Religious Biographies

Neem Karoli Baba, known to his followers as Maharaj-ji, was a mystic saint and devotee of Hanuman. Maharaj-ji’s teachings were simple and universal. He often said, “Sub Ek”—All is One. He taught us to “love everyone, serve everyone, remember God, and tell the truth.” Strongly connected to Hanuman, God in the form of a monkey, Maharaj-ji taught in a highly personalized, non-traditional way that reflected the deep devotion of the bhakti path of the heart. Here is the essence of his remarkable life and teachings.

For more than 10 years, thoroughly Protestant Kathleen Norris had been an oblate at a Benedictine monastery. In The Cloister Life, the celebrated author turns to the priory as her spiritual landscape, as she takes us through a liturgical year, inspiring us to evaluate our own lives and values. Norris provides tremendous insight into the languages, customs, ceremonies, and sexuality of the men and women who have chosen the cloistered life.

Seven-year-old Nate Saint peered wide-eyed over the cockpit of his older brother Sam's Challenger biplane. The eastern Pennsylvania countryside was spread out neatly below him like a fine tablecloth. Nate was determined to remember every moment of this first high-flying adventure. Flying soon captured Nate's heart. His air service ministry to isolated missionaries put him on a path of destiny that would ultimately end with a final airplane flight with 4 missionary friends to the "Palm Beach" landing strip in the jungles of Ecuador.

When young Rachel Saint surrendered her life to God, she began an unimaginable journey that would span decades and radically transform a dying culture steeped in revenge. Against all odds, God would lead her to Ecuador's Waorani Indians—known as Aucas, or savages, and infamous for murder. Despite the martyrdom of five missionaries by Waorani spears, Rachel boldly persisted in following God. In one of the greatest testimonies to God's grace and power in our time, this pioneering Bible translator would live for two decades with her own brother's killers.

Dallas Willard was a personal mentor and inspiration to hundreds of pastors, philosophers, and average churchgoers. His presence and ideas rippled through the lives of many prominent leaders and authors, such as John Ortberg, Richard Foster, James Bryan Smith, Paula Huston, and J. P. Moreland. As a result of these relationships and the books he wrote, he fundamentally altered the way tens of thousands of Christians have understood and experienced the spiritual life.

Steve Saint was five years old when his father, missionary pilot Nate Saint, was speared to death by a primitive Ecuadorian tribe. In adulthood Steve, having left Ecuador for a successful business career in the United States, never imagined making the jungle his home again. But when that same tribe asks him to help them, Steve, his wife, and their teenage children move back to the jungle.

Author David Bennett came out to his parents as gay when he was 14 and entered Sydney's active gay community a few years later. In A War of Loves, he shares his growing desire as a gay rights activist to see justice for LGBTQI people, his journey through new age religions and French existentialism, and his university years as a postmodernist - before Jesus Christ showed up in his life in a highly unexpected way, leading him down a path he never would have imagined or predicted.

Jeya was only four years old and was terrified as she tried to peer about the dark and gloomy temple. Between the pillars was a huge stone body. She shivered when she saw its face. This, she knew, was Kali, the goddess of death and destruction. Why was Jeya there? Who would leave a little girl in the dark like that? Certainly not the God of love - he sent a woman to rescue these children from destruction - Amy Carmichael. And she had been a little girl herself once a little girl with long dark hair, and deep brown eyes.

In 1992 Sripad Jagannatha Das was asked if he would do an exclusive interview with the Maharishi in Switzerland. The author readily agreed as the reclusive spiritual master almost never met the press and was embarking on an ambitious mass meditation program to purify vast areas of the United States. After a great deal of negotiation, the two finally got together on Christmas Eve and had a prolonged, stirring conversation that is documented here.

