New Arrivals: BV 531 - BV 9999
Showing 1 - 17 of 17 new items.
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© 2017,Instant New York Times Bestseller "Anne Lamott is my Oprah." --Chicago Tribune The new bestseller from the author of Help, Thanks, Wow and Bird by Bird , a powerful exploration of mercy, its limitless (if sometimes hidden) presence, why we ignore it, and how we can embrace it. "Mercy is radical kindness," Anne Lamott writes in her enthralling and heartening book, Hallelujah Anyway . It's the permission you give others--and yourself--to forgive a debt, to absolve the unabsolvable, to let go of the judgment and pain that make life so difficult. In Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy Lamott ventures to explore where to find meaning in life. We should begin, she suggests, by "facing a great big mess, especially the great big mess of ourselves." It's up to each of us to recognize the presence and importance of mercy everywhere--"within us and outside us, all around us"--and to use it to forge a deeper understanding of ourselves and more honest connections with each other. While that can be difficult to do, Lamott argues that it's crucial, as "kindness towards others, beginning with myself, buys us a shot at a warm and generous heart, the greatest prize of all." Full of Lamott's trademark honesty, humor and forthrightness, Hallelujah Anyway is profound and caring, funny and wise--a hopeful book of hands-on spirituality. -
© 2013,It has long been acknowledged that Jews and Christians distinguished themselves through charity to the poor. How might we explain this difference? The author argues that the poor constituted the privileged place where Jews and Christians met God.
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© 2014,Julia Roberts on the red carpet at the Oscars. Lady Gaga singing "Applause" to worshipful fans at one of her sold-out concerts. And you and me in our Sunday best in the front row at church. What do we have in common? Chances are, says Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, that we all suffer from vainglory -- a keen desire for attention and approval. Although contemporary culture has largely forgotten about vainglory, it was on the original list of seven capital vices and is perhaps more dangerous than ever today. In Vainglory: The Forgotten Vice DeYoung tells the story of this vice, moving from its ancient origins to its modern expressions. She defines vainglory, gives examples from popular culture, explores motivational sources, and discusses other vices associated with it such as hypocrisy and boasting. After exposing the many ways in which vainglory can rear its ugly head, she explores personal spiritual practices that can help us resist it and community practices that can help us handle glory well.
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© 2016,NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * In his first book published as Pope, and in conjunction with the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, Pope Francis here invites all humanity to an intimate and personal dialogue on the subject closest to his heart--mercy--which has long been the cornerstone of his faith and is now the central teaching of his papacy. In this conversation with Vatican reporter Andrea Tornielli, Francis explains--through memories from his youth and moving anecdotes from his experiences as a pastor--why "mercy is the first attribute of God." God "does not want anyone to be lost. His mercy is infinitely greater than our sins," he writes. As well, the Church cannot close the door on anyone, Francis asserts--on the contrary, its duty is to go out into the world to find its way into the consciousness of people so that they can assume responsibility for, and move away from, the bad things they have done. The first Jesuit and the first South American to be elected Bishop of Rome, Pope Francis has traveled around the world spreading God's message of mercy to the largest crowds in papal history. Clear and profound, The Name of God Is Mercy resonates with this desire to reach all those who are looking for meaning in life, a road to peace and reconciliation, and the healing of physical and spiritual wounds. It is being published in more than eighty countries around the world. "The name of God is mercy. There are no situations we cannot get out of, we are not condemned to sink into quicksand."--Pope Francis Praise for The Name of God Is Mercy "Francis speaks succinctly--and with refreshing forthrightness. . . . He emphasizes moral sincerity over dogma, an understanding of the complexities of the world and individual experience over rigid doctrine. . . . The pope has an easy conversational style that moves effortlessly between folksy sayings and erudite allusions, between common-sense logic and impassioned philosophical insights." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "What makes his book most moving is the way in which this man, without disrespecting his own privacy or offering false bromides of modesty, opens the sacred space of his conscience to explain how he came to center his ministry, and now his papacy, around mercy." --James Carroll, The New Yorker "As he has done throughout his papacy, Pope Francis shows in this book a compelling way to present God's love anew to a skeptical world without denying the ancient teachings of faith. But now he is challenging the entire Church to trek a new way forward." -- Time "Francis enjoys sharing personal stories of God's grace and mercy in the lives of parishioners from his native Argentina, people he has known and who have recognized themselves as sinners." -- The Washington Post "Powerful . . . Francis's book signals a plea for a change of attitude on the part of the faithful and their pastors. . . . Bishops and priests will talk and quarrel over the text for months, even years to come. And that, perhaps, is what Francis intends." -- Financial Times "Deepens his calls for a more merciful Catholic Church . . . The question-and-answer book is told in simple, breezy language, with the pope referring to experiences and people in his own life." -- Newsday "Francis has offered his most detailed outline yet for the role of the Catholic church in the modern era." -- National Catholic Reporter Translated by Oonagh Stransky
