Crimes unspeakable. A name synonymous with twisted brutality and hate. Jeffrey Dahmer. The most notorious serial killer of our time.A decade ago his story shocked our nation and the world. But we didnrsquo;t get the whole story. In prison Dahmerrsquo;s dark journey crossed paths with deep grace.Here is the whole story told by a man who at first tried to avoid meeting Jeffrey Dahmer but later became his friend and showed him the light of Godrsquo;s love.Itrsquo;s an unexpected story of first steps in faith of surprising questions about the Bible of light breaking into darkness. A story that will change what you thought you knew about grace.Jeffrey Dahmer. Christian.Grace unspeakable.

Whether youa (TM)re a layperson or a professional counselor, Helping Those Who Hurt will help you care for others encountering life crises such as:
a [ illness, hospitalization, and death
a [ a troubled marriage
a [ addiction
a [ suicide

The New York Times bestselling book that both galvanizes progressives for action and is a balm--from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author "A light in darkness, Alice Walker awakens us to our own power as only she can. . . . Once again, Walker has exceeded our expectations." --The Atlanta Journal-Constitution When the United States recently exploded with unprecedented demonstrations challenging racial violence and hatred, Alice Walker's New York Times bestselling We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For was one of the books to which people turned for inspiration and solace. Called "stunningly insightful" and "a book that will inspire hope" by Publishers Weekly, this work by the author of The Color Purple is a clarion call to activism--spiritual ruminations with a progressive political edge, that offer a moment of care and solace. Walker encourages readers to take faith in the fact that, despite our daunting predicaments, we are uniquely prepared to create positive change. Drawing on Walker's spiritual grounding and her progressive political convictions, the book offers a cornucopia of the Pulitzer Prize winner's writings and speeches on advocacy, struggle, and hope. Each chapter concludes with a recommended meditation to teach patience, compassion, and forgiveness. Walker's clear vision and calm meditative voice--truly "a light in darkness"--has struck a deep chord among a large and devoted readership.

In spite of a diving accident that has left her paralyzed for more than thirty years, Joni Eareckson Tada has been able to build a life of faith and purpose. The peace she has found as she confronts the painful realities of life as a quadriplegic has made her a hero to many people. In Ordinary People, Extraordinary Faith, Joni lets us know who her heroes are. Inside she tells the stories of people who inspire her with their faith and courage. Although Joni has met many famous "heroes of the faith" through her ministry, the lives she shares here are not the Billy Grahams of the world. They are a mother, a housewife, a nursing home resident, a child. Some are missionaries or pastors; others are bank tellers or data entry clerks. All of these people have touched Joni's life and the lives of others as they found their faith rise to the occasion - to forgive an assailant, to find strength despite the debilitating effects of cerebral palsy, to choose love in the face of racial prejudice, and to discover in the midst of questioning that God Himself is the answer to all questions.

In our age of globalisation and pandemic, how should we react to the new Islamophobic movements now spreading in the West? Everywhere the far right is on the march, with nationalist and populist parties thriving on the back of popular anxieties about Islam and the Muslim presence. Hijab and minaret bans, mosque shootings, hostility to migrants and increasingly scornful media stereotypes seem to endanger the prospects for friendly coexistence and the calm uplifting of Muslim populations. In this series of essays Abdal Hakim Murad dissects the rise of Islamophobia on the basis of Muslim theological tradition. Although the proper response to the current impasse is clearly indicated in Qur'an and Hadith, some have lost the principle of trust in divine wisdom and are responding with hatred, fearfulness or despair. Murad shows that a compassion-based approach, rooted in an authentic theology of divine power, could transform the current quagmire into a bright landscape of great promise for Muslims and their neighbours.

