Showing titles in Religious Studies

Thomas Cahill tells the story of how Europe evolved from the classical age of Rome to the medieval era. Without Ireland, the transition could not have taken place. Not only did Irish monks and scribes maintain the very record of Western civilization, they brought their uniquely Irish world-view to the task. As Cahill delightfully illustrates, so much of the liveliness we associate with medieval culture has its roots in Ireland. When the seeds of culture were replanted on the European continent, it was from Ireland that they were germinated.

While many books have tried to integrate theology and psychology, this book takes another step and explores the importance of the spiritual disciplines in psychotherapy, helping counselors to integrate the biblical principles of forgiveness, redemption, restitution, prayer, and worship into their counseling techniques. Since its first publication in 1996, this book has quickly become a contemporary classic—a go-to handbook for integrating what we know is true from the disciplines of theology and psychology and how that impacts your daily walk with God.

Anne Frank is the most well-known victim of the Holocaust. In 1945, at the age of 15, she died at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, becoming one of the six million Jews who were murdered in Europe under the Nazi regime. But through her writing, her memory lives on. Jemma Saunders goes beyond Anne Frank's diary to fill in the gaps about her family history, her life before she went into hiding, and her final months at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. A sobering tale, Anne Frank's story is one that will continue to inspire for decades to come.

Odin: Ecstasy, Runes, and Norse Magic is the first book on Odin that is both historically sourced and accessible to a general audience. It explores Odin's origins, his appearances in sagas, old magic spells, and the Poetic Edda, and his influence on modern media, such as Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Each chapter features suggestions for rituals, exercises, and music so that listeners can comprehend and become closer to this complicated god.

Are we then, all of us, descendants of demigods? In this crowning oeuvre, Zecharia Sitchin proceeds step-by-step through a mass of ancient writings and artifacts, leading the listener to the stunning Royal Tombs of Ur. He reveals a DNA source that could prove the biblical and Sumerian tales true, providing conclusive physical evidence for past alien presence on Earth and an unprecedented scientific opportunity to track down the “Missing Link” in humankind’s evolution, unlocking the secrets of longevity and even the ultimate mystery of life and death.

Marc Headley provides an insider's view of life as a member of Scientology's "Sea Organization". Marc worked at Scientology's secret desert compound, which houses all Scientology management, for 15 years. The 500-acre property is located deep in the California desert. The local townspeople were told lectures and films were made there. But is that all that was happening? It is the location of a multi-million-dollar home for L. Ron Hubbard, built two decades after his death. It is the home of Scientology's current leader, David Miscavige.

The Church has been both sanctuary and source of deep wounding—offering healing in one moment and harm in the next. In Fractured Witness: Reflections on the Redemption, Reformation, and Reclamation of the Church, Dr. Matt Pandel dares to confront this paradox head-on with unflinching honesty and unwavering hope.

One of the most remarkable historical works of the 19th century came from the pen of French historian Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, a native of Paris. This amazing analysis of family and religious life among the ancient Greeks and Romans is the key to understanding ancient Mediterranean civilizations. The story begins in the misty period of the Bronze Age as the Indo-Europeans began to filter down into the Italian and Greek peninsulas. They brought with them a patriarchy that was based on ancestor worship and the veneration of hearth gods.

Dedicated as few men have been to the life of reason, Bertrand Russell has always been concerned with the basic questions to which religion also addresses itself - questions about man’s place in the universe and the nature of the good life, questions that involve life after death, morality, freedom, education, and sexual ethics. He brings to his treatment of these questions the same courage, scrupulous logic, and lofty wisdom for which his other work as philosopher, writer, and teacher has been famous.

Promising answers, healing, and fulfillment, witchcraft and new age practices captivate our culture. And many spiritually hungry people—even in the church—unknowingly participate in these dark and dangerous spiritual activities, with dark and dangerous consequences.

HOUSES OF THE HOLY: A Nightmare Web of Hate, Crime, Corruption, and Child Abuse is the true story they never wanted you to hear of one man’s battle for truth—and the price he paid. When Mark Harris, a decorated former Air Force Special Operations pilot, filed a routine restraining order to protect his two young sons, he had no idea he was stepping into a nightmare. That single act set off a chain reaction that exposed a hidden criminal empire—an alliance of white supremacists, rogue military operatives, mob families, corrupt officials, government informants, and religious extremists.

Christianity is a picture of reality. It explains why the world is the way it is. When the pieces of this puzzle are properly assembled, we see the big picture clearly. Christianity is a true story of how the world began, why the world is the way it is, what role humans play in the drama, and how all the plotlines of the story are resolved in the end. In The Story of Reality, best-selling author and host of Stand to Reason Gregory Koukl explains the five words that form the narrative backbone of the Christian story.

Michael Vlach describes the 10 interpretation principles that guide dispensationalism's understanding of the Bible's storyline from Genesis 1 through Revelation 22. He also lays out the interpretation tactics of non-dispensationalism so the listener can grasp the contrast. If you want to discover why dispensationalists understand the Bible they way they do, this book is the answer.

A seminal work on the astonishing power of the gospel by one of the most original thinkers of our time.

Edith Hahn was an outspoken young woman in Vienna when the Gestapo forced her into a ghetto and then into a slave labor camp. When she returned home months later, she knew she would become a hunted woman, so she went underground.

The Two Babylons is a religious pamphlet published in 1853 by the Presbyterian Free Church of Scotland theologian Alexander Hislop. The author argues that the Catholic Church is the Babylon of the Apocalypse which is described in the Bible. The work examines the symbolism of the Book of Revelation in detail.

Profiled on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, Iranian-born scholar Vali Nasr has become one of America's leading commentators on current events in the Middle East, admired and welcomed by both media and government for his "concise and coherent" analysis (Wall Street Journal). In this "smart, clear and timely" book (Washington Post), Nasr brilliantly dissects the political and theological antagonisms within Islam. He provides a unique and objective understanding of the 1,400-year bitter struggle between Shias and Sunnis, and sheds crucial light on its modern-day consequences—from the nuclear posturing of Iran's President Ahmadinejad to the recent U.S.-enabled shift toward Shia power in Iraq and Hezbollah's continued dominance in Lebanon.

Gnosticism was a contemporary of early Christianity, and its demise can be traced to Christianity's efforts to silence its teachings. The Gnostic message, however, was not destroyed but simply went underground. Starting with the first emergence of Gnosticism, the author shows how its influence extended from the teachings of neo-Platonists and the magical traditions of the Middle Ages to the beliefs and ideas of the Sufis, Jacob Böhme, Carl Jung, Rudolf Steiner, and the Rosicrucians and Freemasons.

Eve Tibbs offers a comprehensive, yet very accessible, introduction to the beliefs and practices of the Eastern Orthodox Church for Western listeners. Tibbs has devoted her career to translating the Orthodox faith to an evangelical audience, and she has over 20 years of experience teaching this material to students. Assuming no prior knowledge of Orthodox theology, this survey covers the basic ideas of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, from its origins at Pentecost to the present day.

Alan Watts examines the problem of humans in a seemingly hostile universe in ways that question the social norms and illusions that bind and constrict modern humans. Marking a groundbreaking synthesis, Watts asserts that the powerful insights of Freud and Jung, which had, indeed, brought psychiatry close to the edge of liberation, could, if melded with the hitherto secret wisdom of the Eastern traditions, free people from their battles with the self.