Study Commentaries

When British-born Elizabeth Blackwell earned her medical degree in America in 1849, there was an international outcry. Few at the time would have disagreed with the actress Fanny Kemble's remark - "What, trust a woman doctor - never!"

If you love Jesus but are unhappy, disappointed, frustrated, disillusioned, or just plain burned-out with church or religion, I have good news for you. There is a problem with church, but it’s neither your fault nor God’s fault and you’re not required to “try harder” to fix it. Furthermore, you’re not alone. More and more evangelical Christians sense that church and religion are somehow at odds with a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. God has already given us the “way of escape.” His answer has always been hiding in plain sight in the New Testament.

Ever wonder why much of American Christianity is pro-spanking, pro-tough-on-crime, anti-gun control, pro-war, and hell-affirming, even though Jesus taught mercy, non-violence and enemy love? When Michael Camp started deconstructing his evangelical faith, he noticed a pattern. The doctrines he questioned—original depravity, substitutionary atonement, God-ordained genocide in the Old Testament, the doctrine of hell, etc.—were all tied to retribution and violence.

Un libro valiente, sutil y agudo sobre los milagros, la relación entre la ciencia y la fe, la redención o el destino final del hombre. Dios en el banquillo es una de las más conocidas colecciones de ensayos de Lewis, entre los que destacan El mito se hizo realidad, El gran milagro, ¿Sacerdotisas en la Iglesia? y, por supuesto Dios en el banquillo.

C'è un'ansia di cambiamento nel mondo. Papa Francesco la raccoglie nei suoi gesti e nelle sue parole, specialmente in un tempo di crisi quale quello che stiamo vivendo. È chiaro che abbiamo tutti bisogno di capire che cosa ci sta accadendo, di dare una lettura umana e spirituale di quel che viviamo. Francesco, come si comprende in questo volume, assimila la visionedi sant'Ignazio di Loyola così come emerge negli Esercizi Spirituali.

In Lost, medical historian Shannon Withycombe weaves together women’s personal writings and doctors’ publications from the 1820s through the 1910s to investigate the transformative changes in how Americans conceptualized pregnancy, understood miscarriage, and interpreted fetal tissue over the course of the 19th century. Withycombe’s pathbreaking research reveals how Americans construed, and continue to understand, miscarriage within a context of reproductive desires, expectations, and abilities.

"What did Jesus preach?" asks this esteemed Harvard pastor, who believes that excessive focus on the Bible and doctrines about Jesus have led the Christian church astray. To recover the transformative power of the gospel, "the good news", Gomes says we must go beyond the Bible and rediscover how to live out Jesus' original revolutionary message of hope.

Christian men and women across the country experience leadership in many different ways. Some lead a congregation, youth group or ministry, some in their homes, businesses, or non-professional organizations. The lives of many followers of Christ are marked by a combination of these roles. In Leadership by the Book, Brent Garrison offers examples from each book of the Old and New Testaments of how God's servants have led his people

Titus Andronicus is believed to be Shakespeare's first tragedy and the revenge play is among the most violent and bloody of his canon. The story tells of a famous Roman general engaged in a cycle of revenge with his opponents. The version is abridged and adapted into plain English. This is a theatrical audio production by a full cast.

Today, we are witnessing the historically powerful American Order experiencing perhaps its greatest peril as it struggles against the tidal wave of new challenges from Covid-19, the rapid rise of Christian Nationalism, large-scale Apostasy, and an increasingly divided nation streaming toward increased violence and possibly even Civil War. Dr. Kelly takes on these growing trends by examining Scripture by Scripture, the Sixth Chapter of the Book of Revelation as a Template to help explain the reasons for the current Crisis, and where America is likely headed.

With this collection of essays on the life of faith, Fred Smith tells the truth in a way that does not blind but simply turns the prism a degree or two for seeing differently. He "tells it slant" as Emily Dickinson called it. Fred's themes range from finding significance to navigating life transitions to living a life of obedience. Fred writes that this book is not about my life but seeing the world for a time through my eyes. It is about the prism through which the light divides. A point of view.

Words To Think About is a collection of Biblical Essays that was written for The Southern Reporter. The response Ray received for these essays lead him to create this amazing book. It is a compilation of various Bible messages, using particular verses, analyzed as condensed thoughts. If you have not already done so, hopefully this book will help you to see, to better understand, to know the truth and seek your Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. May God bless you!

We are all prone to debilitating physical and spiritual weakness. But knowing how to find spiritual strength in those seasons of weakness - especially in the face of persecution - is elusive for most. Timothy, the apostle Paul's son in the faith, struggled with this very thing. But God revealed to him some very practical ways to tap into the resources he already possessed, bringing him much needed comfort and encouragement, while at the same time giving him power to persevere and prevail in the face of overwhelming forces of opposition.

Jesus helps us believe! Because of his connection with the Gospel of Mark and those impactful verses, along with him being moved to lead a Bible study through the Gospel of Mark, Gil made the decision to write down his thoughts concerning every story in Mark. This book is a result of his preparation for the Bible study. The book is a commentary that presents the thoughts and ideas that came to him from studying those stories. This book presents his comments in ways that listeners may not have considered before.

Between 1927 and 1979, more than 8,000 people were involuntarily sterilized in five hospitals across the state of Virginia. From this plain and terrible fact springs Elizabeth Catte's Pure America, a sweeping, unsparing history of eugenics in Virginia, and by extension the United States.

In summer 2006, 20-year-old Gerald Yeung and his childhood friends from Hong Kong travel to South America and Africa on their parents' dime. Confronted by challenges foreign to their privileged upbringing, the "Wannabe Backpackers" persevere in their Christian Dior clothes. They make plans to do it again when they turn 30. The decade that follows doesn’t go exactly to plan.

With subversive twists and turns, mesmeric highs, and gut-wrenching lows, Pete Atkinson's "ambitious and captivating" debut work skillfully weaves the threads which run from Genesis to Revelation, marrying brevity and listenability with scale, depth, and detail. "Impeccably researched", this "beautifully written" rendering features three narrative voices.

The hardening of racial lines during the first half of the 20th century eliminated almost all African Americans from white organized sports, forcing black athletes to form their own teams, organizations, and events. This separate sporting culture, explored in the 12 essays included here, comprised much more than athletic competition; these “separate games” provided examples of black enterprise and black self-help and showed the importance of agency and the quest for racial uplift in a country fraught with racialist thinking and discrimination.

Weaving together information from official sources and personal interviews, Barbara Tomblin gives the first full-length account of the US Army Nurse Corps in the Second World War. She describes how over 60,000 army nurses, all volunteers, cared for sick and wounded American soldiers in every theater of the war, serving in the jungles of the Southwest Pacific, the frozen reaches of Alaska and Iceland, the mud of Italy and northern Europe, or the heat and dust of the Middle East.

The Good Book collects new pieces by writers from many different faiths and ethnicities, including literary fiction writers (Colm Tóibín, Edwidge Danticat, Tobias Wolff, and Rick Moody); best-selling nonfiction writers (A. J. Jacobs, Ian Frazier, Adam Gopnik, and Thomas Lynch); notable figures in the media (Charles McGrath, Cokie Roberts, and Steven V. Roberts); and social activists (Al Sharpton and Kerry Kennedy).