"Phil Callaway seasons our lives with joy and laughter drawn from the deep well of living. Splash through this book and see if you're not refreshed. I double-dog dare you." -Chris Fabry,New York Times bestselling author and host of Chris Fabry Live Laughter is a windshield wiper. It won't stop the rain, but it will keep you going. Life was funnier when we were five. Grownups tripped on a rake and we laughed for hours. Then came headlines and deadlines. Downturns and disappointments. Laugh Like a Kid Again is for anyone who wonders amid pressing anxieties-who stole my joy? From the tender to the hilarious, these lighthearted stories will help you smile. You'll encounter a prodigal dog, an incoming tornado, an unexpected afternoon in prison, and where to go when you have nine minutes to live. You'll hear whispers of a God who... loves you more than you imagine holds your hand when you're handed more than you can handle does awesome work in the dark Whether you face dark times or just need a good laugh, this "masterpiece of joy" will show you how to leave a lasting legacy, look up, and laugh again.

An acclaimed author interweaves history and legend to re-create the life of a complex man of faith fifteen hundred years ago. Winner of the 1987 Christianity and Literature Book Award for Belles-Lettres.

This collection of nine meditations from renowned biblical scholar and Anglican Bishop Tom Wright carries Holy Week from its solemn beginnings to the dramatic conclusion on Good Friday and Easter. "I hope that these addresses," Wright says in his preface, ." . . will contribute both to the enriched understanding, and also to the empowered living out, of the vital and inexhaustible events at the heart of Christian faith." The writings for Palm Sunday through Maundy Thursday morning, as well as the Easter Vigil, focus on texts from the Gospel of Matthew; Maundy Thursday evening, Good Friday, and Easter morning focus on texts from the Gospel of John.

Over the course of an extraordinary year, Zev Chafets--former New York "Daily News" columnist and onetime director of the Israeli government press office--traveled the world to explore the improbable confluence of Jews and evangelicals. He spent quality time with Jerry Falwell, visited Jewish cadets at West Point, attended the world's biggest Christian retail show, embarked on a road trip with the rabbi with the largest gentile following since Jesus, journeyed to the Holy Land with a band of repentant Christian pilgrims, and broke bread with George W. Bush and five hundred fellow Jewish Republicans.

"A Match Made in Heaven" is the penetrating, engaging, and often hilarious narrative of Chafets's determined quest to get to the root of a very serious question: Why do evangelicals support Israel so strongly? Equal parts history, comedy, travelogue, and political tract, it is a smart and adventurous odyssey along a rapidly changing religious and political border.

Islamic economics and finance has recently enjoyed a spike in interest and a rise in status from theology-tinged discussion fodder for Muslim intellectuals to a fully fledged academic discipline knocking on the doors of university social science departments. The Handbook of Empirical Research on Islam and Economic Life provides a solid background and overview of current empirical research, evaluating how well Islamic institutions have performed in pursuing their objectives. With contributions from leading scholars, this unique Handbook provides chapters examining a range of phenomena in Islamic finance, focusing on five main research areas: religion and growth, Islamic social finance, Islamic banking and finance, Islamic capital market and Sukuk (Islamic bonds). This selection of research literature provides: - a socio-economic profile of Muslim countries - an outline of Islamic systems of accounting and governance - an analysis of the religion-development link - a consideration of the role of the state under Islam. Scholars of finance and Islam in Muslim and in Western universities, students in graduate and post-graduate courses in Islamic studies, and Islamic research institutes and libraries in Western, Middle Eastern and Asian universities will all find great value in this vital resource and its exploration of a compelling approach to finance. Contributors include: A.U.F. Ahmad, M.S. Akhtar, E. Aksak, M.A.M. Al JanabiIhsan Isik, N. Alam, F. Alqahtani, S.O. Alhabshi, C. Aloui, S.B. Anceaur, D. Ashraf, M. Asutay, A.F. Aysan, O. Bacha, A. Barajas, M. Bekri, C. De Anca, G. Dewandaru, M. Disli, A.O. El Aloui, M. Farooq, K. Gazdar, R. Grassa, H.B. Hamida, M.K. Hassan, R. Hayat, C.M. Henry, J. Howe, M.H. Ibrahim, M. Jahrom, K. Jouaber-Snoussi, F. Kamarudin, M. Khawaja, H. Khan, K. Khan, O. Krasicka, M.T. Majeed, N.A.K. Malim, M. Masih, A. Massara, D.G. Mayes, A.K.M. Meera, M. Mehri, C. Mertzanis, H.S. Min, M.A. Mobin, Y.A. Nainggolan, M. Naseri, A.M. Nassir, A. Ng, S. Nowak, M.S. Nurzaman, M. Omran, H. Ozturk, M. Rashid, M.E.S.M. Rashid, R.M. Shafi, A. Shah, N.S. Shirazi, F. Sufian, G.M.W. Ullah, P. Verhoeven, L. Weill, S. Zaheer, S.R.S.M. Zain, A. Zarka

