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From any non-Christian point of view, the gospel does not make sense. Grace doesn't make sense. Grace doesn't add up. Why would Jesus come to be one of us, to pay a debt He did not owe, because we owed a debt we could not pay? Why would He do that? Free? No strings? What was in it for Him? Since the church first began, Christians have had trouble accepting God's grace. We have substituted holiness, discipleship, order, regulation, and a long list of things to avoid in place of God's free gift. The result is a "Bad News Religion" that drains the joy and life out of believers. Bad News Religion is a convicting, liberating exploration of how we, in the name of religion, have shifted the focus from the work of God to our ability to become worthy of salvation. The result is bondage and defeat. The key to success in the Christian life is not what we do, but who we know. Knowing God and knowing the fullness of His grace is a liberating experience. Most of us don't realize how we have robbed ourselves of experiencing the richness of God's grace.
Good News, Bad News by C. John McCloskey,Russell Shaw Pdf
The inspiring personal testimonies of such well-known people, are compelling stories of challenging spiritual journeys that will be a source of deep inspiration for readers in their own spritual walk.
Traces the decline of Christianity in America since the 1950s, posing controversial arguments about the role of heresy in the nation's downfall while calling for a revival of traditional Christian practices.
We live in an age of skepticism. Our society places such faith in empirical reason, historical progress, and heartfelt emotion that it’s easy to wonder: Why should anyone believe in Christianity? What role can faith and religion play in our modern lives? In this thoughtful and inspiring new book, pastor and New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller invites skeptics to consider that Christianity is more relevant now than ever. As human beings, we cannot live without meaning, satisfaction, freedom, identity, justice, and hope. Christianity provides us with unsurpassed resources to meet these needs. Written for both the ardent believer and the skeptic, Making Sense of God shines a light on the profound value and importance of Christianity in our lives.
How we feel is as vital to our survival as how we think. This claim, based on the premise that emotions are largely adaptive, serves as the organizing theme of Why We Need Religion. This book is a novel pathway in a well-trodden field of religious studies and philosophy of religion. Stephen Asma argues that, like art, religion has direct access to our emotional lives in ways that science does not. Yes, science can give us emotional feelings of wonder and the sublime--we can feel the sacred depths of nature--but there are many forms of human suffering and vulnerability that are beyond the reach of help from science. Different emotional stresses require different kinds of rescue. Unlike secular authors who praise religion's ethical and civilizing function, Asma argues that its core value lies in its emotionally therapeutic power. No theorist of religion has failed to notice the importance of emotions in spiritual and ritual life, but truly systematic research has only recently delivered concrete data on the neurology, psychology, and anthropology of the emotional systems. This very recent "affective turn" has begun to map out a powerful territory of embodied cognition. Why We Need Religion incorporates new data from these affective sciences into the philosophy of religion. It goes on to describe the way in which religion manages those systems--rage, play, lust, care, grief, and so on. Finally, it argues that religion is still the best cultural apparatus for doing this adaptive work. In short, the book is a Darwinian defense of religious emotions and the cultural systems that manage them.
Christopher Hitchens, described in the London Observer as “one of the most prolific, as well as brilliant, journalists of our time” takes on his biggest subject yet–the increasingly dangerous role of religion in the world. In the tradition of Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian and Sam Harris’s recent bestseller, The End Of Faith, Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate case against religion. With a close and erudite reading of the major religious texts, he documents the ways in which religion is a man-made wish, a cause of dangerous sexual repression, and a distortion of our origins in the cosmos. With eloquent clarity, Hitchens frames the argument for a more secular life based on science and reason, in which hell is replaced by the Hubble Telescope’s awesome view of the universe, and Moses and the burning bush give way to the beauty and symmetry of the double helix.
Author : Ben J. Wattenberg Publisher : American Enterprise Institute Page : 438 pages File Size : 45,9 Mb Release : 1985 Category : Political Science ISBN : 0671606417
Writing Religion: The Case for the Critical Study of Religions is a collection of outstanding essays on wide-ranging aspects of religious studies by well-known scholars, delivered as part of the University of Alabama's annual Aronov Lectures.
