Sociology Religion

Twenty-seven-year-old Sarah Thebarge had it all - a loving boyfriend, an Ivy League degree, and a successful career - when her life was derailed by an unthinkable diagnosis: aggressive breast cancer. After surviving the grueling treatments - though just barely - Sarah moved to Portland, Oregon, to start over. There, a chance encounter with an exhausted African mother and her daughters transformed her life again.

Thirty years ago, "mindfulness" was a Buddhist principle mostly obscure to the west. Today, it is a popular cure-all for Americans' daily problems. A massive and lucrative industry promotes mindfulness in every aspect of life, however mundane or unlikely: Americans of various faiths (or none at all) practice mindful eating, mindful sex, mindful parenting, mindfulness in the office, mindful sports, mindfulness-based stress relief and addiction recovery, and hire mindful divorce lawyers.

According to Williamson, we need a new paradigm of political understanding, a moral commitment to express it, and a new kind of activism to bring it forth. The Healing of America is a blueprint for all three.

Love in the Age of Ecological Apolcalypse addresses an array of relationships in the Last Emergency and how one's relationship with oneself may enrich or impede interactions with all other beings. Drawing upon her deep experience as a life coach, Baker writes of the specific need to understand our key relationships in a society in collapse, and how to navigate through differing levels of acceptance of collapse, trauma, and grief.

Less and less Christian demographically, America is now home to an ever-larger number of people who say they identify with no religion at all. These non-Christians have increasingly been demanding their full participation in public life, bringing their arguments all the way to the Supreme Court. The law is on their side, but that doesn't mean that their attempts are not met with suspicion or outright hostility.

In It's Dangerous to Believe, Mary Eberstadt documents how people of faith - especially Christians who adhere to traditional religious beliefs - face widespread discrimination in today's increasingly secular society. Eberstadt details how recent laws, court decisions, and intimidation on campuses and elsewhere threaten believers who fear losing their jobs, their communities, and their basic freedoms solely because of their convictions.

In a sweeping synthesis of new research in a number of different disciplines, this book argues that we humans are not who we think we are. As he explores the interconnections between cutting-edge work in bioanthropology, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, human language and learning, and beyond, James Paul Gee advances, also, a personal philosophy of language, learning, and culture, informed by his decades of work across linguistics and the social sciences.

Near death experience is a recognized universal phenomenon. Is it bringing us closer to the meaning of life itself? The phrase "near death experience" can be incredibly evocative. While for some it might simply suggest the proximity to an accident or a personal tragedy, the meaning behind a near death experience is often a great deal more spiritual. After listening to this audiobook, you will be knowledgeable about near death experiences and will know the truth behind NDEs.

Tracing the intersection of religion, race, and power in Texas from Reconstruction through the rise of the Religious Right and the failed presidential bid of Governor Rick Perry, Rough Country illuminates American history since the Civil War in new ways, demonstrating that Texas' story is also America’s. In particular, Robert Wuthnow shows how distinctions between "us" and "them" are perpetuated and why they are so often shaped by religion and politics.

Millionen Muslime leben unter uns, doch wir wissen fast nichts über sie. Wie viele Muslime gibt es eigentlich in Deutschland und wie und wo gehen sie ihrem Glauben nach? Constantin Schreiber hat sich dafür auf die Suche gemacht und liefert den ersten deutschen Moschee-Report: Wo gibt es überall Moscheen und was predigen Imame beim Freitagsgebet? Wie wird über Deutschland gesprochen, wenn keine Kamera dabei ist und man sich unbeobachtet fühlt?

Raised without religion, Adam Leith Gollner was struck by mankind's tireless efforts to cheat aging and death. In a narrative that pivots between profundity and hilarity, he brings us into the world of those whose lives are shaped by a belief in immortality. From a Jesuit priest on his deathbed to antiaging researchers at Harvard, Gollner - sorting truth from absurdity - canvasses religion and science for insight, along with an array of cults, myths, and fringe figures.

A. N. Wilson has been thinking about the Bible, and reading it, since he read theology for a year at university. Martin Luther King was 'reading the Bible' when he started the Civil Rights Movement. When Michelangelo painted the fresco cycles in the Sistine Chapel, he was 'reading the Bible'. In The Book of the People, A. N. Wilson explores how readers and thinkers have approached the Bible and how it might be read today.

When journalist Tom Morton suffered a heart attack in 2015, his close encounter with death led him on an extraordinary journey into the world of the dead. He decided to train to become the only independent funeral celebrant on the remote Shetland islands. Armed with a new black suit and a second-hand undertaker's coat, Tom quickly learned that death requires you to think on your feet, and often to take a magpie approach to faith and philosophy.

A compilation of narratives and histories based on the largely unheard or ignored perspectives of Scientologists themselves, Among the Scientologists draws on six years of interviews, fieldwork, and research conducted among members of the Church of Scientology. This groundbreaking work examines features of the new religion's history, theology, and praxis in ways that move discussion beyond apostate-driven and expose accounts.

In this provocative book, Mugambi Jouet describes why Americans are far more divided than other Westerners over basic issues, including wealth inequality, health care, climate change, evolution, gender roles, abortion, gay rights, sex, gun control, mass incarceration, the death penalty, torture, human rights, and war.

Renew your imagination for what family life can be. Many of us feel overwhelmed about the prospect of raising children in our high-performance, rapid-pace culture. Reflecting on difficulties from our own families of origin can increase our doubt and insecurity about being a good parent. Positive examples of family life can seem few and far between. Mark and Lisa Scandrette understand these challenges, and in Belonging and Becoming they cast a compelling vision of what the family can be.

Glen Walsh and Steven Alward were childhood friends in their tight-knit working-class community in Shortland, on the outskirts of Newcastle, New South Wales. Both proud altar boys at the local Catholic church, they went on to attend the city's Catholic boys' highs schools: Glen to Marist Brothers and Steven to St Pius X. Both did well: Steven became a journalist, Glen a priest. But when Glen discovered another priest was sexually abusing boys, he reported the offending to police, breaking Canon Law and his vows to the Catholic 'brotherhood' in the process.

Raised on Charles Baudelaire, A Clockwork Orange, and fine Bordeaux in 1970s Lebanon, Darina Al-Joundi was encouraged by her unconventional father to defy all taboos. As the bombs fell, she lived an adolescence of excess and transgression, defying death in nightclubs. The more oppressive the country became, the more drugs and anonymous sex she had, fueling the resentment by day of the same men who would spend the night with her. As the war dies down, she begins to incur the consequences of her lifestyle. On his deathbed, her father's last wish is for his favorite song, "Sinnerman" by Nina Simone, to be played at his funeral.

David Ireland, pastor of a multiracial megachurch in New Jersey and diversity consultant to the NBA, equips Christians to usher in a new era of racial reconciliation in One in Christ. Racial disharmony is tearing communities apart, both inside and outside the church. But Jesus Christ is, and was, a great reconciler. Warmth, regard, and respect emanated from His person toward others - all others. Part of this allure was the fact Jesus was comfortable in His skin. This made others who approached Him comfortable in their skin.

From jewelry to meditation pillows to tourist retreats, religious traditions are being commodified as never before. Imitated and rebranded as “new age” or “spiritual,” they are marketed to secular Westerners as an answer to suffering in the modern world. In Buying Buddha, Selling Rumi, Sophia Rose Arjana examines the appropriation and sale of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam in the West today, the role of mysticism and Orientalism in the religious marketplace, and how the commodification of religion impacts people’s lives.