We all have questions about our lives, our souls, and loved ones who have passed on. Now we can find the answers.

In "Heaven and Earth," world-renowned spiritual medium and bestselling author James Van Praagh reveals the techniques that anyone can use to contact "the other side." Combining his own experiences with the testimony of others who have been touched by their spirit guides, Van Praagh encourages us to embark on our own journey of discovery, teaching us to

" recognize and listen to our own inner voices

alter our awareness to make contact with the

spirits of the departed

interpret our dreams as messages from beyond

use our inherent psychic gifts to help and heal others "

Most of us go through life without developing the wonderful, natural, God-given abilities inherent in all of us. In "Heaven and Earth," James Van Praagh gives us the tools to bring them to life.

With practical wisdom the authors of this handbook shows parents how their daily lives, experiences, and relationships reinforce their role as parents.
"The purpose of the family is the formation of people who are able to love...Learning about God is closely woven with love in the family, an integrated process."
The book includes chapters on Parenting, Being a Family, Being a Catholic Family, and Rearing Children in a Christian Family.

In today's society characterized by pluralism and transition, theology is increasingly being done in conversation with other disciplines - a process that is challenging narrow conceptions of God's work in the world. John W. de Gruchy has been at the forefront of efforts to reimagine theology as an interdisciplinary task, and this volume not only honors de Gruchy's work but uses it as a wellspring for theology in the twenty-first century. The title explores the relationship between Christian theology and a wide range of disciplines drawn from the arts, humanities, and sciences. These engaging chapters reveal the contributions that other facets of life can make to Christian thought while also upholding the vital religious grounding that theology brings to conversations about culture, politics, ethics, history, sociology, and other topics.

Liberal Christian theology permeates mainlines denominations and progressive circles of the church to this day. But what is liberal theology? What are progressive Christians progressing toward, and what are they leaving behind?

In Against Liberal Theology, professor and theologian Roger E. Olson warns progressive and mainline Christians against passively accepting the ideas of liberal theology without thinking through the consequences. In doing so, he examines the basic beliefs of the Christian faith, the main ideas of liberal theology, the way today's mainline and progressive Christianity relates to classic liberalism, and how classic Christian faith and liberal Christianity connect and contradict. Following in the footsteps of Gresham Machen's now-classic Christianity and Liberalism 100 years ago, Olson worries that liberal Christianity may not be Christianity but a different religion altogether.

After examining the origins of liberal theology in the nineteenth century, Olson examines how liberal theology views:

• Sources of truth
• The Bible
• God
• Jesus Christ
• Salvation
• The Future

Gentle but direct, Olson provides an even-handed assessment and critique of the ideas of liberal theology and worries that liberal Christianity has strayed too far from the classic Christian orthodoxy of the fathers and creeds to be considered "Christian" at all.

This is what happens when a writer, preacher, and lover of words encounters some of creation's wisest theologians...horses. First, she argues with them. They are, after all, horses. What could they possibly know about life and God that theologians haven't already written? But slowly she engages their language and listens to their holy wisdom, attending to how they express their being, their actions, and their relationships. She allows horses to draw her out of the faith of intellect and into a deeper faith of emotion, body, and soul. With edgy honesty and humor, Brock invites all who have longed for a deeper spiritual encounter with God to join her in the saddle (and occasionally on the ground) to discover how horses speak of God and how their ways of knowing help us to discover ways of God speaking to us.

