(EXCERPT) A new book published by Westminster Seminary Press curates theological reflections by pastors throughout the Reformation and Post-Reformation periods encouraging their flocks through Europe’s worst plagues.
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A new book of autobiographical stories from young, Catholic nuns aims to inspire readers how to live a faith-filled life in the era of social media. In an interview with ReligionUnplugged, Sister Tracey describes how she came to be a nun at age 19 and her passion for spreading the gospel online.
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After the Trump presidency, many leaders have called Americans to put aside their differences and unite around their shared humanity. However, some people have pushed back against these admonitions saying that unifying with their perceived enemy would require them to ignore patterns of oppression. Melissa Florer-Bixler, the lead pastor of Raleigh Mennonite Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, addresses these concerns in her new book.
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Linda Byler, 63, is an Old Order Amish wordsmith who began writing out of financial desperation. With 39 published novels, she has captivated Amish and non-Amish audiences (called English)—readers from around the nation who sometimes drop by her farm just to meet the writer who captures the simple life of the Amish sect, more than 300,000 strong in the United States alone.
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(REVIEW) One sure sign that the pandemic is fading may be the steady stream of books about it that have started to trickle out. It’s true that COVID-19 affected the planet like nothing else in our lifetimes. In fact, the fallout from what has transpired over the last 15 months could be felt for years, if not decades, to come.
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(REVIEW) America’s White underclass suffers from many of the same social problems as its Black urban counterparts. National Review journalist Kevin Williamson documents what he calls the Big White Ghetto, where he grew up, to illustrate how both Republicans and Democrats are promoting a narrative of White victimization rather than an ethic of personal responsibility.
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(REVIEW) Christians of many theological stripes claim to follow Jesus Christ, but how many actually follow his life and teachings? That’s the central question behind Skye Jethani’s visual devotional book “What If Jesus Was Serious?”
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(REVIEW) The book offers readers a detailed history of Catholic thinkers, statesman and military leaders who helped the colonists during the American Revolution. Over the course of 12 chapters, author Dan LeRoy delves into what the fight for freedom would have been like without these figures and, almost more importantly, why they felt the need to help.
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The history of Christianity shows different and evolving interpretations on how Christian women should live. Medieval Christians for example prized joining a convent and devoting one’s life to God more than becoming a wife. This history is the subject of a new book by Dr. Beth Allison Barr, a professor of medieval history at Baylor University.
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(EXCERPT) “Faith-Based Fraud,” by Warren Cole Smith, is a new book on financial and other scandals in the church. Almost a chapter centers around Bernard Madoff, who confessed to one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history.
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Asma Uddin, a religious liberty lawyer and a fellow at the Aspen Institute, writes in her new book The Politics of Vulnerability about how American Muslims and conservative Christians can engage better to protect their religious freedoms.
Read More(REVIEW) Unlike any pope of the modern era, no one has been as controversial and polarizing as Francis. This new book tries to delve into what motivates this pontiff and his mission.
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Dr. Jenny Taylor meets an “accompanist” with soul in her English village: the author Maxine Green who with co-author Dr. Phil Daughtry just published the book “The Art of Accompanying” about the life of one’s soul and the delight in being still.
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(REVIEW) Church historian Massimo Faggioli's new book “Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States” offers background of the three previous times a Catholic candidate has been the nominee for the highest office in the land and why Biden's candidacy and now presidency comes at a particularly fraught moment for not just American Catholicism but the global church.
Read MoreThe Rev. James Martin, one of the most famous Catholic priests in this country, has written a new book, Learning to Pray: A Guide for Everyone, that focuses on helping Christians understand what it takes to have a relationship with God.
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(REVIEW) David Geisser’s new cookbook in time for the holidays, The Vatican Christmas Cookbook, offers up over 100 recipes from around the world.
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(EXCERPT) “Jesus. A World History,” by Markus Spieker, is both a biography of Jesus and a historical narrative of his influence across the world.
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(OPINION) That Pope Francis would put his name on a book — written by a British author — criticizing the United States, its media and politics without understanding the First Amendment is a major shortfall of the project. There is also more to this book that the mainstream secular press did not highlight — like the pope’s staunch opposition to abortion.
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Wood joins a chorus of historians who see the New York Times’s 1619 Project as a failed effort to reframe American history and with “1620” makes the case that the Mayflower Compact inaugurated the American experiment in democracy. “If the 1619 Project were a term paper, any knowledgeable, fair-minded teacher would give it an F,” Wood writes. The project’s lead essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer Prize.
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Fourteen years after her death, Octavia Butler’s 1993 novel “The Parable of the Sower” hit national bestseller lists for eerily predicting this year’s dystopian-feeling chaos. Her invented religion Earthseed, along with her identity as a Black woman, sets her apart from other science fiction writers who often imagine a faith-less future.
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