The Future of Faith


Book Description

The Rise and Fall of Belief and the Coming Age of the Spirit There is an essential change taking place in what it means to be “religious” today. As religious people shift their focus to ethical guidelines and spiritual disciplines—not doctrine—we are seeing a universal trend away from hierarchical, regional, patriarchal, and institutional religion. Now, legendary Harvard scholar Harvey Cox offers a new interpretation of the history and future of religion, revealing how doctrines and dogma are giving way to new grassroots movements based in community, social justice, and spiritual experience. The Future of Faith is a major statement and a hopeful vision from one of the most revered theologians today.




Faith and the Future


Book Description

Increasingly, the future is becoming a theme for theological reflection. In the background we can detect a growing concern among many people for the future of faith. Does faith have any future at all, and, if so, where in all the confusion of today's trends will we discover its embryo? But the problem of the future assails not only the believer. In the ever more rapidly advancing process of historical evolution, man is confronted with enormous opportunities, but also with colossal perils. For him, the future is not only hope, but sorrow a nightmare, indeed. He cannot avoid asking what part faith can play in building tomorrow's world. Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, approaches this problem of universal concern from a variety of angles, bringing his deep personal faith and theological brilliance to bear on these serious questions.




A Future of Faith


Book Description

The beloved people's Pope reveals his views on the contentious political issues of our time—from immigration to climate change. Pope Francis met with French reporter and sociologist Dominique Wolton for an unprecedented series of twelve fascinating and timely conversations—open dialogues revolving around the political, cultural, and religious issues dominating communication and conflict around the world—now published in A Future of Faith: The Path of Change in Politics and Society. Inspiring and insightful, Pope Francis’s views on immigration, poverty, diversity, globalization, and more are borne from his Christian faith and basic humanity. Meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century requires compassion for those in need, a willingness to work towards common goals without domineering other cultures, and the ability to negotiate with trust, respect, and dignity. And for the first time, Pope Francis shares insights into his own personality, and the formation of his faith, including his experience with psychotherapy, and some of the most important women in his upbringing. Controversial, bold, personal, and illuminating— A Future of Faith will serve to be essential reading for not only Catholics, but those who want to see how the “people’s pope” confronts the social injustices of the world with the foresight to create positive change.




The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason


Book Description

"The End of Faith articulates the dangers and absurdities of organized religion so fiercely and so fearlessly that I felt relieved as I read it, vindicated....Harris writes what a sizable number of us think, but few are willing to say."—Natalie Angier, New York Times In The End of Faith, Sam Harris delivers a startling analysis of the clash between reason and religion in the modern world. He offers a vivid, historical tour of our willingness to suspend reason in favor of religious beliefs—even when these beliefs inspire the worst human atrocities. While warning against the encroachment of organized religion into world politics, Harris draws on insights from neuroscience, philosophy, and Eastern mysticism to deliver a call for a truly modern foundation for ethics and spirituality that is both secular and humanistic. Winner of the 2005 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Nonfiction.




Why Religion Matters


Book Description

Huston Smith, the author of the classic bestseller The World's Religions, delivers a passionate, timely message: The human spirit is being suffocated by the dominant materialistic worldview of our times. Smith champions a society in which religion is once again treasured and authentically practiced as the vital source of human wisdom.




Faith, Nationalism, and the Future of Liberal Democracy


Book Description

Faith, Nationalism, and the Future of Liberal Democracy highlights the use of religious identity to fuel the rise of illiberal, nationalist, and populist democracy. In Faith, Nationalism, and the Future of Liberal Democracy, David Elcott, C. Colt Anderson, Tobias Cremer, and Volker Haarmann present a pragmatic and modernist exploration of how religion engages in the public square. Elcott and his co-authors are concerned about the ways religious identity is being used to foster the exclusion of individuals and communities from citizenship, political representation, and a role in determining public policy. They examine the ways religious identity is weaponized to fuel populist revolts against a political, social, and economic order that values democracy in a global and strikingly diverse world. Included is a history and political analysis of religion, politics, and policies in Europe and the United States that foster this illiberal rebellion. The authors explore what constitutes a constructive religious voice in the political arena, even in nurturing patriotism and democracy, and what undermines and threatens liberal democracies. To lay the groundwork for a religious response, the book offers chapters showing how Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism can nourish liberal democracy. The authors encourage people of faith to promote foundational support for the institutions and values of the democratic enterprise from within their own religious traditions and to stand against the hostility and cruelty that historically have resulted when religious zealotry and state power combine. Faith, Nationalism, and the Future of Liberal Democracy is intended for readers who value democracy and are concerned about growing threats to it, and especially for people of faith and religious leaders, as well as for scholars of political science, religion, and democracy.




