In a radical new vision for the future of Christianity, NYT bestselling author and conservative columnist Rod Dreher calls on American Christians to prepare for the coming Dark Age by embracing an ancient Christian way of life. The light of the Christian faith is flickering out all over the West, and only the willfully blind refuse to see it. From the outside, American churches are beset by challenges to religious liberty in a rapidly secularizing culture. From the inside, they are being hollowed out by the departure of young people and a watered-down pseudo-spirituality. Political solutions have failed, as the triumph of gay marriage and the self-destruction of the Republican Party indicate, and the future of religious freedom has never been in greater doubt. The center is not holding. The West, cut off from its Christian roots, is falling into a new Dark Age. The bad news is that the roots of religious decline run deeper than most Americans realize. The good news is that the blueprint for a time-tested Christian response to this decline is older still. In The Benedict Option, Dreher calls on traditional Christians to learn from the example of St. Benedict of Nursia, a sixth-century monk who turned from the chaos and decadence of the collapsing Roman Empire, and found a new way to live out the faith in community. For five difficult centuries, Benedict's monks kept the faith alive through the Dark Ages, and prepared the way for the rebirth of civilization. What do ordinary 21st century Christians -- Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox -- have to learn from the teaching and example of this great spiritual father? That they must read the signs of the times, abandon hope for a political solution to our civilization's problems, and turn their attention to creating resilient spiritual centers that can survive the coming storm. Whatever their Christian tradition, they must draw on the secrets of Benedictine wisdom to build up the local church, create countercultural schools based on the classical tradition, rebuild family life, thicken communal bonds, and develop survival strategies for doctors, teachers, and others on the front lines of persecution. Now is a time of testing, when believers will learn the difference between shallow optimism and Christian hope. However dark the shadow falling over the West, the light of Christianity need not flicker out. It will not be easy, but Christians who are brave enough to face the religious decline, reject trendy solutions, and return to ancient traditions will find the strength not only to survive, but to thrive joyfully in the post-Christian West. The Benedict Option shows believers how to build the resistance and resilience to face a hostile modern world with the confidence and fervor of the early church. Christians face a time of choosing, with the fate of Christianity in Western civilization hanging in the balance. In this powerful challenge to the complacency of contemporary Christianity, Dreher shows why those in all churches who fail to take the Benedict Option aren't going to make it.
Penguin Publishing Group
|
9780735213296
|
Print book
Lies We Believe About God
By Young, Wm Paul
From the author of the twenty million plus copy bestselling novel The Shack and the New York Times bestsellers Cross Roads and Eve comes a compelling, conversational exploration of the wrong-headed ideas we sometimes have and share about God.Wm. Paul Young has been called a heretic for the ways he vividly portrays God's love through his novels. Here he shares twenty-eight commonly uttered and sometimes seemingly innocuous things we say about God. Paul exposes these as lies that keep us from having a full, loving relationship with our Creator. With personal anecdotes and sharing the compassion readers felt from the "Papa" portrayed in The Shack - now a major film starring Sam Worthington and Octavia Spencer - Paul encourages readers to think anew about important issues including sin, religion, hell, politics, identity, creation, human rights, and helping us discover God's deep and abiding love.
Simon & Schuster
|
9781501101397
|
Hardcover
Watch Your Mouth
By Evans, Tony
"Does it really matter what I say?" Your greatest weapon - for good or evil - is in your mouth.. From bestselling author Dr. Tony Evans comes a compelling resource to help you learn to tame your tongue. With life-changing insights shared through engaging lessons and anecdotes, youll learn what the Bible teaches about talking:Discover the power of the spoken word to bolster your faith when youre doubting.Discern what should or shouldnt be said so that you honor God with your speech.Develop the ability to praise God and voice wisdom even in tough circumstances. Get inspired by Tonys teaching on the tongue and model with your mouth the character of God. Dont let your words bring cursing or destruction to yourself and those you love. Instead, let your words minister to and speak life into the world around you.
Harvest House Publishers
|
9780736960601
|
Paperback
Time to Die, A Time to Live
By Magargle, Nancy
A mother grapples with a crisis of faith while struggling to know God's will when facing end-of-life decisions for her child and learns to recognize and recover from false guilt as she seeks to reconnect with God in the aftermath. "It was years ago I first learned about Stacey's story - little did I know how intimately involved I would become in both her life and death. Stacey Magargle taught me many lessons, not the least of which is that God is utterly sovereign over the decisions we make. I also learned the painful lesson of learning to think - and think hard - before speaking. I am so glad to now see A Time to Die, A Time to Live in print, and I hope as you read that you, too, will learn timeless lessons about life and death, care and compassion, and how we can best support each other through the toughest of times.
