Review Quotes: "Taylor's masterful integration of history, sociology, philosophy, and theology demands much of the reader. In return you will be convinced that Charles Taylor is one of the s...[More]

Review Quotes: "Taylor's masterful integration of history, sociology, philosophy, and theology demands much of the reader. In return you will be convinced that Charles Taylor is one of the smartest and deepest social thinkers of our time." -- Tyler Cowen ("Slate" 10/31/2007)

"Taylor's gargantuan philosophical history of modernity, which complicates the flattering and simplified story we like to tell ourselves about secularization, is a major intellectual event." -- Jonathan Derbyshire ("Prospect" 01/01/2008)

"Taylor reminds us that we remain spiritual creatures in our most essential natures, and that what we take for granted--our age's lack of religious faith--is, in fact, an anomaly of history. Our forefathers did not live this way and our grandchildren might not either. Considering the doubts about extreme secularism, it is possible we are entering a new Age of Spirit. If so, Taylor's latest 'magnum opus' serves as a comprehensive guide to the reemergence of religious sensibility." -- Robert Sibley ("Ottawa Citizen" 01/20/2008)

"A singular achievement...Taylor is somehow uniquely able to combine chutzpah and good manners, making bold and imaginative claims, yet always attending respectfully to the whole range of disciplines that touch on the philosophical trajectory being drawn, whether that be history, sociology, theology, art theory, cultural studies, anthropology or social theory..."A Secular Age" succeeds in the same way as his previous work: in illuminating through complicating. At the same time, this book seems to step up the ambition somewhat: by attempting to provide a final definitive account of all the narratives and complications that make up our contemporary age, as they implode on themselves." Christopher J. Insole ("Times Literary Supplement" 02/01/2008)

"Taylor is arguably the most interesting and important philosopher writing in English today... What makes Taylor so important? Over more than 40 years, four large books, four or five slimmer essays and several volumes of articles, he has worked out a distinctive network of arguments and an exceptionally rich analysis of the modern self and its values--an analysis that reveals us to be altogether deeper and more interesting, but also less self-aware, than we tend to suppose..."A Secular Age" sets out to offer a richer characterization of secularization and the nature of contemporary belief, both religious and skeptical...Taylor writes brilliantly about the new social forms--the nation state, the market economy, the charitable enterprise--and the ideals of altruism and public service that have emerged with them..."A Secular Age" is effectively a polemic against dogmatic atheism... It is full of insights, and many of its component parts--notably Taylor's discussion of the "pressures" that make a settled view on the big ontological questions hard to sustain--are as good as anything by this magnificent philosopher." -- (Ben Rogers "Prospect" 02/01/2008)

2008 Christianity Today Book Award: Best History book of 2007 and 2007 Templeton Prize[Less]

A Guide to Making Difficult Decisions Just about everyone will face a difficult bioethics decision at some point. In this book a theologian, ethicist, and lawyer equips Christians to make such ...[More]

A Guide to Making Difficult Decisions Just about everyone will face a difficult bioethics decision at some point. In this book a theologian, ethicist, and lawyer equips Christians to make such decisions based on biblical truth, wisdom, and virtue. Though a relatively new discipline, bioethics has generated extraordinary interest due to a number of socially pressing issues. Bioethics and the Christian Life places bioethics within the holistic context of the Christian life, both developing a general Christian approach to making bioethics decisions and addressing a number of specific, controversial areas of bioethics.

The book is divided into three sections. The first lays the theological foundation for bioethics decision-making and discusses the importance of wisdom and virtue in working through these issues. The second section addresses beginning-of-life issues, such as abortion, stem-cell research, and infertility treatments. The third section covers end-of-life issues, such as living wills, accepting and refusing medical treatment, and treatment of patients in permanent vegetative states.[Less]

A Christian Vision for the Marketplace. Is business just a way to make money? Or can the marketplace be a venue for service to others? Scott B. Rae and Kenman L. Wong seek to explore this and o...[More]

A Christian Vision for the Marketplace. Is business just a way to make money? Or can the marketplace be a venue for service to others? Scott B. Rae and Kenman L. Wong seek to explore this and other critical business issues from a uniquely Christian perspective, offering up a vision for work and service that is theologically grounded and practically oriented. Among the specific questions they address along the way are these:

* What implications does the Christian story have for the vision, mission or sense of purpose that shapes business engagement
* What parts of business can be affirmed and practiced "as is" and what parts need to be rejected or transformed?
* What challenges exist as attempts are made to live out Christian ideals in a broken world characterized by tight margins, fierce competition and short-term investor pressures?
* How do Christian values inform specific functional areas of business such as the management of people, marketing and environmental sustainability?

