Sociology Religion

The hour is critical. The American republic is suffering its gravest crisis since the Civil War. Conflicts, hostility, and incivility now threaten to tear the country apart. Competing visions have led to a dangerous moment of cultural self-destruction. This is no longer politics as usual, but an era of political warfare where our enemies are not foreign adversaries, but our fellow citizens. Yet the roots of the crisis are deeper than many realize. Os Guinness argues that we face a fundamental crisis of freedom, as America's genius for freedom has become her Achilles' heel.

If you are speaking across generations, you need to understand how different generations hear. Pastor Darrell Hall (a millennial) harnesses the insights of generational science to explore how generations are distinct people groups with their own cultures and languages. With fresh research from the Barna Group on how generations communicate, Hall sheds light on how each generation receives verbal messages, from boomers and Xers to millennials and Gen Z and those not yet named.

10 Great Dates revolutionizes dating by providing you with 10 innovative great dates based on marriage enriching themes guaranteed to energize your relationship with fun, friendship, and romance.

The #MeToo movement has revealed sexual abuse and assault in every sphere of society, including the church. But victims are routinely ignored by fellow Christians who deny their accounts and fail to bring accountability to the perpetrators. All too often, churches have been complicit in protecting abusers, reinforcing patriarchal power dynamics, and creating cultures of secrecy, shame, and silence.

The case for assisted suicide can seem so compelling. Surely it can't be wrong to help desperate people to kill themselves? Don't we have a right to take our own lives in certain circumstances? There are no trite or easy answers. John Wyatt helps us to navigate the arguments with hearts and heads engaged, and above all with our Bibles open. There are practical and compassionate alternatives to assisted suicide, and as many who have gone before us have found, the end of our lives on this earth may turn out to be a strange and wonderful opportunity for growth and internal healing.

In this groundbreaking new book, acclaimed researcher and author George Barna identifies, describes, and analyzes seven major "faith tribes" in America - documenting who they are, what they believe, how they vote, and what they are passionate about. Barna provides helpful insight into how these groups influence our economy, politics, and values - and what their potential is to change America.

Mainstream perceptions about what it means to be Buddhist in America often whitewash and invisibilize the diverse, inclusive, and intersectional communities that lie at the heart of American Buddhism. Be the Refuge is both critique and celebration, calling out the erasure of Asian-American Buddhists while uplifting the complexity and nuance of their authentic stories and vital, thriving communities. Drawn from in-depth interviews with a pan-ethnic, pan-Buddhist group, Be the Refuge is the first book to center young Asian-American Buddhists' own voices.

First-century Christians knew what it meant to live in vital community with one another, relating with a depth and commitment that made "the body of Christ" a perfect metaphor for the church. What would it take to reclaim that kind of love, joy, support, and dynamic spiritual growth? Listen to this book and find out.

Philip Gardiner has spent his life on a crusade uncovering the truth behind myths, legends and ancient mysteries. Author of the best selling Secrets of the Serpent and The Ark, the Shroud and Mary, the author now delves into another aspect of the human enigma with Secret Societies. In Secret Societies, Gardiner's quest is to uncover truths and secrets of the world's most powerful men in history.

You're not crazy! The problems that make you feel like you’re broken and can’t be fixed, stem from “negative memory engrams.” You can’t see them or touch them, but you can feel them, and they're running you today! Negative memory engrams can aid your progress or limit it severely! They determine your fears, phobias, and cravings. They’re behind they ways you relate to other people, especially those closest to you. They can even determine how fast you learn and your level of success. When you heal negative memory engrams dysfunction can't hold you hostage any more!

Told with equal parts raw honesty and unbridled compassion, All Day recounts a year in Liza Jessie Peterson's classroom at Island Academy, the high school for inmates detained at New York City's Rikers Island. A poet and an actress who had done occasional workshops at the correctional facility, Peterson was ill prepared for a full-time stint teaching in the GED program for the incarcerated youths.

Drawing inspiration from philosophy, history, and literature, Martha C. Nussbaum takes us to task for our religious intolerance, identifies the fear behind it, and offers a way past fear toward a more equitable, imaginative, and free society, through the consistent application of universal principles of respect for conscience.

Hoy la Iglesia vive una situación muy difícil. ¿Se trata de otra de las muchas crisis que ha vivido el cristianismo o de un declive definitivo? Crisis no quiere decir necesariamente final, argumenta Riccardi en este impecable y minucioso retrato de la iglesia actual. La crisis puede ser una oportunidad para abrirse al futuro, renacer, sabiendo que el gran riesgo consiste en contentarse con sobrevivir o en añorar un pasado que se cree mejor. Hoy, la iglesia está llamada a una condición de lucha, esta vez no contra enemigos externos sino contra la indiferencia y el descrédito.

Dr. Ben Carson is known around the world for breakthroughs in neurosurgery that have brought hope where no hope existed. In Gifted Hands, he tells of his inspiring odyssey from his childhood in inner-city Detroit to his position as director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions at age 33. Filled with fascinating case histories, Gifted Hands will transplant you into the operating room to witness surgeries that made headlines around the world, and into the private mind of a compassionate, God-fearing physician who lives to help others.

What does it mean when God is presented as male? What does it mean when - from our internal assumptions to our shared cultural imaginings - God is presented as white? These are the urgent questions Chine McDonald asks in a searing look at her experience of being a Black woman in the white-majority space that is the UK church - a church that is being abandoned by Black women no longer able to grin and bear its casual racism, colonialist narratives and lack of urgency on issues of racial justice.

For fifty years “Detroit” has been shorthand for all that's wrong with urban America: crime, corruption, decay, racial tension, struggling businesses, failing schools, a declining tax base, and more. Since 1950 Detroit has lost two-thirds of its population, falling from fifth place in the U.S. (just behind Los Angeles) to twenty-fourth (just behind Nashville). Between 2000 and 2017 alone, its population fell 28%, a steeper drop than any other major American city.

Tracing the intersection of religion, race, and power in Texas from Reconstruction through the rise of the Religious Right and the failed presidential bid of Governor Rick Perry, Rough Country illuminates American history since the Civil War in new ways, demonstrating that Texas' story is also America’s. In particular, Robert Wuthnow shows how distinctions between "us" and "them" are perpetuated and why they are so often shaped by religion and politics.

The United States is in the middle of an unprecedented spiritual, technological, demographic, political and social transformation—moving from an older, mostly white, mostly Protestant, religion-friendly society to a younger diverse, multiethnic, pluralistic culture, where no one faith group will have the advantage. At the same time, millions of Americans are abandoning organized religion altogether in favor of disorganized disbelief. Reorganized Religion is an in-depth and critical look at why people are leaving American churches and what we lose as a society as it continues.

In a sweeping synthesis of new research in a number of different disciplines, this book argues that we humans are not who we think we are. As he explores the interconnections between cutting-edge work in bioanthropology, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, human language and learning, and beyond, James Paul Gee advances, also, a personal philosophy of language, learning, and culture, informed by his decades of work across linguistics and the social sciences.

Sonic Encounters: The Islamic Call to Prayer recounts the author’s experience gathering field recordings of the Islamic Call to Prayer. It touches on key questions and problems faced along the way, as well as discussing technologies and methods for recording, what it means to develop art from ethnographic research, and the ethics and considerations of working with Islamic communities around the globe. The book uses a sound studies framework to explore artistic research methods and practices in ethnography as they relate to religious recitation.