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© 2015,Women in Christian Traditions offers a concise and accessible examination of the roles women have played in the construction and practice of Christian traditions, revealing the enormous debt that this major world religion owes to its female followers. It recovers forgotten and obscured moments in church history to help us to realize a richer and fuller understanding of Christianity. This text provides an overview of the complete sweep of Christian history through the lens of feminist scholarship. Yet it also departs from some of the assumptions of that scholarship, raising questions that challenge our thinking about how women have shaped beliefs and practices during two thousand years of church history. Did the emphasis on virginity in the early church empower Christian women? Did the emphasis on marriage during the Reformations of the sixteenth century improve their status? These questions and others have important implications for women in Christianity in particular, and for women in religion in general, since they go to the heart of the human condition. This work examines themes, movements, and events in their historical contexts and locates churchwomen within the broader developments that have been pivotal in the evolution of Christianity. From the earliest disciples to the latest theologians, from the missionaries to the martyrs, women have been instrumental in keeping the faith alive. Women in Christian Traditions shows how they did so. Instructor's Guide Additional Resources -
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© 2009,Studies in the History of Christian Missions/R. E. Frykenberg and Brian Stanley, series editors/The World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh in 1910 has come down in history as a unique event in the history of the Protestant missionary movement. Brian Stanley's book gives us a full and comprehensive account of the conference, doing so from the perspective of developments in the hundred years since the conference. His study should serve not only as a work of history but also as a work of theological reflection about mission as an ongoing international movement. I welcome this book as an important resource in the church's self-understanding and in its engagement with the world. Lamin Sanneh/Yale University/Edinburgh 1910 laid the foundations of interdenominational understanding for the ecumenical movement of the twentieth century. . . . With impeccable scholarship, Brian Stanley has written a thorough and revealing analysis of this epoch-making conference. David Bebbington/University of Stirling/An accomplished study revealing Stanley's deep scholarship and wide knowledge of the modern missionary movement. This book will surely become both a missionary and an ecumenical classic. David M. Thompson/Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge/This long-awaited book is the definitive history of the World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh in 1910. Stanley's thorough scholarship and elegant prose bring the conference to life and make a case for its enduring importance to the history of world Christianity. Scholars of missions, ecumenism, world religions, education, and Christian internationalism will find this superb study essential for their work. Dana L. Robert/Boston University School of Theology"
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© 2015,The gripping story of the American army chaplain sent to save the souls of the Nazis incarcerated at Nuremberg Lutheran minister Henry Gerecke was fifty years old when he enlisted as an army chaplain during World War II. As two of his three sons faced danger and death on the battlefield, Gerecke tended to the battered bodies and souls of wounded and dying GIs outside London. But at the close of the European theater, with Hitler defeated and scores of American troops returning home to resume their lives, Gerecke received his most challenging assignment: he was sent to Nuremberg to minister to the twenty-one imprisoned Nazi leaders awaiting trial for crimes against humanity. A crucial yet largely untold coda to the horrors of World War II, Mission at Nuremberg unearths groundbreaking new research and compelling firsthand accounts to take us deep inside the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, into the very cells of the accused and the courtroom where they answered to the world for their crimes. Never before in modern history had man accomplished mass slaughter with such precision. These twenty-one Nazis had sat at the right hand of Adolf Hitler; Hermann Goering, Albert Speer, Wilhelm Keitel, Hans Frank, and Ernst Kaltenbrunner were the orchestrators, and in some cases the direct perpetrators, of the most methodical genocide in history. As the drama leading to the court's final judgments unfolds, Tim Townsend brings Henry Gerecke's impossible moral quandary to life: How, having risked his own life (and those of his sons) to eliminate the Nazi threat, could he now win the confidence of these men? In the months after the war ended, Gerecke had visited Dachau. He had touched the walls of the camp's crematorium. He had seen the consequences of the choices these men had made, the orders they had given and carried out. As he worked to form compassionate relationships with them, how could he preach the gospel of mercy, knowing full well the devastating nature of the atrocities they had committed? And as the day came nearer when he had to escort these men to the gallows, what comfort could he offer--and what promises of salvation could he make--to evil itself? Detailed, harrowing, and emotionally charged, Mission at Nuremberg is an incisive new history of the Nuremberg trials as well as a nuanced reflection on the nature of morality and sin, the price of empathy, and the limits of forgiveness.
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© 2004,This is the only book that addresses the relations between religion, Protestant missions, and empire building, linking together all three fields of studyby taking as its starting point the early eighteenth century Anglican initiatives in colonial North America and the Caribbean. It considers how the early societies of the 1790s built on this inheritance, and extended their own interests to the Pacific, India, the Far East, and Africa. Fluctuations in the vigour and commitment of the missions, changing missionary theologies, and the emergence of alternative missionary strategies, are all examined for their impact on imperial expansion. Other themes include the international character of the missionary movement, Christianity's encounter with Islam, and major figures such as David Livingstone, the state and politics, and humanitarianism, all of which are viewed in a fresh light. This monumental study shows that the missionary movement had a far more complex and ambiguous relationship with the Empire than has previously been thought, and will be widely welcomed by students and scholars of imperial history and the history of religion.
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© 2014,During a career spanning sixty years, the Reverend Billy Grahamâe(tm)s resonant voice and chiseled profile entered the living rooms of millions of Americans with a message that called for personal transformation through Godâe(tm)s grace. How did a lanky farm kid from North Carolina become an evangelist hailed by the media as âeoeAmericaâe(tm)s pastorâe#157;? Why did listeners young and old pour out their grief and loneliness in letters to a man they knew only through televised âeoeCrusadesâe#157; in faraway places like Madison Square Garden? More than a conventional biography, Grant Wackerâe(tm)s interpretive study deepens our understanding of why Billy Graham has mattered so much to so many. Beginning with tent revivals in the 1940s, Graham transformed his born-again theology into a moral vocabulary capturing the fears and aspirations of average Americans. He possessed an uncanny ability to appropriate trends in the wider culture and engaged boldly with the most significant developments of his time, from communism and nuclear threat to poverty and civil rights. The enduring meaning of his career, in Wackerâe(tm)s analysis, lies at the intersection of Grahamâe(tm)s own creative agency and the forces shaping modern America. Wacker paints a richly textured portrait: a self-deprecating servant of God and self-promoting media mogul, a simple family man and confidant of presidents, a plainspoken preacher and the âeoeProtestant pope.âe#157; Americaâe(tm)s Pastor reveals how this Southern fundamentalist grew, fitfully, into a capacious figure at the center of spiritual life for millions of Christians around the world.
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© 2014,Since the 1973 publication of Gustavo Gutiérrez's groundbreaking work A Theology of Liberation, liberation theology's central premise of the preferential option for the poor has become one of the most important yet controversial theological themes of the twentieth century. As the situation for many of the world's poor worsens, it becomes ever more important to ensure that the option for the poor remains not only a vibrant theological concept but also a practical framework for living out the gift and challenge of Christian faith. The Preferential Option for the Poor beyond Theology draws on a diverse group of contributors to explore how disciplines as varied as law, economics, politics, the environment, science, liberal arts, film, and education can help us understand putting a commitment to the option for the poor into practice. The central focus of the book revolves around the question: How can one live a Christian life in a world of destitution? The contributors address the theological concept of the option for the poor as well as the ways it can shape our social, economic, political, educational, and environmental approaches to poverty. Their creative examples serve as an inspiration to all those who are seeking to put their talents at the service of human need and the building of a more just and humane world. "Daniel G. Groody and Gustavo Gutiérrez have given us a series of testimonies to the significance of the preferential option for the poor in the lives of authors writing from a variety of disciplines and perspectives. By fostering such interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary conversation, the authors deepen our understanding of the concept and show us its relevance outside of theology. That the poor become subjects of history, and not only its objects, lies at the core of the liberation theological approach of Gustavo Gutiérrez; it reflects an approach to challenges that is at least as necessary as our technological, political, and economic approaches and, by so doing, touches on important theological issues." -- Jacques Haers, Catholic University of Leuven -
© 2013,Few things are more likely to cause heartache to devout parents than seeing their child leave the faith. And it seems, from media portrayals, that this is happening more and more frequently. But is religious change between generations common? How does religion get passed down from onegeneration to the next? Why do some families maintain one faith while others do not? What factors are likely to push people away from their childhood faith? What role does the particular faith play? The family? The wider society? Does atheism get passed down as well? In Families and Faith, Vern Bengtson seeks to answer these questions and more by drawing on an extraordinary study, conducted over more than four decades, of more than 350 families composed of more than 2400 people whose lives span more than a century: the oldest was born in 1881, the youngest in1988. Bengtson argues that a child is actually more likely to remain within the fold than to leave it, and, more surprisingly, that parents' influence has remained relatively stable since the early 1970s. Even the nonreligious, in fact, are much more likely to be following their parents thanrebelling against them. And while outside social forces play a role, the most important factor in whether a child keeps the faith is the presence of a strong fatherly bond. Armed with this unprecedented data, Bengtson offers remarkable insight into American religion over the course of severaldecades. -
© 2009,In this insightful volume, Susan R. Holman blends personal memoir and deep research into ancient writings to illuminate the age-old issues of need, poverty, and social justice in the history of the Christian tradition. Tying these historical texts to modern responses to need, Holman begins with her own encounters with need and describes her discovery of the existence of never-before-translated early Christian texts on responses to poverty, hunger, and disease. Holman explores, for instance, the stories of fourth- and fifth-century bishops responding to social crises of famine, homelessness, and disease, showing how these early Christian writers can be allies for those of us who want to influence our contemporary dialogue about relief and social justice. Throughout this deeply personal and richly scholarly work, Holman looks in particular at three broad, recurring ideas - sensing need, sharing the world, and embodying sacred kingdom - that allow her to bridge the ancient and themodern, and help readers understand more fully these age-old issues. -
© 2013,Winner of the 2014 Christianity Today Book of the Year First Place Winner of the Religion Newswriters Association's Non-fiction Religion Book of the Year The Jesus People movement was a unique combination of the hippie counterculture and evangelical Christianity. It first appeared in the famed "Summer of Love" of 1967, in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, and spread like wildfire in Southern California and beyond, to cities like Seattle, Atlanta, and Milwaukee. In 1971 the growing movement found its way into the national media spotlight and gained momentum, attracting a huge new following among evangelical church youth, who enthusiastically adopted the Jesus People persona as their own. Within a few years, however, the movement disappeared and was largely forgotten by everyone but those who had filled its ranks. God's Forever Family argues that the Jesus People movement was one of the most important American religious movements of the second half of the 20th-century. Not only do such new and burgeoning evangelical groups as Calvary Chapel and the Vineyard trace back to the Jesus People, but the movement paved the way for the huge Contemporary Christian Music industry and the rise of "Praise Music" in the nation's churches. More significantly, it revolutionized evangelicals' relationship with youth and popular culture. Larry Eskridge makes the case that the Jesus People movement not only helped create a resurgent evangelicalism but must be considered one of the formative powers that shaped American youth in the late 1960s and 1970s. -
© 2013,Engagingly written by one of the world's leading scholars in this field, this comprehensively revised edition tells the story of Christian spirituality from its origins in the New Testament right up to the present day. Charts the main figures, ideas, images and historical periods, showing how and why spirituality has changed and developed over the centuries Includes new chapters on the nature and meaning of spirituality, and on spirituality in the 21st century; and an account of the development and main features of devotional spirituality Provides new coverage of Christian spirituality's relationship to other faiths throughout history, and their influence and impact on Christian beliefs and practices Features expanded sections on mysticism, its relationship to spirituality, the key mystical figures, and the development of ideas of 'the mystical' Explores the interplay between culture, geography, and spirituality, taking a global perspective by tracing spiritual developments across continents -
© 2012,What is Christian Spirituality? How does it relate to non-Christian traditions? Where does it arise from and where is it going? These are some of the key questions addressed in this innovative new guide from Bloomsbury. The Bloomsbury Guide to Christian Spirituality is written by foremost academics in their fields who distill their knowledge for a wide intelligent audience. They do this with huge skill and attention to the needs of modern readers. Appealing equally to those studying the tradition for religious formation or those wishing to acquaint themselves with this fascinating subject, this guide is destined to become an essential text in the field.