Business can be even more than an environment through which individual Christians grow in Christlikeness. In this book you'll discover how it can also be a means toward serving the common good.

CONTENTS:
1 Your Work Is an Altar
2 The Shape of a Calling to Business
3 Business and Spiritual Formation
4 Wealth, Success and Ambition
5 The Calling of Business in the Global Economy
6 Ethics in the Workplace
7 Leadership and Management: Serving Employees
8 Marketing: Serving Customers
9 Stewardship and Sustainability: Serving The Garden and Our Neighbors
10 Emerging Directions in Business[Less]

The State Of White America, 1960-2010 From the bestselling author of "The Bell Curve" comes a harrowing portrait of the haves and have nots in white America. A startling long-lens view, "Coming...[More]

The State Of White America, 1960-2010 From the bestselling author of "The Bell Curve" comes a harrowing portrait of the haves and have nots in white America. A startling long-lens view, "Coming Apart" shows how class--not race or ethnicity--is putting the great tensions on the seams of American society.

Drawing on five decades of statistics and research, "Coming Apart" demonstrates that a new upper class and a new lower class have diverged so far in core behaviors and values that they barely recognize their underlying American kinship--divergence that has nothing to do with income inequality and that has grown during good economic times and bad.

The top and bottom of white America increasingly live in different cultures, Murray argues, with the powerful upper class living in enclaves surrounded by their own kind, ignorant about life in mainstream America, and the lower class suffering from erosions of family and community life that strike at the heart of the pursuit of happiness. That divergence puts the success of the American project at risk. The evidence in "Coming Apart" is about white America. Its message is about all of America.

"I'll be shocked if there's another book this year as important as Charles Murray's 'Coming Apart.'" --David Brooks, "The New York Times

"Mr. Murray's sobering portrait is of a nation where millions of people are losing touch with the founding virtues that have long lent American lives purpose, direction and happiness." --W. Bradford Wilcox, The Wall Street Journal

"'Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010' brims with ideas about what ails America." -- The Economist

Featured Guest Review on Amazon:
Since the advent of "Occupy Wall Street," there has been a tendency to assume that only the Left worries about inequality in America. Charles Murray's Coming Apart shows that conservatives, too, need to be concerned.

This is an immensely important and utterly gripping book. It deserves to be as much talked about as Murray's most controversial work (co-authored with Richard J. Herrnstein), The Bell Curve. Quite unjustly, that book was anathematized as "racist" because it pointed out that, on average, African-Americans had lower IQ scores than white Americans.

No doubt the same politically correct critics will complain about this book, because it is almost entirely devoted to the problem of social polarization within "white America." They will have to ignore one of Coming Apart's most surprising findings: that race is not a significant determinant of social polarization in today's America. It is class that really matters.

Murray meticulously chronicles and measures the emergence of two wholly distinct classes: a new upper class, first identified in The Bell Curve as "the cognitive elite," and a new "lower class," which he is too polite to give a name. And he vividly localizes his argument by imagining two emblematic communities: Belmont, where everyone has at least one college degree, and Fishtown, where no one has any. (Read: Tonyville and Trashtown.)

The key point is that the four great social trends of the past half-century--the decline of marriage, of the work ethic, of respect for the law and of religious observance--have affected Fishtown much more than Belmont. As a consequence, the traditional bonds of civil society have atrophied in Fishtown. And that, Murray concludes, is why people there are so very unhappy--and dysfunctional.

What can be done to reunite these two classes? Murray is dismissive of the standard liberal prescription of higher taxes on the rich and higher spending on the poor. As he points out, there could hardly be a worse moment to try to import the European welfare state, just as that system suffers fiscal collapse in its continent of origin.

What the country needs is not an even larger federal government but a kind of civic Great Awakening--a return to the republic's original foundations of family, vocation, community, and faith.

