Showing titles in Religious Studies

Speak of the Devil is the first book-length study of The Satanic Temple. Joseph Laycock, a scholar of new religious movements, contends that the emergence of "political Satanism" marks a significant moment in American religious history that will have a lasting impact on how Americans frame debates about religious freedom.

Here is an impassioned plea for reason in a world divided by faith. This important and timely work delivers a startling analysis of the clash of faith and reason in today's world. Harris offers a vivid historical tour of mankind's willingness to suspend reason in favor of religious beliefs, even when those beliefs are used to justify harmful behavior and sometimes heinous crimes.

C. S. Lewis's dazzling allegory about Heaven and Hell - and the chasm fixed between them - is one of his most brilliantly imaginative tales, where we discover that the gates of Hell are locked from the inside. In a dream, the narrator boards a bus on a drizzly afternoon in Hell and embarks on an incredible voyage to Heaven. Anyone in Hell is invited on board, and anyone may remain in Heaven if he or she so chooses. But do we really want to live in Heaven?

A classic of Holocaust literature, Gerda Weissmann Klein's celebrated memoir tells the moving story of a young woman's 3 frightful years as a slave laborer of the Nazis and her miraculous liberation. All But My Life stands as the ultimate lesson in humanity, hope, and friendship.

In this searing memoir of survival in the spirit of Stolen Innocence, the daughter of Warren Jeffs, the self-proclaimed Prophet of the FLDS Church, takes you deep inside the secretive polygamist Mormon fundamentalist cult run by her family and how she escaped it. Born into the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Rachel Jeffs was raised in a strict patriarchal culture defined by subordinate sister wives and men they must obey.

You think you know about Islam. But, did you know that Islam teaches that Muslims must wage war to impose Islamic law on non-Muslim states, or that American Muslim groups are engaged in a huge cover-up of Islamic doctrine? These and other "politically incorrect" facts are revealed by Robert Spencer in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades).

This book is the culmination of more than three decades of meticulous historiographic research on Nazi Germany by one of the period’s most distinguished historians. The volume brings together the most important and influential aspects of Ian Kershaw’s research on the Holocaust for the first time. The writings are arranged in three sections - Hitler and the Final Solution, popular opinion and the Jews in Nazi Germany, and the Final Solution in historiography - and Kershaw provides an introduction and a closing section on the uniqueness of Nazism.

From multiple New York Times best-selling author, neuroscientist, and "new atheist" Sam Harris, Waking Up is for the 30 percent of Americans who follow no religion, but who suspect that Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Rumi, and the other saints and sages of history could not have all been epileptics, schizophrenics, or frauds.

In Exo-Vaticana: Petrus Romanus, PROJECT LUCIFER, and the Vatican's Astonishing Exo-Theological Plan for the Arrival of an Alien Savior, internationally acclaimed investigative authors Thomas Horn and Cris Putnam break the greatest story of our time and expose the elitists and intellectuals who are planning to assimilate mankind under a coming "savior," one whom the prophet Daniel foresaw as "an alien god."

For more than 2,000 years, the Heart Sutra has been part of the daily life of millions of Buddhists. This concise text, so rich and laden with meaning, concentrates the very heart of Buddhism into a powerful and evocative teaching on the interdependence of all reality. In Essence of the Heart Sutra, the Dalai Lama masterfully unpacks the Heart Sutra so that any listener can benefit from its teachings - teachings meant to help us release ourselves from suffering and live with true compassion.

Nine essential works by C. S. Lewis in one deluxe audio edition: Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, Miracles, The Problem of Pain, A Grief Observed, The Abolition of Man, The Weight of Glory, and George MacDonald.

What would you do if you were sitting quietly in your living room when a mysterious couple appeared from out of nowhere-and then told you they were “ascended masters” who had come to reveal some shocking secrets of existence and teach you the miraculous powers of advanced forgiveness? When two such teachers appeared before Gary Renard in 1992, he chose to listen to them (and ask a lot of impertinent questions). The result is this startling book: an extraordinary record of 17 mind-bending conversations that took place over nearly a decade, reorienting the author’s life.

Evangelical Christians are perhaps the most polarizing—and least understood—people living in America today. In his seminal new book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, journalist Tim Alberta, himself a practicing Christian and the son of an evangelical pastor, paints an expansive and profoundly troubling portrait of the American evangelical movement.

Anne Frank, it has been said, gave a face and a name to the horror of the Holocaust. This is her story. It relates how Anne, her family, and their friends hid in secret rooms - "the Annex" - in an Amsterdam warehouse for 25 months. Anne, just 13 when the family moved in and only 15 when the Gestapo at last broke down the doors of her secret world, found hope where there was only fear and the first blush of love when outside and all around there washed a sea of hate.

Crucifixion, the Romans believed, was the worst fate imaginable, a punishment reserved for slaves. How astonishing it was, then, that people should have come to believe that one particular victim of crucifixion—an obscure provincial by the name of Jesus—was to be worshipped as a god.

Bruce Shelley's classic history of the church brings the story of global Christianity into the 21st century. Like a skilled screenwriter, Shelley begins each chapter with three elements: characters, setting, plot. Taking you from the early centuries of the church up through the modern era he tells a story of actual people, in a particular situation, taking action or being acted upon, provides a window into the circumstances and historical context, and from there develops the story of a major period or theme of Christian history.

Contemporary culture trivializes the "seven deadly sins," or vices, as if they have no serious moral or spiritual implications. Glittering Vices clears this misconception by exploring the traditional meanings of gluttony, sloth, lust, and others. It offers a brief history of how the vices were compiled and an eye-opening explication of how each sin manifests itself in various destructive behaviors. Listeners gain practical understanding of how the vices shape our culture today and how to correctly identify and eliminate the...patterns of sin in their own lives.

The shocking and subversive memoir of a 12-year-NXIVM-member-turned-whistleblower, and her inspiring true story of abuse, escape, and redemption. "Master, would you brand me? It would be an honor." Scarred follows actress Sarah Edmondson's account of her recruitment into the NXIVM cult, founded by Keith Raniere. It narrates in detail the 12 years she spent within the organization, during which she enrolled over 2,000 members, chronicling her breaking point and her harrowing fight to get out, help others, and heal.

In this powerful audiobook by the acclaimed spiritual leader and best-selling writer, one he calls his "most important", he analyzes the profound spiritual, moral, and political crisis in the contemporary world. He says that he "considers that the decadence of our time has all the faces of mortal peril." His finding is simple: Our world is on the brink of the abyss.

A powerful, moving memoir - and a practical guide to healing - written by Dr. Edith Eva Eger, an eminent psychologist whose own experiences as a Holocaust survivor help her treat patients and allow them to escape the prisons of their own minds. The Choice weaves Eger's personal story with case studies from her work as a psychologist. Her patients and their stories illustrate different phases of healing and show how people can choose to escape the prisons they construct in their minds and find freedom, regardless of circumstance.