Carpenter's Son Publishing
|
9781942587774
|
Paperback
In Good Faith
By Polonchek, Maria
Part memoir, part cultural exploration, this book covers the authors journey as she grows up in an evangelical Christian home, leaves religion behind as a young adult, and goes on to raise children in a family outside of religious belief. Maria Polonchek weaves a personal story with up-to-date studies and philosophic exploration of what it means to raise secular children in an otherwise religious world. Offering careful and respectful advice for other parents who are raising their children outside of a particular religious belief system, she explores the many other ways of instilling identity, belonging, and meaning into our lives and the lives of children. Honest and irreverent, the author admits to her religious "baggage" and searches for better understanding of such topics as religious education, morality, awe, death, purpose, and meaning and tradition from secular perspectives. She interviews experts, looks at various studies, and turns to a variety of sources for answers while maintaining a casual and personal tone. While she ultimately argues for parents to let their children shape their own beliefs, she encourages families to tend to existential and social needs that sometimes go unnoticed or unconsidered in life outside religion.
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
|
9781442270664
|
Audiobook
Taking My Life Back
By Gregory, Rebekah
On April 15, 2013, Rebekah Gregory and her five-year-old son waited at the finish line of the Boston Marathon to support a friend who was running. When the blasts of terrorists' homemade bombs packed with nails and screws went off three feet away, Rebekah's legs took the brunt of the blast, protecting her son from certain death. Eighteen surgeries and sixty-five procedures later, her left leg was amputated.Despite the extraordinary trauma she underwent and the nightmares she continues to have, Rebekah sees it as just another part of her personal journey, a journey that has led her through abuse, mistakes, and pain and into the arms of Jesus. This stirring memoir tells the story of her recovery, including her triumphant return to Boston two years later to run part of the race, and explores the peace we experience when we learn to trust God with every part of our lives--the good, the bad, and even the terrifying.Readers will be moved by the joyous way Rebekah is determined to live her life, seeing every obstacle as part of how God forms us into the people we are meant to be. Readers will also find comfort in the message that it's not what they can or can't do that makes the difference, but rather what God, in his mercy, does through them despite it all. Life is hard, but with God all things are possible.
Revell
|
9780800728212
|
Print book
The Templars
By Jones, Dan
"Dan Jones is an entertainer, but also a bona fide historian. Seldom does one find serious scholarship so easy to read." - The Times, Book of the YearA New York Times bestseller, this major new history of the knights Templar is "a fresh, muscular and compelling history of the ultimate military-religious crusading order, combining sensible scholarship with narrative swagger" - Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Jerusalem A faltering war in the middle east. A band of elite warriors determined to fight to the death to protect Christianity's holiest sites. A global financial network unaccountable to any government. A sinister plot founded on a web of lies.Jerusalem 1119. A small group of knights seeking a purpose in the violent aftermath of the First Crusade decides to set up a new order. These are the first Knights Templar, a band of elite warriors prepared to give their lives to protect Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. Over the next two hundred years, the Templars would become the most powerful religious order of the medieval world. Their legend has inspired fervent speculation ever since. In this groundbreaking narrative history, Dan Jones tells the true story of the Templars for the first time in a generation, drawing on extensive original sources to build a gripping account of these Christian holy warriors whose heroism and alleged depravity have been shrouded in myth. The Templars were protected by the pope and sworn to strict vows of celibacy. They fought the forces of Islam in hand-to-hand combat on the sun-baked hills where Jesus lived and died, finding their nemesis in Saladin, who vowed to drive all Christians from the lands of Islam. Experts at channeling money across borders, they established the medieval world's largest and most innovative banking network and waged private wars against anyone who threatened their interests.Then, as they faced setbacks at the hands of the ruthless Mamluk sultan Baybars and were forced to retreat to their stronghold in Cyprus, a vindictive and cash-strapped King of France set his sights on their fortune. His administrators quietly mounted a damning case against the Templars, built on deliberate lies and false testimony. On Friday October 13, 1307, hundreds of brothers were arrested, imprisoned and tortured, and the order was disbanded amid lurid accusations of sexual misconduct and heresy. They were tried by the Pope in secret proceedings and their last master was brutally tortured and burned at the stake. But were they heretics or victims of a ruthlessly repressive state? Dan Jones goes back to the sources tobring their dramatic tale, so relevant to our own times, to life in a book that is at once authoritative and compulsively readable.
Viking
|
9780525428305
|
Hardcover
Nothing to Fear
By Black, Barry C
"I'm really concerned about the state of the world. It feels like things are falling apart.""I'm worried about my family's future.""How can I stand firm in my faith in today's culture?"Our times are turbulent ones, and questions and worries like these can haunt us and keep us awake at night. Yet is it possible that, ultimately, there is actually nothing to fear? Barry C. Black is the spiritual "leader of leaders" for the US Senate -- shepherding those on the front lines of the decisions that shape our culture. Now, Chaplain Black shows all of us how to thrive in the midst of today's turbulence and confusion by following eight principles that Jesus gave his disciples prior to sending them into a dangerous world.
Tyndale Momentum
|
9781496418685
|
Print book
Silence and Beauty
By Fujimura, Makoto
Shusaku Endo's novel Silence, first published in 1966, endures as one of the greatest works of twentieth-century Japanese literature. Its narrative of the persecution of Christians in seventeenth-century Japan raises uncomfortable questions about God and the ambiguity of faith in the midst of suffering and hostility. Endo's Silence took internationally renowned visual artist Makoto Fujimura on a pilgrimage of grappling with the nature of art, the significance of pain and his own cultural heritage. His artistic faith journey overlaps with Endo's as he uncovers deep layers of meaning in Japanese history and literature, expressed in art both past and present. He finds connections to how faith is lived in contemporary contexts of trauma and glimpses of how the gospel is conveyed in Christ-hidden cultures.
InterVarsity Press
|
9780830844593
|
Print book
Faith, Farming, and Family
By Henderson, Caitlin
When Caitlin, a small-town girl, fell in love with a farm boy named Jake Henderson, she had little idea what farm life - or marriage and motherhood - would bring. But raising a family on a farm is teaching her more about God's goodness and grace than she could have imagined.When Caitlin, a small-town girl, fell in love with a farm boy named Jake Henderson, she had little idea what farm life - or marriage and motherhood - would bring. But raising a family on a farm is teaching her more about God's goodness and grace than she could have imagined.When Caitlin, a small-town girl, fell in love with a farm boy named Jake Henderson, she had little idea what farm life - or marriage and motherhood - would bring. But raising a family on a farm is teaching her more about God's goodness and grace than she could have imagined.
The Benedict Option
By Dreher, Rod
In a radical new vision for the future of Christianity, NYT bestselling author and conservative columnist Rod Dreher calls on American Christians to prepare for the coming Dark Age by embracing an ancient Christian way of life. The light of the Christian faith is flickering out all over the West, and only the willfully blind refuse to see it. From the outside, American churches are beset by challenges to religious liberty in a rapidly secularizing culture. From the inside, they are being hollowed out by the departure of young people and a watered-down pseudo-spirituality. Political solutions have failed, as the triumph of gay marriage and the self-destruction of the Republican Party indicate, and the future of religious freedom has never been in greater doubt. The center is not holding. The West, cut off from its Christian roots, is falling into a new Dark Age. The bad news is that the roots of religious decline run deeper than most Americans realize. The good news is that the blueprint for a time-tested Christian response to this decline is older still. In The Benedict Option, Dreher calls on traditional Christians to learn from the example of St. Benedict of Nursia, a sixth-century monk who turned from the chaos and decadence of the collapsing Roman Empire, and found a new way to live out the faith in community. For five difficult centuries, Benedict's monks kept the faith alive through the Dark Ages, and prepared the way for the rebirth of civilization. What do ordinary 21st century Christians -- Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox -- have to learn from the teaching and example of this great spiritual father? That they must read the signs of the times, abandon hope for a political solution to our civilization's problems, and turn their attention to creating resilient spiritual centers that can survive the coming storm. Whatever their Christian tradition, they must draw on the secrets of Benedictine wisdom to build up the local church, create countercultural schools based on the classical tradition, rebuild family life, thicken communal bonds, and develop survival strategies for doctors, teachers, and others on the front lines of persecution. Now is a time of testing, when believers will learn the difference between shallow optimism and Christian hope. However dark the shadow falling over the West, the light of Christianity need not flicker out. It will not be easy, but Christians who are brave enough to face the religious decline, reject trendy solutions, and return to ancient traditions will find the strength not only to survive, but to thrive joyfully in the post-Christian West. The Benedict Option shows believers how to build the resistance and resilience to face a hostile modern world with the confidence and fervor of the early church. Christians face a time of choosing, with the fate of Christianity in Western civilization hanging in the balance. In this powerful challenge to the complacency of contemporary Christianity, Dreher shows why those in all churches who fail to take the Benedict Option aren't going to make it.