Coming Apart is a model of rigorous sociological inquiry, yet it is also highly readable. After the chronic incoherence of Occupy Wall Street, it comes as a blessed relief. Every American should read it. Too bad only the cognitive elite will. --Niall Ferguson[Less]

The State Of White America, 1960-2010 From the bestselling author of "The Bell Curve" comes a harrowing portrait of the haves and have nots in white America. A startling long-lens view, "Coming...[More]

The State Of White America, 1960-2010 From the bestselling author of "The Bell Curve" comes a harrowing portrait of the haves and have nots in white America. A startling long-lens view, "Coming Apart" shows how class--not race or ethnicity--is putting the great tensions on the seams of American society.

Drawing on five decades of statistics and research, "Coming Apart" demonstrates that a new upper class and a new lower class have diverged so far in core behaviors and values that they barely recognize their underlying American kinship--divergence that has nothing to do with income inequality and that has grown during good economic times and bad.

The top and bottom of white America increasingly live in different cultures, Murray argues, with the powerful upper class living in enclaves surrounded by their own kind, ignorant about life in mainstream America, and the lower class suffering from erosions of family and community life that strike at the heart of the pursuit of happiness. That divergence puts the success of the American project at risk. The evidence in "Coming Apart" is about white America. Its message is about all of America.

"I'll be shocked if there's another book this year as important as Charles Murray's 'Coming Apart.'" --David Brooks, "The New York Times

"Mr. Murray's sobering portrait is of a nation where millions of people are losing touch with the founding virtues that have long lent American lives purpose, direction and happiness." --W. Bradford Wilcox, The Wall Street Journal

"'Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010' brims with ideas about what ails America." -- The Economist

Featured Guest Review on Amazon:
Since the advent of "Occupy Wall Street," there has been a tendency to assume that only the Left worries about inequality in America. Charles Murray's Coming Apart shows that conservatives, too, need to be concerned.

This is an immensely important and utterly gripping book. It deserves to be as much talked about as Murray's most controversial work (co-authored with Richard J. Herrnstein), The Bell Curve. Quite unjustly, that book was anathematized as "racist" because it pointed out that, on average, African-Americans had lower IQ scores than white Americans.

No doubt the same politically correct critics will complain about this book, because it is almost entirely devoted to the problem of social polarization within "white America." They will have to ignore one of Coming Apart's most surprising findings: that race is not a significant determinant of social polarization in today's America. It is class that really matters.

Murray meticulously chronicles and measures the emergence of two wholly distinct classes: a new upper class, first identified in The Bell Curve as "the cognitive elite," and a new "lower class," which he is too polite to give a name. And he vividly localizes his argument by imagining two emblematic communities: Belmont, where everyone has at least one college degree, and Fishtown, where no one has any. (Read: Tonyville and Trashtown.)

The key point is that the four great social trends of the past half-century--the decline of marriage, of the work ethic, of respect for the law and of religious observance--have affected Fishtown much more than Belmont. As a consequence, the traditional bonds of civil society have atrophied in Fishtown. And that, Murray concludes, is why people there are so very unhappy--and dysfunctional.

What can be done to reunite these two classes? Murray is dismissive of the standard liberal prescription of higher taxes on the rich and higher spending on the poor. As he points out, there could hardly be a worse moment to try to import the European welfare state, just as that system suffers fiscal collapse in its continent of origin.

What the country needs is not an even larger federal government but a kind of civic Great Awakening--a return to the republic's original foundations of family, vocation, community, and faith.

Coming Apart is a model of rigorous sociological inquiry, yet it is also highly readable. After the chronic incoherence of Occupy Wall Street, it comes as a blessed relief. Every American should read it. Too bad only the cognitive elite will. --Niall Ferguson[Less]

The Origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief. "Discovering God" is a monumental history of the origins of the great religions from the Stone Age to the Modern Age. Sociologist...[More]

The Origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief. "Discovering God" is a monumental history of the origins of the great religions from the Stone Age to the Modern Age. Sociologist Rodney Stark (author of "The Rise of Christianity") surveys the birth and growth of religions around the world--from the prehistoric era of primal beliefs; the history of the pyramids found in Iraq, Egypt, Mexico, and Cambodia; and the great "Axial Age" of Plato, Zoroaster, Confucius, and the Buddha, to the modern Christian missions and the global spread of Islam. He argues for a free-market theory of religion and for the controversial thesis that under the best, unimpeded conditions, the true, most authentic religions will survive and thrive. Among his many conclusions:

- Despite decades of faulty reports that early religions were crude muddles of superstition, it turns out that primitive humans had surprisingly sophisticated notions about God and Creation.
- The idea of "sin" appeared suddenly in the sixth century BCE and quickly reshaped religious ideas from Europe to China.
- Some major world religions seem to lack any plausible traces of divine inspiration.
- Ironically, some famous figures who attempted to found "Godless" religions ended up being worshiped as Gods.