As President Bush is preparing to invade Iraq, Wall Street Journal correspondent Asra Nomani embarks on a dangerous journey from Middle America to the Middle East to join more than two million fellow Muslims on the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca required of all Muslims once in their lifetime. Mecca is Islam's most sacred city and strictly off limits to non-Muslims. On a journey perilous enough for any American reporter, Nomani is determined to take along her infant son, Shibli -- living proof that she, an unmarried Muslim woman, is guilty of zina, or "illegal sex." If she is found out, the puritanical Islamic law of the Wahabbis in Saudi Arabia may mete out terrifying punishment. But Nomani discovers she is not alone. She is following in the four-thousand-year-old footsteps of another single mother, Hajar (known in the West as Hagar), the original pilgrim to Mecca and mother of the Islamic nation.

Each day of her hajj evokes for Nomani the history of a different Muslim matriarch: Eve, from whom she learns about sin and redemption; Hajar, the single mother abandoned in the desert who teaches her about courage; Khadijah, the first benefactor of Islam and trailblazer for a Muslim woman's right to self-determination; and Aisha, the favorite wife of the Prophet Muhammad and Islam's first female theologian. Inspired by these heroic Muslim women, Nomani returns to America to confront the sexism and intolerance in her local mosque and to fight for the rights of modern Muslim women who are tired of standing alone against the repressive rules and regulations imposed by reactionary fundamentalists.

Nomani shows how many of the freedoms enjoyed centuries ago have been erased by the conservative brand of Islam practiced today, giving the West a false image of Muslim women as veiled and isolated from the world. Standing Alone in Mecca is a personal narrative, relating the modern-day lives of the author and other Muslim women to the lives of those who came before, bringing the changing face of women in Islam into focus through the unique lens of the hajj. Interweaving reportage, political analysis, cultural history, and spiritual travelogue, this is a modern woman's jihad, offering for Westerners a never-before-seen look inside the heart of Islam and the emerging role of Muslim women.

A rare, intimate account of a world-renowned Buddhist monk’s near-death experience and the life-changing wisdom he gained from it.

In In Love With the World, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, one of the world's most respected leaders of Tibetan meditation, shares his personal story of how he explored the deepest, most hidden aspects of his being, and the near-death experience that came to define his meditation practice and teaching forever. Moving, beautiful and suffused with local colour, Rinpoche shares the invaluable lessons learned during his four-year wandering retreat and the meditation practices that sustained him, showing how we can all transform our fear of dying into joyful living.

One of the world's foremost exponents of the "pluralist" position as the most adequate Christian theological account of religious diversity turns to a new and urgent issue facing the community of world religions. For Paul Knitter, the spectre of environmental and social injustice looms over any serious discussion of humankind's future. As urgent as it is to have peace among the world's believers to achieve peace among nations, it is urgent that these communities unite in understanding and defending of the earth. In One Earth Many Religions Knitter looks back at his own "dialogical odyssey" and forward to the way that interfaith encounters and dialogue must focus attention on new challenges. Nothing less than enlisting the commitment of the world's religions on the task of saving our common home will do. In making that case, Knitter makes clear the complex structurespolitical, economic, and social as well as religious - that face those who approach this task. While articulating a "this-worldly soteriology" necessary to overcome our eco-human plight, Knitter offers practical considerations on actions and projects that have and should have been undertaken to stem the tide of environmental and human suffering. The global crisis is both at the center of One Earth Many Religions and a test case for Knitter and others engaged in the dialogue of religions. Can religious differences concerning the nature of the transcendent themselves be transcended in order to promote eco-human well-being? The issue seems basic and clearif interreligious dialogue cannot effect such a change, then one must question whether religion is of any use whatsoever.

In The Magnificent Defeat, Frederick Buechner examines what it means to follow Christ, the lessons of Christmas and Easter, the miracles of grace, and "the magnificent defeat" of the human soul of God.