Lies We Believe About God
By Young, Wm Paul
From the author of the twenty million plus copy bestselling novel The Shack and the New York Times bestsellers Cross Roads and Eve comes a compelling, conversational exploration of the wrong-headed ideas we sometimes have and share about God.Wm. Paul Young has been called a heretic for the ways he vividly portrays God's love through his novels. Here he shares twenty-eight commonly uttered and sometimes seemingly innocuous things we say about God. Paul exposes these as lies that keep us from having a full, loving relationship with our Creator. With personal anecdotes and sharing the compassion readers felt from the "Papa" portrayed in The Shack - now a major film starring Sam Worthington and Octavia Spencer - Paul encourages readers to think anew about important issues including sin, religion, hell, politics, identity, creation, human rights, and helping us discover God's deep and abiding love.
Watch Your Mouth
By Evans, Tony
"Does it really matter what I say?" Your greatest weapon - for good or evil - is in your mouth.. From bestselling author Dr. Tony Evans comes a compelling resource to help you learn to tame your tongue. With life-changing insights shared through engaging lessons and anecdotes, youll learn what the Bible teaches about talking:Discover the power of the spoken word to bolster your faith when youre doubting.Discern what should or shouldnt be said so that you honor God with your speech.Develop the ability to praise God and voice wisdom even in tough circumstances. Get inspired by Tonys teaching on the tongue and model with your mouth the character of God. Dont let your words bring cursing or destruction to yourself and those you love. Instead, let your words minister to and speak life into the world around you.
Time to Die, A Time to Live
By Magargle, Nancy
A mother grapples with a crisis of faith while struggling to know God's will when facing end-of-life decisions for her child and learns to recognize and recover from false guilt as she seeks to reconnect with God in the aftermath. "It was years ago I first learned about Stacey's story - little did I know how intimately involved I would become in both her life and death. Stacey Magargle taught me many lessons, not the least of which is that God is utterly sovereign over the decisions we make. I also learned the painful lesson of learning to think - and think hard - before speaking. I am so glad to now see A Time to Die, A Time to Live in print, and I hope as you read that you, too, will learn timeless lessons about life and death, care and compassion, and how we can best support each other through the toughest of times.
In Good Faith
By Polonchek, Maria
Part memoir, part cultural exploration, this book covers the authors journey as she grows up in an evangelical Christian home, leaves religion behind as a young adult, and goes on to raise children in a family outside of religious belief. Maria Polonchek weaves a personal story with up-to-date studies and philosophic exploration of what it means to raise secular children in an otherwise religious world. Offering careful and respectful advice for other parents who are raising their children outside of a particular religious belief system, she explores the many other ways of instilling identity, belonging, and meaning into our lives and the lives of children. Honest and irreverent, the author admits to her religious "baggage" and searches for better understanding of such topics as religious education, morality, awe, death, purpose, and meaning and tradition from secular perspectives. She interviews experts, looks at various studies, and turns to a variety of sources for answers while maintaining a casual and personal tone. While she ultimately argues for parents to let their children shape their own beliefs, she encourages families to tend to existential and social needs that sometimes go unnoticed or unconsidered in life outside religion.
Taking My Life Back
By Gregory, Rebekah
On April 15, 2013, Rebekah Gregory and her five-year-old son waited at the finish line of the Boston Marathon to support a friend who was running. When the blasts of terrorists' homemade bombs packed with nails and screws went off three feet away, Rebekah's legs took the brunt of the blast, protecting her son from certain death. Eighteen surgeries and sixty-five procedures later, her left leg was amputated.Despite the extraordinary trauma she underwent and the nightmares she continues to have, Rebekah sees it as just another part of her personal journey, a journey that has led her through abuse, mistakes, and pain and into the arms of Jesus. This stirring memoir tells the story of her recovery, including her triumphant return to Boston two years later to run part of the race, and explores the peace we experience when we learn to trust God with every part of our lives--the good, the bad, and even the terrifying.Readers will be moved by the joyous way Rebekah is determined to live her life, seeing every obstacle as part of how God forms us into the people we are meant to be. Readers will also find comfort in the message that it's not what they can or can't do that makes the difference, but rather what God, in his mercy, does through them despite it all. Life is hard, but with God all things are possible.