Most people believe in the existence of God (or Gods), and this has apparently been so throughout human history. Many modern biologists and psychologists reject these spiritual ideas, especially those about the existence of God, as delusional. They claim that religion is a primitive survival mechanism that should have been discarded as humans evolved beyond the stage where belief in God served any useful purpose--that in modern societies, faith is a misleading crutch and an impediment to reason. In "Discovering God," award-winning sociologist Rodney Stark responds to this position, arguing that it is our capacity to understand God that has evolved--that humans now know much more about God than they did in ancient times.
2008 Christianity Today Merit Award.[Less]

Tomas Sedlacek has shaken the study of economics as few ever have. Named one of the "Young Guns" and one of the "five hot minds in economics" by the Yale Economic Review, he serves on the National Eco...[More]

Tomas Sedlacek has shaken the study of economics as few ever have. Named one of the "Young Guns" and one of the "five hot minds in economics" by the Yale Economic Review, he serves on the National Economic Council in Prague, where his provocative writing has achieved bestseller status. How has he done it? By arguing a simple, almost heretical proposition: economics is ultimately about good and evil.

In The Economics of Good and Evil, Sedlacek radically rethinks his field, challenging our assumptions about the world. Economics is touted as a science, a value-free mathematical inquiry, he writes, but it's actually a cultural phenomenon, a product of our civilization. It began within philosophy (Adam Smith himself not only wrote The Wealth of Nations, but also The Theory of Moral Sentiments), and, as Sedlacek shows, economics is woven out of history, myth, religion, and ethics. "Even the most sophisticated mathematical model," Sedlacek writes, "is, de facto, a story, a parable, our effort to (rationally) grasp the world around us." Economics not only describes the world, but establishes normative standards, identifying ideal conditions. Science, he claims, is a system of beliefs to which we are committed. To grasp the beliefs underlying economics, he breaks out of the field's confines with a tour de force exploration of economic thinking, broadly defined, over the millennia. He ranges from the epic of Gilgamesh and the Old Testament to the emergence of Christianity, from Descartes and Adam Smith to the consumerism in Fight Club. Throughout, he asks searching meta-economic questions: What is the meaning and the point of economics? Can we do ethically all that we can do technically? Does it pay to be good?

Placing the wisdom of philosophers and poets over strict mathematical models of human behavior, Sedlacek's groundbreaking work promises to change the way we calculate economic value.[Less]

An Introduction To Key Thinkers And Philosophies. "What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the church?" (Tertullian, 3rd century). Such skepti...[More]

An Introduction To Key Thinkers And Philosophies. "What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the church?" (Tertullian, 3rd century). Such skepticism about the place of philosophy in the life of Christians persists down through the ages. As a student, author Steve Wilkens had deep reservations about studying the works of "pagans" or even "questionable Christians." Now a teacher at a Christian university, Wilkens has developed a deep appreciation for teaching and studying philosophy. In fact, he believes that the life of faith can be enriched by good philosophical reflection. In this book Wilkens helps you begin the same journey.Using generous quotations from the original sources, Wilkens provides an introduction to the study of philosophy by exploring a single key issue from each of the following philosophers: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche and Sartre. The questions considered include
- Why ask why?
- Is a just society possible?
- Is God responsible for evil?
- Can you be certain of anything?
- Is morality all about power?
- Do you really want to be free?
Wilkens encourages you not to be a mere spectator but to actively and critically engage the questions and ideas these philosophers raise. Here is a book for beginning students, thoughtful Christians or anyone who wants to explore life's deepest questions.[Less]

Stem-cell research. Cloning. Genetic engineering. Today, discoveries in biotechnology are occurring so rapidly that we can barely begin to address one ethical debate before another looms overhead. Thi...[More]