Future Faith


Book Description

In Future Faith: Ten Challenges Reshaping the Practice of Christianity, author Wesley Granberg-Michaelson provides a lucid view of how the top ten winds of change blowing through global Christian faith are reshaping the practice of Christianity today. He is uniquely qualified to identify and interpret connection points between global Christian trends and the American church. Drawing on the stories, examples, and personalities of pastors and congregations from throughout the U.S. as well as those from Africa, Asia, Latin America, who are the faces of Christianity's future, Future Faith is designed to inform and empower followers of Jesus to seek new ways of becoming the face of Christ to a rapidly changing world. Leaders and practitioners in church growth, renewal, and planting will be a primary audience for this book. Students of religion from Catholic, evangelical, Pentecostal, and historic Protestant streams will find this book an informative and stimulating resource for pondering together the future of their faith. Small groups engaged in congregational nurture and growth will find in the author a welcome companion for guiding them through the multi-cultural landscape of contemporary faith.




Dispatches from the Religious Left


Book Description

A visionary and groundbreaking collection of the leading voices of the religious left.




Ancient-Future Faith


Book Description

In a world marked by relativism, individualism, pluralism, and the transition from a modern to a postmodern worldview, evangelical Christians must find ways to re-present the historic faith. In his provocative new work, Ancient-Future Faith, Robert E. Webber contends that present-day evangelicalism is a product of modernity. Allegiance to modernity, he argues, must be relinquished to free evangelicals to become more consistently historic. Empowerment to function in our changing culture will be found by adapting the classical tradition to our postmodern time. Webber demonstrates the implications in the key areas of church, worship, spirituality, evangelism, nurture, and mission. Webber writes, The fundamental concern of Ancient-Future Faith is to find points of contact between classical Christianity and postmodern thought. Classical Christianity was shaped in a pagan and relativistic society much like our own. Classical Christianity was not an accommodation to paganism but an alternative practice of life. Christians in a postmodern world will succeed, not by watering down the faith, but by being a counter cultural community that invites people to be shaped by the story of Israel and Jesus. A substantial appendix explores the development of authority in the early church, an important issue for evangelicals in a society that shares many features with the Roman world of early Christians. Students, professors, pastors, and laypeople concerned with the churchs effective response to a postmodern world will benefit from this paradigmatic volume. Informative tables and extensive bibliographies enhance the books educational value. - Amazon.




Reclaiming Hope


Book Description

Now with a new afterword from the author. "An important and extremely timely book...Get it, read it, and talk to others about it." --Timothy Keller In this unvarnished account of faith inside the world’s most powerful office, Michael Wear provides unprecedented insight into the highs and lows of working as a Christian in government. Reclaiming Hope is an insider’s view of the most controversial episodes of the Obama administration, from the president’s change of position on gay marriage and the transformation of religious freedom into a partisan idea, to the administration’s failure to find common ground on abortion and the bitter controversy over who would give the benediction at the 2012 inauguration. The book is also a passionate call for faith in the public square, particularly for Christians to see politics as a means of loving one’s neighbor and of pursuing justice for all. Engrossing, illuminating, and at time provocative, Reclaiming Hope changes the way we think about the relationship of politics and faith. "A pre-Trump book with serious questions for our politics in the age of Trump...More necessary than ever before." -- Sojourners "Should be read by Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, and all who are concerned by the state of our politics.” --Kirsten Powers, USA Today columnist and CNN political analyst "Reclaiming Hope will certainly give you a fresh perspective on politics--but, more importantly, it may also give you a fresh perspective on faith.”--Andy Stanley, senior pastor of North Point Ministries "An important and extremely timely book...Get it, read it, and talk to others about it." --Timothy Keller, author of Reason for God "An important contribution in this age of religious and political polarization." --J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy "A lifeline for these times." --Ann Voskamp, author of One Thousand Gifts and The Broken Way “We can hope, and this book can help us.” --Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention