Religion : Christianity

Lyle E. Schaller offers seven basic factors for translating important new concepts from the behavioral sciences into terms that can be used for effectively solving church problems. more...

Price: $9.00

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Illuminata comes a book about everyday peace, everyday purpose, everyday hope, everyday love, and everyday grace. In these pages, author and lecturer Marianne Williamson acts as a guide back to the spiritual source, exploring the ways to nurture a thriving soul in a harsh world. The large and small difficulties of our days challenge us to open our hearts and minds. With an attitude of hope, a call to forgive, and a celebration of miracles, Williamson helps readers to find sacred footing on ordinary ground. For no matter what, there is always an opportunity to be happy. Everyone is entitled to the pleasures of everyday grace. more...

Price: $13.00

Despite the masses still lining up to enter mega-churches with warehouse-like architecture, casually dressed clergy, and pop Christian music, the “Post-Boomer” generation—those ranging in age from twenty to forty—is having second thoughts. In this perceptive look at the evolving face of Christianity in contemporary culture, sociologists Richard Flory and Donald E. Miller argue that we are on the verge of another potential revolution in how Christians worship and associate with one another. Just as the formative experiences of Baby Boomers were colored by such things as the war in Vietnam, the 1960s, and a dramatic increase in their opportunities for individual expression, so Post-Boomers have grown up in less structured households with working (often divorced) parents and exposure to multiple cultures and worldviews. These childhood experiences leave them questioning institutions and craving authentic spiritual experience, rather than entertainment. Flory and Miller develop a typology that captures four current approaches to the Christian faith and argue that this generation represents a new religious orientation of “expressive communalism,” in which they seek spiritual experience and fulfillment in community and through various expressive forms of spirituality, both private and public. more...

Price: $18.00

Gnosticism - derived from the Greek word gnosis, to know - is the name given to various religious schools that proliferated in the first centuries after Christ and, at one time, it almost became the dominant form of Christianity. Yet some Gnostic beliefs derive from the older Mystery traditions of Greece and Rome, and the various Gnostic schools came to be branded as heretical by the emerging Christian church. Indeed, although some Gnostic beliefs are close to mainstream Christianity Gnosticism also held that the world is imperfect as it was created by an evil god who was constantly at war with the true, good God; that Christ and Satan were brothers; that reincarnation exists; and that women were the equal of men As a result, the Gnostics held the Feminine Aspect of God - whom they addressed as Sophia, or Wisdom - in very high regard. They also stressed that we each have a spark of the Divine inside us which, when recognised and developed, will ultimately liberate us from the prison of the material world. Although largely stamped out by the Church by the sixth century, Gnosticism survived underground through groups such as the Bogomils and the Cathars, and influenced the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the psychologist Carl Jung, the Existentialists, the New Age movement and writers as diverse as William Blake, W.B. Yeats, Albert Camus and Philip K. Dick. In this book, Sean Martin recounts the long and diverse history of Gnosticism, and argues for its continued relevance today. more...

Price: $14.99

This work by Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) gives a history of the decadence of the late empire from the time of the Antonines and the rise of Western Christianity. more...

Price: $9.95