An anthology that examines the historical and contemporary relationship between religion and violence This groundbreaking anthology provides the most comprehensive overview for understanding the fascinating relationship between religion and violence-historically, culturally, and in the contemporary world. Bringing together writings from scholarly and religious traditions, it is the first volume to unite primary sources-justifications for violence from religious texts, theologians, and activists-with invaluable essays by authoritative scholars. The first half of the collection includes original... View More...
For the majority of cultures around the world, religion permeates and informs everyday rituals of survival and hope. But religion also has served as the foundation for national differences, racial conflicts, class exploitation, and gender discrimination. Indeed, religious spirituality, having been transformed by contemporary economic and political events, remains both empowering and controversial. Religions/Globalizations examines the extent to which globalization and religion are inseparable terms, bound up with each other in a number of critical and mutually revealing ways. As the contributo... View More...
What is sin? Is it simply wrongdoing? Why do its effects linger over time? In this sensitive, imaginative, and original work, Gary Anderson shows how changing conceptions of sin and forgiveness lay at the very heart of the biblical tradition. Spanning nearly two thousand years, the book brilliantly demonstrates how sin, once conceived of as a physical burden, becomes, over time, eclipsed by economic metaphors. Transformed from a weight that an individual carried, sin becomes a debt that must be repaid in order to be redeemed in God's eyes.Anderson shows how this ancient Jewish revolution in th... View More...
In this work, the origins of religions and the experience of freedom and unification which is the essence of religion are examined and clarified, and the stages and conditions necessary to reach this state are carefully described. View More...
Atheists are frequently demonized as arrogant intellectuals, antagonistic to religion, devoid of moral sentiments, advocates of an "anything goes" lifestyle. Now, in this revealing volume, nineteen leading philosophers open a window on the inner life of atheism, shattering these common stereotypes as they reveal how they came to turn away from religious belief. These highly engaging personal essays capture the marvelous diversity to be found among atheists, providing a portrait that will surprise most readers. Many of the authors, for example, express great affection for particular religious t... View More...
With a new postscriptIn these times of rising geopolitical chaos, the need for mutual understanding between cultures has never been more urgent. Religious differences are seen as fuel for violence and warfare. In these pages, one of our greatest writers on religion, Karen Armstrong, amasses a sweeping history of humankind to explore the perceived connection between war and the world's great creeds--and to issue a passionate defense of the peaceful nature of faith. With unprecedented scope, Armstrong looks at the whole history of each tradition--not only Christianity and Islam, but also Buddhi... View More...
In the late twentieth century, fundamentalism has emerged as one of the most powerful forces at work in the world, contesting the dominance of modern secular values and threatening peace and harmony around the globe. Yet it remains incomprehensible to a large number of people. In The Battle for God, Karen Armstrong brilliantly and sympathetically shows us how and why fundamentalist groups came into existence and what they yearn to accomplish. We see the West in the sixteenth century beginning to create an entirely new kind of civilization, which brought in its wake change in every aspect of li... View More...
A nuanced exploration of the part religion plays in human life, past and present, from one of the foremost commentators on religion at work today. 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 has called God, Brahman, Nirvana, Allah, or Dao. Focusing especially on Christianity but including Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Chinese spirituality, Armstrong examines the diminished impulse toward religion in our own time, when a significant number of people either want not... View More...
From Karen Armstrong, the bestselling author of A History of God and The Spiral Staircase, comes this extraordinary investigation of a critical moment in the evolution of religious thought. In the ninth century BCE, events in four regions of the civilized world led to the rise of religious traditions that have endured to the present day--development of Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Armstrong, one of our most prominent religious scholars, examines how these traditions began in response to the viol... View More...
Gripping, revelatory, and inspirational, The Spiral Staircase is an extraordinary account of an astonishing spiritual journey. In 1962, at age seventeen, Karen Armstrong entered a convent, eager to meet God. After seven brutally unhappy years as a nun, she left her order to pursue English literature at Oxford. But convent life had profoundly altered her, and coping with the outside world and her expiring faith proved to be excruciating. Her deep solitude and a terrifying illness-diagnosed only years later as epilepsy--marked her forever as an outsider. In her own mind she was a complete failur... View More...