In this concise biography, best-selling author John Piper introduces listeners to this incredible Christian who - although he never served abroad himself - inspired the modern missionary movement that gave rise to such figures as William Carey and Hudson Taylor. Working tirelessly to raise funds for missionaries in the field and championing the importance of sound doctrine for fruitfulness in missions, Fuller stands as an example to all Christians eager to devote themselves to the true gospel of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth.

In this follow-up to the hugely popular Angels in the ER, Dr. Robert D. Lesslie shares more of his life-changing emergency-room encounters with nurses, doctors, patients, friends, and strangers who’ve served as God’s hands in the direst of circumstances. You’ll be deeply moved by these tales of both triumph and tragedy from the ER front line, as well as by the profound faith that has sustained Dr. Lesslie for more than 30 years on the job.

Albert V. Salinas Jr. is a guy who has had his ups and downs in life. He is still trying to get better in life and continues to work on himself. He has grown up in a Christian home all his life yet had not experienced God the way he has now in life. He happened to come across a true prophet of God and now has a totally different perspective about God because of the signs and wonders he has experienced since coming across the prophet of God. He attended Bible school and been on several mission trips to help others in different countries.

The winners of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting tell the astonishing story of Mary Clarke. At the age of 50, Clarke left her comfortable life in suburban Los Angeles to follow a spiritual calling to care for the prisoners in one of Mexico's most notorious jails. She actually moved into a cell to live among drug kingpins and petty thieves. She has led many of them through profound spiritual transformations in which they turned away from their lives of crime, and she has deeply touched the lives of all who have witnessed the depth of her compassion.

Born to Betty and George Sumrall of New Orleans on February 15, 1913, Lester Frank Sumrall's cold-hearted brawler father considered him an "accident", telling him bluntly, "You weren't supposed to be here." Reared in the Deep South he showed early in life the resourcefulness and leadership attributes that comprised his remarkable 83-year life and 65-year ministry of the Gospel of Christ.

John Charles Ryle (1816-1900), a lover of Puritan theology, was one of the most popular evangelical orators and lively tract writers. Known for his direct and punchy style, Ryle expressed gospel truths with clarity and vivacity, leaving a legacy that continues to shape Christians today.

There are many editions of the writings of St. Francis, and many biographies about him, but here in one volume are both, plus the complete text of the late medieval work The Little Flowers, which did more to establish the legend of the man than any other work. This edition includes the complete Road to Assisi, Paul Sabatier's groundbreaking and foundational biography of the saint, first published in French in 1894; the complete Francis in His Own Words: The Essential Writings; and The Little Flowers, thus offering the best introduction to St. Francis yet available between two covers.

D. A. Carson's father was a pioneering church-planter and pastor in Quebec. He ministered during a transformative era for French Canada, navigating the harsh realities of persecution and imprisonment faced by Baptist ministers, and ultimately witnessing the spectacular growth and revival in the 1970s. Through Tom Carson's journals and written prayers, along with the narrative and historical background provided by his son, listeners gain a firsthand account of the life of an ordinary pastor during a pivotal era in North American church history.

The seventeenth century was a pivotal time for the tiny but culturally vibrant kingdom of Bhutan—marked especially by the life of the influential political and spiritual leader Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyal (1594-1651), including his remarkable past lives. Sasha Wakefield traces the life and profound spiritual accomplishment of this master in the context of her own spiritual journey from Australia to Bhutan.

Irene Spencer did as she felt God commanded in marrying her brother-in-law, Verlan LeBaron, becoming his second wife. When the government raided the fundamentalist, polygamous Mormon village of Short Creek, Arizona, Irene and her family fled to Verlan's brothers' Mexican ranch. They lived in squalor and desolate conditions in the Mexican desert with Verlan's six brothers, one sister, and numerous wives and children.

Saint Augustine is one of history's most prolific geniuses. With great eloquence and passion, his Confessions - a masterpiece of Western literature - explores enduring questions that continue to stir millions. Perhaps the most moving record of a soul's journey to grace, Confessions appears midway in Saint Augustine's prodigious body of theological writings and remains his most influential work.