Showing results by publisher "Tantor Audio" in Religious Studies

Twenty years since its first publication, this new anniversary edition of the Holocaust memoir of George Salton (then Lucjan Salzman), gives listeners a personal and powerful account of his survival through one of the darkest periods in human history. With heartbreaking and honest reflection, the author shares a gripping first-person narrative of his transformation from a Jewish eleven-year-old boy living happily in Tyczyn, Poland, with his brother and parents, to his experiences as a teenage victim of growing persecution, brutality, and imprisonment as the Nazis pursued the Final Solution.

Beginning with a handful of members in 1830, the church that Joseph Smith founded has grown into a world-wide organization with over twelve million adherents, playing prominent roles in politics, sports, entertainment, and business. Yet they are an oddity. Mormonism: A Very Short Introduction explains who Mormons are: what they believe and how they live their lives.

A classic portrait of immigrant life in the early decades of the twentieth century, A Walker in the City is a tour of tenements, subways, and synagogues—but also a universal story of the desires and fears we experience as we try to leave our small, familiar neighborhoods for something new.

The early Christian movement spread from Jerusalem in every direction, taking on local cultural expression all around the ancient world. So why do so many people see Christianity as a primarily Western, white religion? In A Multitude of All Peoples, Vince Bantu surveys the geographic range of the early church's history, revealing an alternate, more accurate narrative to that of Christianity as a product of the Western world. Focusing on the necessity for contextualization and indigenous leadership, he draws out practical lessons for intercultural communication of the gospel.

Refugia (reh-FU-jee-ah) is a term describing places of shelter where life endures in times of crisis, such as a volcanic eruption, fire, or stressed climate. Ideally, these refugia endure, expand, and connect so that new life emerges. Debra Rienstra applies this concept to human culture and faith, asking: In this era of ecological devastation, how can Christians become people of refugia? How can we find and nurture these refugia in our human cultural systems and in our spiritual lives? Refugia Faith speaks to people securely within the faith as well as to those on the edge.

Throughout history, Christians have pictured the relationships between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit through analogies. Such illustrations—some from the West but also from Latin America, Asia, Africa, and other places—come laden with theological ramifications that the church has rejected (heresies) or embraced (doctrines). In Three in One, William David Spencer shares a lifetime of insights from teaching within the global church, bringing fresh images and analogies of the Trinity to deepen our theological vocabulary.

In the 1960s and 1970s, complaints about a "Jewish literary mafia" were everywhere. Although a conspiracy of Jews colluding to control publishing in the United States never actually existed, such accusations reflected a genuine transformation from an industry notorious for excluding Jews to one in which they arguably had become the most influential figures. Josh Lambert examines the dynamics between Jewish editors and Jewish writers; how Jewish women exposed the misogyny they faced; and how children of literary parents have struggled with and benefited from their inheritances. 

Americans long viewed the world as a realm of suffering heathens whose lands and lives needed their intervention to flourish. The term "heathen" fell out of common use by the early 1900s, leading some to imagine that racial categories had replaced religious differences. But the ideas underlying the figure of the heathen did not disappear. Heathen reveals a key source of American exceptionalism and a prism through which Americans have defined themselves as a progressive and humanitarian nation even as supposed heathens have drawn on the same to counter this national myth.

Drawing on twelve years of research in dozens of archives in Austria, Germany, Israel, and the United States, this book tells the story of five Jewish people—a merchant, a homemaker, a real estate broker, and two teenagers—who bravely resisted persecution and defended themselves in Nazi Germany.

The history of America cannot be told without the history of religion, the history of American religion cannot be told without the history of Catholicism, and the history of Catholicism in America cannot be told without the history of Jesuits in America. Jesuits in the United States offers a panoramic overview of the Jesuit order in the United States from the colonial era to the present. David J. Collins, SJ, describes the development of the Jesuit order in the US against the background of American religious, cultural, and social history.