Stem-cell research. Cloning. Genetic engineering. Today, discoveries in biotechnology are occurring so rapidly that we can barely begin to address one ethical debate before another looms overhead. This brave new world we've entered is a daunting one as well, with disturbing implications for the sanctity of life and for human nature itself. How should we respond as Christians? Drawing on an abundance of cutting-edge information and life experience, Joni Eareckson Tada and Nigel M. de S. Cameron help you think through issues no Christian can afford to ignore. As a quadriplegic who has spent three decades advocating for the disability community out of a wheelchair, Joni offers the insights of a woman intimately acquainted with suffering and struggle. Dr. Cameron shares from his vast knowledge as one of today's foremost bioethics. Together, they offer deeply informed perspectives on such pressing issues as Human cloning Designer babies Redefining human nature Human harvesting Here is thoughtful, passionate, and gripping reading about the world that is coming--that, indeed, is already here--and how to live out your faith with conviction in its midst.[Less]

Extraordinary advances in genetic engineering hold much promise; yet serious concerns are warranted, read about the issues and challenges.

How We Became Hedonists. Abortion. Euthanasia. Infanticide. Sexual promiscuity. Ideas and actions once unthinkable have become commonplace. We seem to live in a different moral universe than we...[More]

How We Became Hedonists. Abortion. Euthanasia. Infanticide. Sexual promiscuity. Ideas and actions once unthinkable have become commonplace. We seem to live in a different moral universe than we occupied just a few decades ago. Consent and noncoercion seem to be the last vestiges of a morality long left behind. Christian moral tenets are now easily dismissed and have been replaced with what is curiously presented as a superior, more magnanimous, respectful and even humble morality. How did we end up so far away from where we began? Can the decline be stopped?

Ben Wiker, in this provocative and insightful book, traces the amazing story that explains our present cultural situation. Wiker finds the roots of our moral slide reaching all the way back to the ethical theory and atheistic cosmology of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus. Christian teaching had been in contention with this worldview long before it reached its pinnacle with the rise and acceptance of Darwinism. But it was Darwinism, Wiker contends, that provided this ancient teaching with the seemingly modern and scientific basis that captured twentieth-century minds.

Wiker demonstrates that this ancient atomistic and materialistic philosophy supplies the guiding force behind Darwinism and powerfully propels the hedonistic bent of our society while promoting itself under the guise of pure science. This book is a challenge not only to those who believe Darwinism to be purely scientific fact but to Christians who have at times inconsistently lived out their Christian moral convictions and so have failed to recognize and address the ancient corrosive underpinnings of our present moral and intellectual crisis.

"Several authors have attempted to get at the roots of the current culture war. James Davison Hunter has traced its sociological roots. Robert Bork has traced its political roots. Phillip Johnson has traced its Darwinian roots. But none of them has traced the historical roots of the culture war back to its metaphysical foundation. Ben Wiker does that brilliantly in the present book. . . . If you really want to understand why our culture is in its current state, you must read this book." --William A. Dembski (from the foreword)[Less]

Moral Guidance for Assisted Reproduction. The use of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) is rising, and not just among the wealthy and the weird. Media accounts of unnatural multiples (thi...[More]

Moral Guidance for Assisted Reproduction. The use of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) is rising, and not just among the wealthy and the weird. Media accounts of unnatural multiples (think Nadya Suleman) and aging celebrities having children (Cheryl Tiegs, twins at age 52; Jane Seymour, twins at age 45; Joan Lunden, two sets of twins through a surrogate at age 52 and 54) represent the exceptions, not the norm. The most common user of reproductive technologies today may be an average American couple or single woman unable to have children naturally.

According to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, Americans use in-vitro fertilization (IVF) at a rate of 236 per 100,000 -- for a total of more than 70,000 nationwide. And that's just IVF; many other means of assisted reproduction are increasingly available. As Americans continue to delay child-bearing, and as the availability of fertility treatments rises, we can expect more and more Christian couples to make use of reproductive technologies. But how ethical are such treatments? What key issues should couples wrestle with before using any type of assisted procreation? These are the kinds of questions medical ethicist Scott Rae and Dr. Joy Riley seek to answer in "Outside the Womb."

The authors don't condemn ART, but they do call Christians to give careful thought to what God intended for the family and to the ethical issues involved in various fertility treatments. Readers of the book will be better equipped to think morally and biblically about ART, both as a social issue and as a personal issue that affects their own friends, church members, and families.[Less]

A Post-Christendom Perspective Few books have been used as broadly in Christian colleges and seminaries in the past half century as H. Richard Niebuhr's Christ and Culture. His five classic typ...[More]

A Post-Christendom Perspective Few books have been used as broadly in Christian colleges and seminaries in the past half century as H. Richard Niebuhr's Christ and Culture. His five classic typologies of how Christ can relate to culture--Christ against culture, Christ in "paradox" with culture, and so on--have influenced two generations of Protestant and Catholic thinkers.

But in recent decades scholars have become aware that Niebuhr's typologies need to be rethought in light of changing circumstances. While Niebuhr wrote at a time when it was still possible to speak of Christendom, Christianity since that time has held less and less sway over American and European intellectuals and other shapers of culture. As such, Christianity has found itself increasingly marginalized.

In this work, Craig Carter follows in Niebuhr's footsteps, using typology to explore the crucial question of how Christians should relate to the world. However, he goes beyond Niebuhr to offer an alternative typology that is arguably more deployable in our post-Christian society. This book is a useful text for college and seminary courses and for any Christian who seeks to understand how to share a timeless message in changing times.

[Less]

Ethics and Accountability in Mission. The word “ethics” carries an aura of countervailing views, overlapping claims, uncertain footing, and seductive attractions. Some issues are as clear a...[More]

Ethics and Accountability in Mission. The word “ethics” carries an aura of countervailing views, overlapping claims, uncertain footing, and seductive attractions. Some issues are as clear as the horizontal versus vertical axes in Sawai Chinnawong’s striking painting, Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife, that graces the cover of this book. At the same time—because we are involved, because our interests, our inclinations, our plans and relationships are at stake—the issues that engage missionary practitioners can be frustratingly labyrinthine, curling endlessly back on themselves.

Evangelical missionaries and mission agencies are concerned about personal morality—and rightly so. But as the chapters in this volume attest, evangelical mission’s ethical engagement extends far beyond simply avoiding compromising sexual situations and not absconding with the finances. How should we talk about others’ beliefs and practices to ourselves? To them? How should we represent ourselves to others? What role does tolerance for ambiguity play in missionaries’ mental preparation? How should accountability be structured in intercultural partnerships? Are there ways to enable organizational justice to flourish in mission institutions? What might integrity in short-term mission outreach look like? How does care for creation relate to mission? What role can a code of ethics for missionary practice play?

Limited and fallible and marred by the fall, we need both guidance and admonition—and deep reflection on the conduct of evangelical mission such as is provided in this volume—so that we may serve Jesus with true integrity.[Less]

A nuanced exploration of the part that religion plays in human life, drawing on the insights of the past in order to build a faith that speaks to the needs of our dangerously polarized age.

M...[More]

A nuanced exploration of the part that religion plays in human life, drawing on the insights of the past in order to build a faith that speaks to the needs of our dangerously polarized age.

Moving from the Paleolithic age to the present, Karen Armstrong details the great lengths to which humankind has gone in order to experience a sacred reality that it called by many names, such as God, Brahman, Nirvana, Allah, or Dao. Focusing especially on Christianity but including Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Chinese spiritualities, Armstrong examines the diminished impulse toward religion in our own time, when a significant number of people either want nothing to do with God or question the efficacy of faith. Why has God become unbelievable? Why is it that atheists and theists alike now think and speak about God in a way that veers so profoundly from the thinking of our ancestors?

