Religious Marriage

Civil marriage ceremonies are increasingly popular, but it can be difficult to choose readings which are appropriate in a non-religious setting. A few well-known poems tend to appear regularly at civil ceremonies, but if you are looking for something different, this book could be the answer. Non-Religious Wedding Readings contains a selection of 77 poems and prose passages on love and marriage from various writers dating from the 17th to the 20th century.

In Polygamy: A Very Short Introduction, Sarah M.S. Pearsall explores what plural marriages reveal about the inner workings of marriage and describes the controversies surrounding it. The book emphasizes the diversity of historical polygamist societies, from the Shi'ite Muslims and Wendat men who practiced short-term marriages to the Mixteca, Maori, Inca, Algonquin, and Marta indigenous people of North America and the Pacific Islands. Pearsall also explains the divides within Christianity that led to Joseph Smith's establishment of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

A young believer vows in a covenant to remain a virgin until God led him to his future wife. For 35 years of pure celibacy, he lives out this faith. How does he react when God finally reveals to him a lady he had previously ruled out as impossible to relate to was his wife? How does he reconcile his verdict with God’s? Hear it all in this faith-inspiring, Jesus-devoted, God-glorifying, non-fiction book.

When police raided the Short Creek compound of the Fundamental Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in 1953, it soon became a political and publicity nightmare and eventually cost the governor of Arizona his job. From that point on, skittish public officials allowed the polygamist sect to practice its tenants unmolested for the next 50 years and turned a blind eye to child abandonment, kidnapping, statutory rape, incest, and massive tax and welfare fraud. But then Warren Jeffs, a new FLDS prophet, escalated the sect’s crimes to near madness.

In The Breaking Point, two people struggle to survive after their truck plunges off a snowy mountain. As they battle the cold, they also begin to figure out how to save their failing marriage.

Here they were, two ordinary people who took a vow to love each other forever and ventured into life together happily and innocently. This was soon interrupted by malevolent third parties who began a series of vicious attacks that left the couple perplexed and confused. Yet the worst blow will take the couple through a barrage of events that would change their future forever. This is a journey of self-discovery, learning to know God for oneself, perseverance, and the will to keep going against all the odds.

As a former three-term U.S. Republican senator from Missouri and an ordained Episcopal priest, John C. Danforth has watched the shifts in his party and the Christian church with growing alarm. Now he feels the time has come for a change.

For TV-obsessed Jake Lightman, his parents’ divorce is like his favorite show getting canceled: The worst. Now he’s stuck between playing the role of “Yaakov” for his mother and “Jacob” for his father. On Jake’s first day at a new school, Caleb and Tehilla barrel into his life. Suddenly, he has two friends who seem to like the real Jake. And when they invite him to Camp Gershoni for the summer, Jake knows he has to go—even if his parents won’t let him.

With the discovery of her birth father, 12-year-old River has definite thoughts about how her life should turn out - and that certainly does not include any of the challenges that keep popping up! It's not easy to decide if she should live with Gram, who has been her family for the past 10 years, or with her father, who she's over-the-moon to have just met but knows little about. When River gets diagnosed with scoliosis, she fears it will impact her hopes and dreams. River decides to ask God for help.

Lily has settled into life in Connecticut after her parent's divorce but it's been harder on her eight-year-old brother Michael. After their mother remarries, her brother chooses to go live with his father in Washington, D.C., until the day he calls home from the Baltimore-Washington Airport where his father has abandoned him. Lily is home babysitting her baby stepbrother when she answers the phone. She has no idea the extent to which her faith in God will be tested. There is no choice for Lily.

Relationship experts and award-winning authors Les and Leslie Parrott believe the same forces that can tear down a marriage can become the catalyst for new relational depth and richness--provided you learn the secrets to using everyday problems to strengthen your marriage. In this book they explore how a marriage survives and thrives when a couple learns to use problems to boost their love life, to literally love each other more.

On November 2, 2006, Gayle Haggard's life changed forever when her husband, Ted Haggard, founder of the 14,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs and president of the National Association of Evangelicals, was publicly exposed in a scandal. In the days and months ahead, everything in Gayle's life was at stake—her beliefs, her marriage, and her relationship with the church community she had been a part of for more than 20 years.

In Restored, Lolita Young shares her testimony of life experiences in relationship and marriage. Lolita shares her life trials and accomplishments that ultimately lead her to develop an intimate relationship with God. Her story includes the dating and marital challenges she faced on her journey. She tells the story of how God was able to deliver her from all that the enemy had planned, and bring her full restoration.

Though they may seem to be dividing the country irreparably, today's heated cultural and political battles between right and left, progressives and the Tea Party, religious and secular are far from unprecedented. In this engaging and important work, Stephen Prothero reframes the current debate, viewing it as the latest in a number of flashpoints that have shaped our national identity.

A handsome Italian film producer. A beautiful Mexican dancer. A match made on a movie set and a lavish Beverly Hills wedding. The beginning of Camille Franzese's story takes on the shade of an exotic fairy tale. But a closer look at her marriage to mafia capo Michael Franzese exposes more than a decade of anguish endured in the shadows of her husband's crimes. The fear of arrest, the prison sentences, the house raids from federal agents - Camille lived through it all. Discover how Camille's devotion to her marriage and her faith in God's larger plan led to deliverance from devastation.

In Oops! I Forgot My Wife, Doyle Roth puts his 30-plus years of counseling experience into the story of a guy named Mitch. A guy who is so bad at husbanding that he wakes up one morning king of an empty castle. Listen in as Mitch, Stacy, Gerry, and the other characters in this audiobook struggle with the issues of fidelity, intimacy, spirituality, God, and what it means to be a man and woman in holy matrimony. The main character, cowboy-turned-preacher Carter, is performed with sincerity and authenticity by the author.

Wouldn't you like to know how to have a healthy marriage, effective ministry, and godly children? Learn the 13 keys that helped these pastors plant churches and continue leading them for up to 33 years while they grew to over 1,500 people. Now in their 60's, these pastors are still enjoying ministry, happy marriages, and children who are all following the Lord. How did they do it? You're about to find out! This book is based upon a real-world case study that will give you the keys to keep you standing strong - not just in ministry, but personally, and in marriage and family as well.

In late 1956, an item in the Times of London stunned England's literary set. Confirmed bachelor and celebrated Christian apologist C.S. Lewis announced his marriage to Joy Gresham. His choice could not have been more unlikely. Joy was an American, a divorcee, an ex-communist, and a former atheist. Yet this extraordinary and fascinating woman made a great impact on Lewis and his writings in the short time they had together.

Are you suffering the effects of sexual abuse? There is a way out. In Not Marked: Finding Hope and Healing After Sexual Abuse, Mary DeMuth illuminates the way to go from shame-filled to joy-filled, from traumatized to finding enduring peace. This isn't theory. Mary has lived it. She's traveled this path and offers a uniquely qualified, insider's view of the healing process.

This is the true story of Ora-Jay and Irene Eash, Amish farmers from northwest Montana whose lives changed in an instant when a semi-truck struck the family buggy, killing their two young daughters. After the accident, the couple turned to their Amish community for comfort, but they remained haunted by the thought that they might not see their girls again in heaven. Would their deeds be good enough?