Spirituality Social Change

For over two decades, Skot Welch has been a key advisor on diversity and inclusion around the world, in everything from the arts and entertainment to the church to Fortune 500 companies. With wisdom and a humble graciousness, he challenges us to rethink the way we talk about race and ethnicity, empowering you to celebrate both your identity in Christ and diverse cultural makeup; embrace a new kingdom language that is biblically grounded and culturally relevant; explore a Christ-centered perspective on hard but crucial questions; and build a united, diverse community.

The next generation will face the reality that human activity is changing the planet from one geological epoch to another. From this vantage point—two generations across two geological epochs facing a fundamentally changing planet—Larry Rasmussen writes to his grandchildren. As a grandfather invested in a green earth and climate justice as well as a scholar of faith-based earth ethics, Rasmussen bridges this gap between generations to write to the future about climate change, global citizenship, democracy, and legacy.

Mark McKnelly presents a restorative approach to transforming lives that is based on biblical principles and real-world experience. There is no need to be overwhelmed or deterred, for there is a way to restore lives with those in extreme poverty that is as fruitful as it is rewarding. Begin listening to Change for the Poor today and prepare to become a meaningful part of transforming lives—including your own—in a lasting way!

What Brian McLaren sets forth in this provocative, unsettling work is a "form of Christian faith that is holistic, integral, balanced, that offers good news for both the living and the dying, that speaks of God's grace at work both in this life and the life to come, both to individuals and to societies and the planet as a whole."

Who you really are as an individual is exactly what delights God and what the world needs. Lynne Hybels knows. Sharing from her personal journey, she reveals the tremendous importance of resisting the forces that would shape you into something otherand lessthan who God made you to be.

Barbara Crain Major and Joseph Barndt bring ninety combined years of experience as community organizers, teachers, and anti-racism trainers in community and church settings to this book. In Deconstructing Racism, they propose the deconstruction of racism's roots within systems and institutions that have been created, both structurally and legally, to serve white people.

Nick grew up on a typical American farm in the heart of the great Midwest. But when his best friend in college invites him into a romantic relationship, Nick's life takes an unexpected twist. Join Nick as he explores and experiences all the glorious, unpredictable, and multi-faceted dimensions of a life lived in love - love with men, love with women, and even love with God Himself. Filled with passion and romance, heartbreak and sex, you'll always be yearning for more!

We all need to make a retreat. To find a few moments in our busy lives to try to stop worrying and fretting about so many different things, and to sit in silence at God’s feet and just to listen. A retreat is simply an attempt to see beyond the 101 cares and occupations we normally have and to ask ourselves, ‘Where it is all leading? What’s the purpose of it all?’ Time to Change takes the basic format and principles of The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius and allows us to make a retreat without interrupting too much your ordinary daily life and all the things you have to do.

It is 1998, and Richard Stearns’s heart is breaking as he sits in a mud hut and listens to the story of an orphaned child in Rakai, Uganda. His journey to this place took more than a long flight from the United States to Africa. It took answering God’s call on his life, a call that hurtled him out of his corner office at Lenox - America’s finest tableware company - to this humble corner of Uganda. This is a story of how a corporate CEO faced his struggle to obey God, whatever the cost, and his passionate call for Christians to change the world by actively living out their faith.

Radical theology and political theology are terms that have gained a lot of currency among philosophers of religion today. In this visionary new book, Jeffrey W. Robbins explores the contemporary direction of these movements as he charts a course for their future. Robbins claims that radical theology is no longer bound by earlier thinking about God and that it must be conceived of as post-secular and post-liberal.

In the Encyclical on Climate Change and Inequality, the beloved pope exhorts the world to combat environmental degradation and its impact on the poor. In a stirring, clarion call that is not merely aimed at Catholic listeners but rather at a wide, lay audience, the pope cites the overwhelming scientific evidence of climate change and does not hesitate to detail how it is the result of a historic level of unequal distribution of wealth.

Pope Francis met with French reporter and sociologist Dominique Wolton for an unprecedented series of 12 fascinating and timely conversations - open dialogues revolving around the political, cultural, and religious issues dominating communication and conflict around the world - now published in A Future of Faith: The Path of Change in Politics and Society.

In Possible, he presents clear and biblical thinking, powerful stories, and practical tools for sustainably impacting our workplaces, neighborhoods, villages, and cities. Possible is an eloquent and personal call to reconsider what it means to change ourselves so we can change the world.

Psychologists Dr Miguel Farias and Catherine Wikholm explore the human ambition for personal change and its possible illusions, with a focus on yoga and meditation. They examine the psychological and biological evidence, from early research on transcendental meditation to recent brain-imaging studies on mindfulness. They also include personal accounts from practitioners, as well as recounting their own experiences of testing the effects of meditation and yoga on incarcerated criminals.

The news and media are full of discussions about religious radicals. Their extreme actions dominate our headlines and political conversations because their behavior is so far from society's comfort zone. Much of this kind of behavior that we see is negative and destructive, but maybe there's something we can do about it. Perhaps it's time to think about a different kind of religious radicalism.

In the midst of our turbulent, conflicted modern life, how do we find a sense of peace and harmony so that we can navigate through this world without breaking down? The ancient philosophy of Tao has been giving us the tools to do this for centuries. Not only does it offer a set of techniques with which to achieve happiness, but it actually invokes a mental shift which results in a transformed mindset. Despite being an ancient philosophy, Tao is as practical and applicable today as it was centuries ago.

Daniel Day could tell you all about his love for God and his desire to live as a follower of Jesus. But it took a simple but radical experiment to move from simply talking about it to actually living like it. For ten days at a time, Daniel chose to abandon a certain "necessity" - a coat, a voice, shoes, media, furniture, legs, touch - and to blog about it to raise funds and awareness for organizations that are doing amazing things to make a difference in the world.

If you take a ride down the rabbit hole with Joey, he can show you that the path to true peace is infinitely simpler and more accessible than you've ever imagined. There are no complicated mantras involved, just a simple leap of faith and a straightforward shift in your habits. Throughout the book he carefully explains how to strip away the façade of what we imagine peace to be and reveals the reality of what peace actually is. He then shows us the absolute ease with which this peace can be known beyond doubt.

Teens are busy exploring the world and their place within it. Many of them wonder about their purpose in life. They’re concerned about the environment and all the world’s problems, but they feel powerless to change anything because they’re just regular teenagers - right? Wrong. Some of the greatest changemakers in history were ordinary people who took small steps that led them to extraordinary things. Young people can start their journey now to becoming a hero in their own lives and change the world for the better.

When it comes to racial reconciliation, we often ask, “Where do we go from here?” But has it ever occurred to you that the real question is “Why are we still here?” In other words, until we’ve seen the problem of racism correctly—its history, its current effects, and its root causes—we aren’t equipped to head in the right direction. We’ll just keep falling into the same old patterns. The blind will lead the blind, and no one will have the vision to foster real change.