Answering these questions with the same depth of knowledge and profound insight that have marked all her acclaimed books, Armstrong makes clear how the changing face of the world has necessarily changed the importance of religion at both the societal and the individual level. Yet she cautions us that religion was never supposed to provide answers that lie within the competence of human reason; that, she says, is the role of "logos." The task of religion is "to help us live creatively, peacefully, and even joyously with realities for which there are no easy explanations." She emphasizes, too, that religion will not work automatically. It is, she says, a practical discipline: its insights are derived not from abstract speculation but from "dedicated intellectual endeavor" and a "compassionate lifestyle that enables us to break out of the prism of selfhood." (publisher)[Less]

Unleashing Christianity's Compassion for Animals. Today we find ourselves in an anomaly in human history: many of our lives are empty of animals. Many of us have pets or watch documentaries on ...[More]

Unleashing Christianity's Compassion for Animals. Today we find ourselves in an anomaly in human history: many of our lives are empty of animals. Many of us have pets or watch documentaries on Animal Planet, but, for the most part, we humans don't really know how all the other species on our planet live today. And as Laura Hobgood-Oster reveals, many of them are not living very well--sadly, not very well at all.

Seeking to awaken Christians to the place and, too often, plight of animals in the twenty-first century, The Friends We Keep gently but astutely introduces the situations animals face today--as companions, as animals in sport, as animals raised for food, and as creatures in the wild--and simultaneously retells a myriad of often surprising and instructive stories from the long, rich history of Christianity. We see and experience animals as Christians have for generations--as beloved companions to the saints, as unfortunate prisoners in Roman arenas, as sentient and compassionate recipients and givers of hospitality, and as good and worthy beings created by God. Once upon a time, it seems--not too terribly long ago--animals held an important place in Christianity.

Could it be, then, that Christianity can be good news for animals today?

With a guide for group discussion and ideas for how people of faith can respond, this thoroughly engaging and enlightening book is essential for all who desire to live compassionately.[Less]

Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View. Here are the great minds of Western civilization and their pivotal ideas, from Plato to Hegel, from Augustine to Nietzsche, from Copernicus to ...[More]

Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View. Here are the great minds of Western civilization and their pivotal ideas, from Plato to Hegel, from Augustine to Nietzsche, from Copernicus to Freud. Richard Tarnas performs the near-miracle of describing profound philosophical concepts simply but without simplifying them. Ten years in the making and already hailed as a classic, THE PASSION OF THE WESTERN MIND is truly a complete liberal education in a single volume. Allows readers to grasp the big picture of Western culture.[Less]

Why an Ancient Biblical Vision Is Key to the World's Future. In The Sacredness of Human Life, Christian ethicist David P. Gushee invites us to truly embrace the immeasurable value of a single h...[More]

Why an Ancient Biblical Vision Is Key to the World's Future. In The Sacredness of Human Life, Christian ethicist David P. Gushee invites us to truly embrace the immeasurable value of a single human life — an ancient biblical concept which, in our violent world, may be the key to the future of all creation.

Tracing the concept of the sacredness of human life from Scripture through church history to the present day, Gushee argues that viewing human life as sacred is one of the most precious legacies of biblical faith — albeit one that the church has too often failed to uphold. His discussion includes many of the current ethical challenges that will impact the survival and flourishing of human life, including biotechnology, the death penalty, abortion, human rights, nuclear weapons, just war theory, women's rights, and creation care. Gushee's Sacredness of Human Life is a game-changing book that will set the standard for all future discussions of this key ethical concept.[Less]

A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, this brilliantly reported and beautifully crafted book ex...[More]

A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, this brilliantly reported and beautifully crafted book explores the clash between a medical center in California and a Laotian refugee family over their care of a child--and the lack of understanding that led to tragedy. (Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award)[Less]

How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind. In one of the biggest religion news stories of the new millennium, Professor Antony Flew, the worlds leading atheist, announced he now ...[More]

How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind. In one of the biggest religion news stories of the new millennium, Professor Antony Flew, the worlds leading atheist, announced he now believes in God. In this book, a brilliant mind and reasoned thinker reveals where his lifelong intellectual pursuit eventually led him: belief in God as designer.

Flew is a pioneer for modern atheism. His famous paper, Theology and Falsification, was first presented at a meeting of the Oxford Socratic Club chaired by C. S. Lewis and went on to become the most widely reprinted philosophical publication of the last five decades. Flew earned his fame by arguing that one should presuppose atheism until evidence of a God surfaces. He now believes that such evidence exists, and "There Is a God" chronicles his journey from staunch atheism to believer.

"After a meal of Flew's rich stew of argument and opinion, one lifts a spoonful of most professional apologetics and mutters, 'Thin soup indeed.'" -- CT 04/08 (2008 Christianity Today Book Award: Best Apologetics book of 2007)[Less]