The Templars
By Jones, Dan
"Dan Jones is an entertainer, but also a bona fide historian. Seldom does one find serious scholarship so easy to read." - The Times, Book of the YearA New York Times bestseller, this major new history of the knights Templar is "a fresh, muscular and compelling history of the ultimate military-religious crusading order, combining sensible scholarship with narrative swagger" - Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Jerusalem A faltering war in the middle east. A band of elite warriors determined to fight to the death to protect Christianity's holiest sites. A global financial network unaccountable to any government. A sinister plot founded on a web of lies.Jerusalem 1119. A small group of knights seeking a purpose in the violent aftermath of the First Crusade decides to set up a new order. These are the first Knights Templar, a band of elite warriors prepared to give their lives to protect Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. Over the next two hundred years, the Templars would become the most powerful religious order of the medieval world. Their legend has inspired fervent speculation ever since. In this groundbreaking narrative history, Dan Jones tells the true story of the Templars for the first time in a generation, drawing on extensive original sources to build a gripping account of these Christian holy warriors whose heroism and alleged depravity have been shrouded in myth. The Templars were protected by the pope and sworn to strict vows of celibacy. They fought the forces of Islam in hand-to-hand combat on the sun-baked hills where Jesus lived and died, finding their nemesis in Saladin, who vowed to drive all Christians from the lands of Islam. Experts at channeling money across borders, they established the medieval world's largest and most innovative banking network and waged private wars against anyone who threatened their interests.Then, as they faced setbacks at the hands of the ruthless Mamluk sultan Baybars and were forced to retreat to their stronghold in Cyprus, a vindictive and cash-strapped King of France set his sights on their fortune. His administrators quietly mounted a damning case against the Templars, built on deliberate lies and false testimony. On Friday October 13, 1307, hundreds of brothers were arrested, imprisoned and tortured, and the order was disbanded amid lurid accusations of sexual misconduct and heresy. They were tried by the Pope in secret proceedings and their last master was brutally tortured and burned at the stake. But were they heretics or victims of a ruthlessly repressive state? Dan Jones goes back to the sources tobring their dramatic tale, so relevant to our own times, to life in a book that is at once authoritative and compulsively readable.
Nothing to Fear
By Black, Barry C
"I'm really concerned about the state of the world. It feels like things are falling apart.""I'm worried about my family's future.""How can I stand firm in my faith in today's culture?"Our times are turbulent ones, and questions and worries like these can haunt us and keep us awake at night. Yet is it possible that, ultimately, there is actually nothing to fear? Barry C. Black is the spiritual "leader of leaders" for the US Senate -- shepherding those on the front lines of the decisions that shape our culture. Now, Chaplain Black shows all of us how to thrive in the midst of today's turbulence and confusion by following eight principles that Jesus gave his disciples prior to sending them into a dangerous world.
Silence and Beauty
By Fujimura, Makoto
Shusaku Endo's novel Silence, first published in 1966, endures as one of the greatest works of twentieth-century Japanese literature. Its narrative of the persecution of Christians in seventeenth-century Japan raises uncomfortable questions about God and the ambiguity of faith in the midst of suffering and hostility. Endo's Silence took internationally renowned visual artist Makoto Fujimura on a pilgrimage of grappling with the nature of art, the significance of pain and his own cultural heritage. His artistic faith journey overlaps with Endo's as he uncovers deep layers of meaning in Japanese history and literature, expressed in art both past and present. He finds connections to how faith is lived in contemporary contexts of trauma and glimpses of how the gospel is conveyed in Christ-hidden cultures.
Faith, Farming, and Family
By Henderson, Caitlin
When Caitlin, a small-town girl, fell in love with a farm boy named Jake Henderson, she had little idea what farm life - or marriage and motherhood - would bring. But raising a family on a farm is teaching her more about God's goodness and grace than she could have imagined.When Caitlin, a small-town girl, fell in love with a farm boy named Jake Henderson, she had little idea what farm life - or marriage and motherhood - would bring. But raising a family on a farm is teaching her more about God's goodness and grace than she could have imagined.When Caitlin, a small-town girl, fell in love with a farm boy named Jake Henderson, she had little idea what farm life - or marriage and motherhood - would bring. But raising a family on a farm is teaching her more about God's goodness and grace than she could have imagined.