Through the Narrow Gate is Karen Armstrong's intimate memoir of life inside a Catholic convent. With refreshing honesty and clarity, the book takes readers on a revelatory adventure that begins with Armstrong's decision in the course of her spiritual training offers a fascinating view into a shrouded religious life, and a vivid, moving account of the spiritual coming age of one of our most loved and respected interpreters of religious.
One of the most original thinkers on the role of religion in the modern world author of such acclaimed books as A History of God, Islam, and Buddha now gives us an impassioned and practical book that can help us make the world a more compassionate place. Karen Armstrong believes that while compassion is intrinsic in all human beings, each of us needs to work diligently to cultivate and expand our capacity for compassion. Here, in this straightforward, thoughtful, and thought-provoking book, she sets out a program that can lead us toward a more compassionate life. The twelve steps Armstrong sug... View More...
One of the most original thinkers on the role of religion in the modern world author of such acclaimed books as A History of God, Islam, and Buddha now gives us an impassioned and practical book that can help us make the world a more compassionate place. Karen Armstrong believes that while compassion is intrinsic in all human beings, each of us needs to work diligently to cultivate and expand our capacity for compassion. Here, in this straightforward, thoughtful, and thought-provoking book, she sets out a program that can lead us toward a more compassionate life. The twelve steps Armstrong sug... View More...
This enduring work of Russian spirituality has charmed countless people with its tale of a nineteenth-century peasant's quest for the secret of prayer. Readers follow this anonymous pilgrim as he treks over the Steppes in search of the answer to the one compelling question: How does one pray constantly? Through his journeys, and under the tutelage of a spiritual father, he becomes gradually more open to the promptings of God, and sees joy and plenty wherever he goes. Ultimately, he discovers the different meanings and methods of prayer as he travels to his ultimate destination, Jerusalem. The ... View More...
This enduring work of Russian spirituality has charmed countless people with its tale of a nineteenth-century peasant's quest for the secret of prayer. Readers follow this anonymous pilgrim as he treks over the Steppes in search of the answer to the one compelling question: How does one pray constantly? Through his journeys, and under the tutelage of a spiritual father, he becomes gradually more open to the promptings of God, and sees joy and plenty wherever he goes. Ultimately, he discovers the different meanings and methods of prayer as he travels to his ultimate destination, Jerusalem. The ... View More...
"The wisdom is timeless and the updates fresh as Christina Baldwin brings this classic into a new century. Her clear, calm vision for writing as spiritual practice emanates from every page."--Kathleen Adams, author of Journal to the Self In this classic book you will discover the intimate journey of personal and spiritual development that is possible through the practice of journal writing. In Life's Companion, acclaimed author Christina Baldwin offers readers guidance and inspiration to this powerful way of expanding our inner horizons and opening our minds and spirits to a deeper relationshi... View More...
I've had a sense since I was youngthat there's more going on here, thatthe world is not a cold, dead place, that it's alive in some compelling andmysterious way. This book is about that sense. I've triedto listen to it, and follow it, and trust it.It's been devastating at times, intoxicatingat others, heartbreaking and maddeningand euphoric----how do you make senseof this experience we're having here onthis ball of rock hurtling through spaceat 67,000 miles an hour? There are big questions: Everythingis made of particles and atoms, and theuniverse has been expanding for thirteenbillion years? ... View More...
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was only thirty-nine years old when he was executed in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945, yet his courage, vision, and brilliance have greatly influenced the twentieth-century Church and theology. Particularly through his bestselling classic, The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer profoundly shaped such minds and movements as Martin Luther King, Jr., and Leonardo Boff, civil rights and leberation theology.A Testament to Freedom, completely revised and expanded for this edition, includes previously untranslated writings, excerpts from major books, sermons, and selected letters... View More...