As the youngest-ever op-ed columnist for the New York Times, Ross Douthat has emerged as one of the most provocative and influential voices of his generation. In Bad Religion he offers a masterful and hard-hitting account of how American Christianity has gone off the rails—and why it threatens to take American society with it. Writing for an era dominated by recession, gridlock, and fears of American decline, Douthat exposes the spiritual roots of the nation’s political and economic crises. He argues that America’s problem isn’t too much religion, as a growing chorus of atheists have argued; nor is it an intolerant secularism, as many on the Christian right believe. Rather, it’s bad religion: the slow-motion collapse of traditional faith and the rise of a variety of pseudo-Christianities that stroke our egos, indulge our follies, and encourage our worst impulses. These faiths speak from many pulpits—conservative and liberal, political and pop cultural, traditionally religious and fashionably “spiritual”—and many of their preachers claim a Christian warrant. But they are increasingly offering distortions of traditional Christianity—not the real thing. Christianity’s place in American life has increasingly been taken over, not by atheism, Douthat argues, but by heresy: debased versions of Christian faith that breed hubris, greed, and self-absorption. In a story that moves from the 1950s to the age of Obama, he brilliantly charts institutional Christianity’s decline from a vigorous, mainstream, and bipartisan faith—which acted as a “vital center” and the moral force behind the civil rights movement—through the culture wars of the 1960s and 1970s to the polarizing debates of the present day. Ranging from Glenn Beck to Barack Obama, Eat Pray Love to Joel Osteen, and Oprah Winfrey to The Da Vinci Code, Douthat explores how the prosperity gospel’s mantra of “pray and grow rich,” a cult of self-esteem that reduces God to a life coach, and the warring political religions of left and right have crippled the country’s ability to confront our most pressing challenges and accelerated American decline. His urgent call for a revival of traditional Christianity is sure to generate controversy, and it will be vital reading for all those concerned about the imperiled American future.
One young woman’s true story of growing up in a repressive cult led by her charismatic grandfather, Hopeful Christian. In an idyllic valley in New Zealand, the Gloriavale Christian Community seemingly flourished. Founded by Lilia Tarawa’s grandfather, Hopeful Christian, Gloriavale was run according to an oppressive interpretation of fundamental Christianity and became a strictly controlled world of arranged marriages, religious control and spiritual abuse. Born into the cult that her grandfather had started, and surrounded by friends and family, Gloriavale seemed like paradise for Lila Tarawa at first. Her mother, Miracle, had grown up in there too and Lilia’s father managed a thriving moss export business, one of several companies owned by the community. As Lilia grew older, however, she began to see and experience the darker side of the cult, with its strict rules, tight control and shocking abuse. As Lilia and her family started to question Gloriavale’s beliefs and practices, Lilia was forced to make a desperate choice: stay with people she loved or flee to a world that she had always been told was evil. In Daughter of Gloriavale, Lilia Tarawa exposes the shocking world of the secretive cult and details her heart-wrenching journey to break free, find happiness and discover her own strength.
Media Portrayals of Religion and the Secular Sacred by Kim Knott,Elizabeth Poole Pdf
Is it true that Christianity is being marginalised by the secular media, at the expense of Islam? Are the mass media Islamophobic? Is atheism on the rise in media coverage? Media Portrayals of Religion and the Secular Sacred explores such questions and argues that television and newspapers remain key sources of popular information about religion. They are particularly significant at a time when religious participation in Europe is declining yet the public visibility and influence of religions seems to be increasing. Based on analysis of mainstream media, the book is set in the context of wider debates about the sociology of religion and media representation. The authors draw on research conducted in the 1980s and 2008-10 to examine British media coverage and representation of religion and contemporary secular values, and to consider what has changed in the last 25 years. Exploring the portrayal of Christianity and public life, Islam and religious diversity, atheism and secularism, and popular beliefs and practices, several media events are also examined in detail: the Papal visit to the UK in 2010 and the ban of the controversial Dutch MP, Geert Wilders, in 2009. Religion is shown to be deeply embedded in the language and images of the press and television, and present in all types of coverage from news and documentaries to entertainment, sports reporting and advertising. A final chapter engages with global debates about religion and media.
What if religions are neither all true nor all nonsense? The long-running and often boring debate between fundamentalist believers and non-believers is finally moved forward by Alain de Botton’s inspiring new book, which boldly argues that the supernatural claims of religion are entirely false—but that it still has some very important things to teach the secular world. Religion for Atheists suggests that rather than mocking religion, agnostics and atheists should instead steal from it—because the world’s religions are packed with good ideas on how we might live and arrange our societies. Blending deep respect with total impiety, de Botton (a non-believer himself) proposes that we look to religion for insights into how to, among other concerns, build a sense of community, make our relationships last, overcome feelings of envy and inadequacy, inspire travel and reconnect with the natural world. For too long non-believers have faced a stark choice between either swallowing some peculiar doctrines or doing away with a range of consoling and beautiful rituals and ideas. At last, in Religion for Atheists, Alain de Botton has fashioned a far more interesting and truly helpful alternative.
Fr. John McCloskey has become a famous "convert maker" in the powerful corridors close to the White House. Having run the Catholic Information Center in the heart of Washington, DC from 1998 to 2004, McCloskey had direct contact with numerous well-known and lesser-known Washington figures. Among well-known Catholic converts instructed by Fr. McCloskey are Senator Sam Brownback, publisher Alfred Regnery, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, journalist Robert Novak and many others. This work is a joint effort of McCloskey and Russell Shaw, the widely read Catholic author, speaker, and former communications director for the U.S. bishops. Drawing on moving, firsthand accounts of conversions, this book combines personal testimony, solid theology, and effective methods of communicating the Catholic Faith. From personal experience, I can testify that Father C. John McCloskey is one of America's great Catholic evangelizers. This book is a unique, fascinating guide of how and why to convert, and it should be must reading for all Catholics. -Robert D. Novak, Syndicated Columnist Mr. Shaw and Fr. McCloskey have written a book about repentance, recovery, conversion, and joy. I recommend it because I have experienced it through Jesus, my Savior. -Lawrence Kudlow, Host CNBC's "Kudlow & Company" Through their friendship and their family life, Catholics converted the Roman Empire, on person at a time. This book shows you how it was done-and how it's still done today. It's a book that can change the world all over again. -Scott Hahn, author Rome Sweet Home This book ranks with Karl Stern's Pillar of Fire and Thomas Merton's Seven Storey Mountain as an indispensable spiritual road map for the perplexed, the sorely bent and the broken.I know: Father John McCloskey was my Virgil, guiding me gently and lovingly through the terrifying jungle of secular success to a place of infinite surcease - God's grace. -Dr. Bernard Nathanson, Pro-Life activist and author Fr. C.J. McCloskey and Russell Shaw are themselves incomparavle evangelists and apologists of the Curch. They are compelling writers. All should study them. -Lewis E.Lehrman, 2005 winner of the National Humanities Medal No matter where you are in your spiritual journey, pick this book up and be transformed both inside and out. -Raymond Arroyo, EWTN News Director and New York times bestselling author When it comes to leading people into full communion with the Catholic Church, Fulton J. Sheen was the John McCloskey of his day. -Robert P. George, Princeton University This book is calling all Catholics to share the gift of faith and shows them how to do so with winsome joy. -Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, Editor-In-chief of First Things Articulate and provocative. This is an important book we all need to read. -Bowie Kuhn, Former Commissioner of Professional Baseball. "There is no more articulate believer in the power and majesty of the Catholic Church than Fr. C. J. McCloskey. Any sincere searcher for Truth who is attracted to Christian--particularly Catholic--faith, will want to read this book. Agree or disagree with Fr. McClosky's unequivocal perspectives, his assertive witness provides much food for thought." -Wesley J. Smith Senior fellow, Discovery Institute and author of Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America. I've often wished that the call to Christian witness could come wi
