Catalog Search Results
1) Free will
Author
Pub. Date
2012
Language
English
Description
In this enlightening book, Sam Harris argues that free will is an illusion but that this truth should not undermine morality or diminish the importance of social and political freedom; indeed, this truth can and should change the way we think about some of the most important questions in life.
Author
Publisher
Parallax Press
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Distilling a lifetime's insights on the triangle of healing emotional pain, social justice work, and spiritual growth, veteran activist and educator John Bell shares personal stories and reflective practices to help us on our path of personal and collective transformation. Unbroken Wholeness brings an integrated lens of social justice, trauma healing, and spiritual practice to the work we do in the world and the pressing concerns of our times"--
Author
Language
English
Description
Rachel Held Evans is widely recognized for her theologically astute, profoundly honest, and beautifully personal books, which have guided, instructed, edified, and shaped Christians as they seek to live out a just and loving faith. At the time of her tragic death in 2019, Rachel was working on a new book about wholeheartedness. With the help of her close friend and author Jeff Chu, that work-in-progress has been woven together with some of her other...
Author
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Pub. Date
2020
Language
English
Formats
Description
"As Europe wrangles over questions of national identity, nativism and immigration, Olivier Roy interrogates the place of Christianity, foundation of Western identity. Do secularism and Islam really pose threats to the continent's 'Christian values'? What will be the fate of Christianity in Europe? Rather than repeating the familiar narrative of decline, Roy challenges the significance of secularized Western nations' reduction of Christianity to a...
Author
Language
English
Description
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro argues that Western Civilization is in the midst of a crisis of purpose and ideas. Our freedoms are built upon the twin notions that every human being is made in God's image and that human beings were created with reason capable of exploring God's world. We can thank these values for the birth of science, the dream of progress, human rights, prosperity, peace, and artistic beauty. Jerusalem and Athens built America,...
Author
Language
English
Description
For millions of conservative Christians, America is their kingdom--a land set apart, a nation uniquely blessed, a people in special covenant with God. This love of country, however, has given way to right-wing nationalist fervor, a reckless blood-and-soil idolatry that trivializes the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Alberta retraces the arc of the modern evangelical movement, placing political and cultural inflection points in the context of church teachings...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
The Protestant ethic - a moral code stressing hard work, rigorous self-discipline, and the organization of one's life in the service of God - was made famous by sociologist and political economist Max Weber. In this brilliant study (his best-known and most controversial), he opposes the Marxist concept of dialectical materialism and its view that change takes place through "the struggle of opposites." Instead, he relates the rise of a capitalist economy...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Influential scholar Peter L. Berger explores the sociological underpinnings of religion and the rise of a modern secular society Acclaimed scholar and sociologist Peter L. Berger carefully lays out an understanding of religion as a historical, societal mechanism in this classic work of social theory. Berger examines the roots of religious belief and its gradual dissolution in modern times, applying a general theoretical perspective to specific...
Author
Pub. Date
[2018]
Language
English
Description
The author of "The Gnostic Gospels" draws on personal experiences and the perspectives of neurologists, anthropologists, and historians to illuminate the enduring capacity of faith in explaining and meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century.
"Why does religion still exist in the twenty-first century? And why do so many people -- even, and especially, those who challenge religion -- continue to argue about the questions it raises? What purpose...
Author
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Pub. Date
2002
Language
English
Description
One of the great intellectual battles of modern times is between evolution and religion. Until now, they have been considered completely irreconcilable theories of origin and existence. David Sloan Wilson's Darwin's Cathedral takes the radical step of joining the two, in the process proposing an evolutionary theory of religion that shakes both evolutionary biology and social theory at their foundations.
The key, argues Wilson, is to think of society...
Author
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Pub. Date
1994
Language
English
Description
"In a sweeping reconsideration of the relation between religion and modernity, Jose Casanova surveys the roles that religions may play in the public sphere of modern societies. During the 1980s, religious traditions around the world, from Islamic fundamentalism to Catholic liberation theology, began making their way, often forcefully, out of the private sphere and into public life, causing the "deprivatization" of religion in contemporary life. No...
Author
Language
English
Description
In her examination of the ways in which we symbolize the structure of society in our attitudes toward the human body, anthropologist Mary Douglas strips away the surface of political, ecological and cultural differences between peoples to reveal the surprising similarities between disparate social groups. Using a wealth of examples ranging from Persian nomads to London Irishmen, from West African tribesmen to modern-day intellectuals and bohemians,...
Author
Publisher
Simon & Schuster
Pub. Date
c2010
Language
English
Description
American Grace takes its findings from two of the largest, most comprehensive surveys ever conducted on religion and public life in America, plus in-depth studies of diverse congregations-among them a megachurch, a Mormon congregation, a Catholic parish, a reform Jewish synagogue, and an African American congregation. From abortion to gay marriage to feminism, this book shows how religion has influenced politics in America-and vice versa. The discoveries...
Author
Publisher
Stanford University Press
Pub. Date
[2013]
Language
English
Description
A Systems Theory of Religion, still unfinished at Niklas Luhmann's death in 1998, was first published in German two years later thanks to the editorial work of André Kieserling. One of Luhmann's most important projects, it exemplifies his later work while redefining the subject matter of the sociology of religion. Religion, for Luhmann, is one of the many functionally differentiated social systems that make up modern society. All such subsystems...
Author
Publisher
Princeton University Press
Pub. Date
2008
Language
English
Description
"From uttering a prayer before boarding a plane, to exploring past lives through hypnosis, has superstition become pervasive in contemporary culture? Robert Park, the best-selling author of Voodoo Science, argues that it has. In Superstition, Park asks why people persist in superstitious convictions long after science has shown them to be ill-founded. He takes on supernatural beliefs from religion and the afterlife to New Age spiritualism and faith-based...