Anthropology Religion

Drawing on decades of research around the world - touching on the first known horoscope, a statue ordered into exile, and the mystical power of tattoos - Gosden shows what magic can offer us today and how we might use it to rethink our relationship with the world. Magic is an original, singular, and sweeping work of scholarship, and its revelations will leave a spell on the listener.

This first new translation of Kierkegaard's masterwork in a generation brings an essential work of modern philosophy to vivid life. While the majority of Kierkegaard's work leading up to The Concept of Anxiety dealt with the intersection of faith and knowledge, here the renowned Danish philosopher turns to the perennial question of sin and guilt. First published in 1844, this concise treatise identified - long before Freud - anxiety as a deep-seated human state, one that embodies the endless struggle with our own spiritual identities.

If it is true that God is a male, then his divinity or deity is expressed in his masculinity. Yet, I am a woman, and there are parts of my body, such as my breasts, vagina, and womb that are telling a story about God that I have never learned or understood. This is an exploration of the significance of a womb that must shed and bleed before it can create. How will we engage our body which cyclically bleeds most of our life and can build and birth a human soul? How will we honor the living womb that lives and, sometimes, dies within us?

At a time when we are all confronted by not one, but many crossroads in our modern lives - identity, technology, trust, politics, and a global pandemic - celebrated mythologist and wilderness guide Martin Shaw delivers Smoke Hole: three metaphors to help us understand our world, one that is assailed by the seductive promises of social media and shadowed by a health crisis that has brought loneliness and isolation to an all-time high.

"Biblical womanhood" is the idea that the Bible teaches God-ordained male leadership and female submission in the home and subordination in the church. Some say this hierarchy of authority is sufficiently evidenced by examples of male leadership (and lack of female leadership) in the Bible: the first human was male, Israel's official priests were male, most authors of Scripture were male, Jesus was male and chose twelve male Apostles. God is addressed as Father. Wives are commanded to submit to their husbands.

By meditating on personal examples from the author's life, as well as reflecting on the inspirational life and writings of Thomas Merton, stories from the Gospels, as well as the lives of other holy men and women (among them, Henri Nouwen, Therese of Lisieux, and Pope John XXIII), the listener will understand how becoming who you are, and becoming the person that God created, is a simple path to happiness, peace of mind and even sanctity.

In Our Endangered Values, Carter offers a personal consideration of "moral values" as they relate to the important issues of the day. He puts forward a passionate defense of separation of church and state, and a strong warning of where the country is heading as the lines between politics and rigid religious fundamentalism are blurred.

In 2012, Dr. Karen King, a star religion professor at Harvard, announced a breathtaking discovery just steps from the Vatican: she’d found an ancient scrap of papyrus in which Jesus calls Mary Magdalene “my wife”. The mysterious manuscript, which King provocatively titled “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife”, had the power to topple the Roman Catholic Church. It threatened not just the all-male priesthood, but centuries of sacred teachings on marriage, sex, and women’s leadership, much of it premised on the hallowed tradition of a celibate Jesus.

Satan knows something that most of us fail to consider: Human beings are the crown of God's creation. It is this position of honor in all the cosmos that draws Satan's ire. With thoughtful and encouraging insight into our position of value in God's eyes, Charles Kraft explores the overt attacks that destroy our self-image - and the hidden ones, too. In his powerful and fortifying book, he answers these and other questions.

A giant of archaeology, Colin Renfrew has immeasurably improved our understanding of human history. In this passionately argued work, he offers a concise summary of prehistory - human existence that predates the development of written records - while challenging the very definition of prehistory itself.

This thought-provoking audiobook helps listeners reconcile the teachings of the Bible with the widely held evolutionary view of beginnings and will appeal to anyone interested in the Christianity-evolution debate.

What do we believe? And in God's name why? Lewis Black has the answers. Or at least his answers. He survived Hebrew school and a bar mitzvah (barely), was a 60's college student who saw the parallels between religious rapture and drug-induced visions (even if none of his friends did), explored the self-actualization movement of the 70's (and the self-indulgence it engendered), and turned a cynical eye toward politicians who don the cloak of religious rectitude to cover up their own hypocrisy.

Many bemoan the decay of culture. But we all have a responsibility to care for culture, to nurture it in ways that help people thrive. In Culture Care artist Makoto Fujimura issues a call to cultural stewardship, in which we become generative and feed our culture's soul with beauty, creativity, and generosity. We serve others as cultural custodians of the future. This is a book for artists, but artists come in many forms.

Join Aaron Mahnke, the host of the popular podcast Lore, as he explores some dreadful places and the history that haunts them. Mahnke takes us to Colorado and the palatial Stanley Hotel, where wealthy guests enjoyed views of the Rocky Mountains at the turn of the 20th century - and where, decades later, a restless author would awaken from a nightmare, inspired to write one of the most revered horror novels of all time. Mahnke also crosses land and sea to visit frightful sites with their own echoes of dark deeds, horrible tragedies, and shocking evil still resounding.

God is often described as all knowing, all loving, and all powerful. But are there other traits that we overlook? What is God really like? Can we truly put his eternal attributes into words? And how does the way we describe God affect our relationship with him? Best-selling author and speaker Chip Ingram helps readers answer these questions and more in this fascinating study of seven attributes of God. With engaging insight, Ingram guides readers through a challenging but accessible study of God's goodness, sovereignty, holiness, wisdom, justice, love, and faithfulness.

From an early age, Alex Seeley was told she was an accident, but she also carried the weight of feeling stupid. Labels like these, sometimes spoken over us by well-meaning people, can cause us to believe lies about ourselves that make us question why we were born and what our purpose on earth could be. Yet, according to Psalm 139, God designed us in his image, with a unique DNA and amazing characteristics! We are loved and created for a purpose that only we can fulfill.

As news reports of the horrific December 2004 tsunami in Asia reached the rest of the world, commentators were quick to seize upon the disaster as proof of either God’s power or God’s nonexistence, asking over and over, How could a good and loving God - if such exists - allow such suffering? In The Doors of the Sea, David Bentley Hart speaks at once to those skeptical of Christian faith and to those who use their Christian faith to rationalize senseless human suffering.

Who are you, really? In an uncertain world, we crave the security of knowing exactly who we are and where we belong. But too often as women, we try to find this safety in our roles and relationships, our professional accomplishments, or our picture-perfect homes. And as we do, our souls shrink smaller and smaller. It's because these things aren't made to hold us.

Poythress uses multiple biblical perspectives to address the origin of humanity, the image of God, body and soul, the creational covenant, free agency, human sexuality, and other truths about humanity.

This 1754 work by Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is subtitled An Inquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of the Freedom of the Will Which Is Supposed to Be Essential to Moral Agency, Virtue and Vice, Reward and Punishment, Praise and Blame. Edwards was a Christian reformer, theologian, and author in the Calvinist tradition, and in this work he explores the necessity of divine grace for the redeeming of the damaged will of humanity. He contends that free will is an extension of, and connected to, the grace of God.