with spiritually fluid people, renowned scholar Duane Bidwell explores how people come to claim and be claimed by multiple religious traditions, how spiritually fluid people engage radically opposed truth claims, and what this growing population tells us about change within our communities.

Religion is at the heart of man’s societies. ‘For a long time,’ Durkheim writes early on in his book, ‘it has been known that the first systems of representations with which men have pictured to themselves the world and themselves were of religious origin.’ Durkheim decided to examine how and why this phenomenon functioned and evolved - by looking specifically at simple societies and their religions, rather than at religions in more complex or developed societies.

Physician Ed Wheat has helped thousands of couples improve their love lives and build happier marriages. In Love Life for Every Married Couple, he'll help you improve your marriage through sharing, touching, appreciating, and focusing healing attention on your mate. Answering physical, psychological, and stress-related questions in a Christian context, Dr. Wheat demonstrates how to bring your feelings of love back to life.

There is a war being waged on the soul of America, but Phil Robertson believes there is hope. Your Daily Phil compiles readings taken from Phil Robertson's bestselling books The Theft of America's Soul and Jesus Politics, along with newly added prayers and Bible verses, to give you 100 daily devotions. These devotions encourage you and show you how you can turn away from the lies of the devil and embrace the life-giving, healing, and wholly transforming love of God, helping to bring the kingdom of heaven to your home, neighborhood, church, community, and country.

By the numbers, the American church enjoys the resources to profoundly impact the Kingdom. But despite the rapid growth of these evangelical movements, the church in the West is in decline. A growing schism has emerged between the movement with a strong emphasis on attracting people and the more missional communities that focus on releasing people into ministry. Hugh Halter and Matt Smay bring fresh encouragement to church leaders and invite them to move beyond the attractional-missional divide by utilizing the best insights from both perspectives.

A sparklingly strange odyssey through the kaleidoscope of America's new spirituality: the cults, practices, high priests, and prophets of our supposedly post-religion age.

At the dawn of the 21st century, dizzying scientific and technological advancements, interconnected globalized economies, and even the so-called New Atheists have done nothing to change one thing: our world remains furiously religious. For good and for evil, religion is the single greatest influence in the world. In God Is Not One, Prothero provides listeners with much-needed content about each of the eight great world religions.

Freshly translated from the original German into todays English, this book contains a treasury of devotionals taken from Luthers writings and sermons (1513 to 1546), conveniently divided into daily readings to point readers to the Bible and a deeper understanding of faith.