Sociology Religion

Religious involvement has been declining in the West for decades—and, though men have historically outnumbered women among the disaffiliated in the U.S., a greater share of the young adults leaving religion today are women. A young, secular Kelsey Osgood would have been surprised to hear that she would be among those moving in the opposite direction. And yet, after the conversion to Orthodox Judaism that transformed her life, she began to wonder about the other contemporary women who, like her, had been startled to find a home in organized religion.

Something unimaginable occurred from 1764 to 1767 in the remote highlands of south-central France. For three years, a real-life monster, or monsters, ravaged the region, slaughtering by some accounts more than 100 people, mostly women and children, and inflicting severe injuries upon many others.

Death. It happens to everyone, yet most of us don't want to talk about this final chapter of existence. Sixth-generation funeral director Caleb Wilde intimately understands this reticence and fear. The son of an undertaker, he hesitated to embrace the legacy of running his family's business. Yet he discovered that caring for the deceased and their loved ones profoundly changed his faith and his perspective on death - and life itself.

C.H. Spurgeon, in 1800s England, said "Everywhere there is apathy. Nobody cares whether that which is preached is true or false. A sermon is a sermon whatever the subject; only, the shorter it is the better." Until all that changes, until we return to our calling to go into all the world and preach the Gospel without shame, the Church is in danger of losing its impact on society. And that would be our generation's greatest loss.

Is it possible to disagree politically and love unconditionally? The reaction of evangelicals to political and cultural shifts in recent years revealed what they value most. Lurking beneath our Bible-laced rhetoric, faith claims, books, and sermons is a relentless drive to WIN! But the church is not here to win. By every human measure, our Savior lost. On purpose. With a purpose. And we are his body. We are not in it to win anything. We are in it for something else entirely. That something else is what this book is about.

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.

Why You Think the Way You Do traces the development of the worldviews that underpin the Western world. Professor and historian Glenn S. Sunshine demonstrates the decisive impact that the growth of Christianity had in transforming the outlook of pagan Roman culture into one that—based on biblical concepts of humanity and its relationship with God—established virtually all the positive aspects of Western civilization.

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.

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.

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.

This book is for everyone who has a father. And for all those who know what it's like to long for a father's blessing: his approval, affection, and attention. It's for anyone who's ever longed to hear your dad say, "I love you. I'm so proud of you." You may already know what it's like to live in the rays of such a blessing, to flourish in the marvelous light of a father's love. Yet, in this "fatherless generation", it's also likely you've never known the blessing of your earthly dad.

R. Andrew Chesnut offers a fascinating portrayal of Santa Muerte, a skeleton saint whose cult has attracted millions of devotees over the past decade. Although condemned by mainstream churches, this folk saint's supernatural powers appeal to millions of Latin Americans and immigrants in the US. Devotees believe the Bony Lady (as she is affectionately called) to be the fastest and most effective miracle worker, and as such, her statuettes and paraphernalia outsell those of the Virgin of Guadalupe and Saint Jude, two other giants of Mexican religiosity.

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.

In 1979, a fiery preacher named Jane Whaley attracted a small group of followers with a promise that she could turn their lives around. In the years since, Whaley’s following has expanded to include thousands of congregants across three continents. Based on hundreds of interviews, secretly recorded conversations, and thousands of pages of documents, Pulitzer Prize winner Mitch Weiss and Holbrook Mohr’s Broken Faith is a terrifying portrait life inside the Word of Faith Fellowship, and the harrowing account of one family who escaped after two decades.

Despite Jesus' prayer that all Christians "be one", divisions have been epidemic in the body of Christ from the beginning to the present. We cluster in theological groups, gender groups, age groups, ethnic groups, educational, and economic groups. We criticize freely those who disagree with us, don't look like us, don't act like us, and don't even like what we like. With a personal touch and the trained eye of a social psychologist, Cleveland brings to bear the latest studies and research on the unseen dynamics at work that tend to separate us from others.

Why has Christianity, a religion premised upon neighborly love, failed in its attempts to heal social divisions? In this ambitious and wide-ranging work, Willie James Jennings delves deep into the late medieval soil in which the modern Christian imagination grew, to reveal how Christianity's highly refined process of socialization has inadvertently created and maintained segregated societies.

Recent years have seen a growing recognition of the role that White Christian Nationalism plays in American society. As White Christian Nationalism has become a major force, and as racial and religious attitudes become increasingly aligned among whites-for example, the more likely you are to say that the decline of white people as a share of the population is "bad for society," the more likely you are to believe the government should support religious values-it has become reasonable to wonder which of the adjectives in the phrase "White Christian Nationalism" takes precedence.

The Child Catchers is a shocking exposé of what the adoption industry has become and how it got there, told through deep investigative reporting and the heartbreaking stories of individuals who became collateral damage in a market driven by profit and, now, pulpit command. Anyone who seeks to adopt - of whatever faith or no faith, and however well-meaning - is affected by the evangelical adoption movement, whether they know it or not. Joyce reveals with great sensitivity and empathy why, if we truly care for children, we need to see more clearly.

Religion lurks in the floorboards of our daily lives, whether we want it to or not. A departure from more traditional approaches to "Religion 101," Religion Is Not Done with You gives thought-provoking context to the basics of religious studies by challenging listeners to consider the origins of their assumptions about religion and broaden their perspectives on what religion is and does. Religion scholars and Keeping It 101 podcast duo Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst and Megan Goodwin offer their straightforward, plainspoken overviews of religious studies theory.

In March of 1980, college senior Peter Panagore went ice climbing on the world-famous Lower Weeping Wall, along the Ice Fields Parkway in Alberta, Canada. His climbing partner was an experienced ice climber, but Panagore was a novice. On their descent, they became trapped on the side of the mountain. As the sun set, he was overcome by exhaustion and hypothermia. He died on the side of that mountain in 1980. In his minutes on the other side, he experienced hell, forgiveness, and unconditional love.