Barbara Crain Major and Joseph Barndt bring ninety combined years of experience as community organizers, teachers, and anti-racism trainers in community and church settings to this book. In Deconstructing Racism, they propose the deconstruction of racism's roots within systems and institutions that have been created, both structurally and legally, to serve white people.

Over the last thirty years, conservative evangelicals have been moving to the Northwest of the United States, where they hope to resist the impact of secular modernity and to survive the breakdown of society that they anticipate. Their activity coincides with the promotion by prominent survivalist authors of a program of migration to the "American Redoubt," a region encompassing Idaho, Montana, parts of eastern Washington and Oregon, and Wyoming, as a haven in which to endure hostile social change or natural disaster and in which to build a new social order.

In this book, the author traces the history of this unholy alliance and invites those recovering from the influence of fundamentalist religions, as well as the non-religious seeking to preserve the democratic experiment, to excise the toxic influences of religious authoritarianism from politics and personal life. Listeners from all backgrounds will be enlightened and inspired by Baker's clear and incisive snapshot of this defining moment in our history.

How did Muslims across time and place define the line between themselves and their neighbors? Youshaa Patel explores why the Prophet Muhammad first advised his followers to emulate Christians and Jews, but then allegedly reversed course, urging them to "be different!" He details how subsequent generations of Muslim scholars canonized the Prophet's admonition into an influential doctrine against imitation that enjoined ordinary believers to embody and display their religious difference in public life.

"The unexamined life is not worth living," according to Socrates, but pursuing the examined life strikes many as daunting, unappealing and even unnecessary. Is philosophy important? Why do I need philosophy if I have the Bible? Aren't philosophers simply engaged in meaningless disputes that are irrelevant to everyday life? Mark Foreman addresses these and other questions in this "prelude" to the subject. Unlike a full introduction to philosophy, this book is a preliminary discussion that dispels misunderstandings and explains the rationale for engaging in philosophical reasoning.

The Pilgrims' celebration of the first Thanksgiving is a keystone of America's national and spiritual identity. But is what we've been taught about them or their harvest feast what actually happened? And if not, what difference does it make? Through the captivating story of the birth of this quintessentially American holiday, veteran historian Tracy McKenzie helps us to better understand the tale of America's origins—and for Christians, to grasp the significance of this story and those like it.

We live in a world of oppositional relationships and increasing in-group/out-group divisions. Christian sociologist Matthew Vos explains how the problem of the stranger lies at the root of many problems humanity faces, such as racism, sexism, and nationalism. He applies classic sociological theory on "the stranger" to matters of faith and social justice, showing that an identity in Christ frees us to love strangers as neighbors and friends. The book also includes two guest chapters, one on intersex persons and the church and one on stranger-making in the "correctional" system.

In October 1942, SS guards at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp violently disbanded a rehearsal of a secret Jewish choir led by conductor Rosebery d'Arguto. Many in the group did not live to see morning, and those who survived were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Only one of its members survived the Holocaust. Yet their story survives, thanks to Aleksander Kulisiewicz. An amateur musician, he was not Jewish, but became friends with d'Arguto in Sachsenhausen. D'Arguto tasked him with a mission: to save the musical heritage of the victims of the Nazi camps.

The Angels of Christmas: Hearing God's Voice in Advent, a four-week Advent study by Susan Robb, explores the four angelic visits surrounding the birth of Jesus with Zechariah, Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds. In this study, the listener will explore the visits and dive deep into the history of the angel Gabriel—and other angels—in the Old Testament. The Angels of Christmas uses these four angelic appearances to discuss God's presence in history and our lives today. The messages of the angels hold meaning for listeners both then and now.

Since Revolutionary times, Jews have served in the United States armed forces and fought bravely in America's wars. Jews first arrived in the New World in 1654, seeking religious freedom. Since the beginning of American nationhood, Jewish volunteers and conscripts fought in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, on both sides of the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, in both World Wars, and in the Korean, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars.