Showing results by publisher "-emdashery books-" in Religious Studies

In this personal account, Lilia Tarawa exposes the shocking secrets of the cult, with its rigid rules and oppressive control of women. She describes her fear when her family questioned Gloriavale's beliefs and practices. When her parents fled with their children, Lilia was forced to make a desperate choice: to stay or to leave. No matter what she chose, she would lose people she loved.

While most people think that the 27 books of the New Testament are the only sacred writings of the early Christians, this is not at all the case. A companion volume to Bart Ehrman's Lost Christianities, this book offers an anthology of up-to-date and easy-listening translations of many noncanonical writings from the first centuries after Christ - texts that have been for the most part lost or neglected for almost two millennia.

Winner of the British Book Awards, Author of the Year, 2007.
Shortlisted for the British Book Awards, Book of the Year, 2007.
Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, 2007.
Winner of the Audiobook Download of the Year, 2007.
As the author of many classic works on science and philosophy, Richard Dawkins has always asserted the irrationality of belief in God and the grievous harm it has inflicted on society. He now focuses his fierce intellect exclusively on this subject, denouncing its faulty logic and the suffering it causes.

You think you know about Islam. But, did you know that Islam teaches that Muslims must wage war to impose Islamic law on non-Muslim states, or that American Muslim groups are engaged in a huge cover-up of Islamic doctrine? These and other "politically incorrect" facts are revealed by Robert Spencer in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades).

For more than 2,000 years, the Heart Sutra has been part of the daily life of millions of Buddhists. This concise text, so rich and laden with meaning, concentrates the very heart of Buddhism into a powerful and evocative teaching on the interdependence of all reality. In Essence of the Heart Sutra, the Dalai Lama masterfully unpacks the Heart Sutra so that any listener can benefit from its teachings - teachings meant to help us release ourselves from suffering and live with true compassion.

Beginning with the life of Jesus, Robert Louis Wilken narrates the dramatic spread and development of Christianity over the first thousand years of its history. Moving through the formation of early institutions, practices, and beliefs to the transformations of the Roman world after the conversion of Constantine, he sheds new light on the subsequent stories of Christianity in the Latin West, the Byzantine and Slavic East, the Middle East, and Central Asia.

America has a God-shaped hole in its heart, argues New York Times best-selling author Ben Shapiro, and we shouldn't fill it with politics and hate.

The role of personal prayer, worship in common, everyday work, and Christian service is treated in simple, almost biblical, words. Life Together is bread for all who are hungry for the real life of Christian fellowship.

Neville Goddard (1905-1972) was one of the most extraordinary and ardently practical spiritual thinkers of the past century. Writing and lecturing under the solitary name Neville, this modern mystic enthralled audiences with one simple, radical principle: the human imagination is God. Whatever you think and feel, Neville taught, you literally out-picture in your world. Here are three of Neville's most concise and persuasive statements on the creative powers of your mind.

In this new translation of the Gospel of Thomas, Leloup shows that the Jesus recorded by the "infinitely skeptical and infinitely believing" Thomas has much in common with gnostics of non-dualistic schools. Like them, Jesus preaches the coming of a new man, the genesis of the man of knowledge. In this gospel, Jesus describes a journey from limited to unlimited consciousness. The Jesus of Thomas invites us to drink deeply from the well of knowledge within, not so that we may become good Christians but so we may attain the self-knowledge that will make each of us, too, a Christ.

The most widely-used text of the last 25 years in its discipline, Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem has been thoroughly revised and expanded for the first time while retaining the features that have made it the standard in its field: Clear explanations, an emphasis on each doctrine’s scriptural basis, and practical applications to daily life. Volume 1 of 2.

The shocking and subversive memoir of a 12-year-NXIVM-member-turned-whistleblower, and her inspiring true story of abuse, escape, and redemption. "Master, would you brand me? It would be an honor." Scarred follows actress Sarah Edmondson's account of her recruitment into the NXIVM cult, founded by Keith Raniere. It narrates in detail the 12 years she spent within the organization, during which she enrolled over 2,000 members, chronicling her breaking point and her harrowing fight to get out, help others, and heal.

The Book of Enoch contains one of the oldest stories ever told by the human species on Planet Earth. It is an epic tale of lustful angels, man-eating giants, and portentous visions of the end times. It introduces us to the heavenly Watchers and their earthborn hybrid sons, the mighty Nephilim, unlocking the meaning behind some of the most perplexing passages in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.

In the 1950s, a young Indianapolis minister named Jim Jones preached a curious blend of the gospel and Marxism. His congregation was racially mixed, and he was a leader in the early civil rights movement. Eventually, Jones moved his church, Peoples Temple, to northern California, where he got involved in electoral politics and became a prominent Bay Area leader. But underneath the surface lurked a terrible darkness.

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.

Waiting to be rediscovered in the British Library is an ancient manuscript of the early Church, copied by an anonymous monk. The manuscript is at least 1,450 years old, possibly dating to the first century, Jesus' lifetime. And now, The Lost Gospel provides the first-ever translation from Syriac into English of this unique document that tells the inside story of Jesus' social, family, and political life. The Lost Gospel takes listeners on an unparalleled historical adventure through a paradigm-shifting manuscript.

A historical tour de force that demolishes the myths and taboos that have surrounded Jewish and Israeli history, The Invention of the Jewish People offers a new account of both that demands to be reckoned with. Was there really a forced exile in the first century, at the hands of the Romans? Should we regard the Jewish people, throughout two millennia, as both a distinct ethnic group and a putative nation—returned at last to its Biblical homeland? In this iconoclastic work of history, Shlomo Sand provides the intellectual foundations for a new vision of Israel's future.

This long-awaited second book by renowned spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle goes deeper into the teachings so eloquently and clearly expressed in his first book, The Power of Now.

In Why I Am a Hindu, one of India’s finest public intellectuals gives us a profound book about one of the world’s oldest and greatest religions. Starting with a close examination of his own belief in Hinduism, he ranges far and wide in his study of the faith.

Talking to key modern influences and thinkers, and drawing inspiration from the Bible and the historical experience of the Jewish people, Sacks argues that there are eight key factors in establishing, maintaining and passing on resilient moral values within a broad group, among them attitudes of lifelong learning and of thanksgiving, the importance of family life and community, and a culture of positive argument in place of destructive conflict.