Conscience is the Cinderella of the contemporary world. We hardly speak or think about our conscience. She is left behind while we get on with the party of life, untroubled by any serious self-examination. And yet conscience is a God-given part of being human, with tremendous potential for good - if it is cleansed and kept clean - or for harm - if it becomes hardened or calloused. 'This book is about the joy of a clear conscience in every day of living and in the day of death,' enthuses Christopher Ash. 'With a clear conscience, we can enjoy not just the stuff we think of as 'spiritual', but all sorts of things like sleep, sport, friendship and holidays. With a good conscience none of these things ever leaves a sour taste in our mouths.' Christopher is eager to get all of us thinking about conscience again: 'I want you to take your conscience out of the cupboard, dust it down, bring it back into daily life and discover its power to do you good.'

Have you ever felt like something was missing either within yourself or in your life-as if there's a void that you can't define and yet can't escape? You've been trying to find your purpose, and sometimes you even question whether you have one. Author Jill Allen has faced those questions and has discovered the way to show up as the woman she wants to be-the woman God designed and created her to be.
Set Free reveals Allen's heartbreaking and awe-inspiring life story. She recalls the fog surrounding the tragedy of her mother's unexpected death when she was a young girl, her own near-fatal accident, and her relationship with God throughout every moment. Using candid and relatable storytelling, she shares some of her darkest moments and traces her path to where she is today-a fierce woman of strong faith, a happily married wife of twenty years, and a proud mother of five. She details every step she took along the journey that led her to God's unconditional love so you can take these exact steps to freedom and enjoy His peace too.
In this inspirational personal narrative, one woman tells her life story to help women realize they can overcome anything with God.

How Does God Guide Us? is a chapter from Nicky Gumbel's book, Questions of Life, and the seventh talk on Alpha. Nicky Gumbel examines how we can follow in God's will and direction for our life. This booklet may be given to a guest who missed this Alpha talk. Alpha creates an environment of hospitality where people can bring their friends, family and work colleagues to explore the Christian faith, ask questions and share their point of view. Alpha makes it easy to invite friends to have spiritual conversations which explore life's biggest questions in a safe and respectful way. Alpha's approach to hospitality, faith and discussion is designed to welcome everyone, especially those who might not describe themselves as Christians or church-goers. Each session includes time for a large group meal, short teaching, and small group discussion.

This book explores an issue at the nerve of the long term health of all churches: how godly wonder can be reborn through renewed attention to the place of beauty in preaching and worship.
The book opens with an exploration of the theological and cultural difficulties of defining beauty. It traces the church's historical ambivalence about beauty and art and describes how, in our own day, the concept of beauty has been commercialized and degraded. Troeger develops a theologically informed aesthetic that provides a counter-cultural vision of beauty flowing from the love of God.
The book demonstrates how preachers can reclaim the place of beauty in preaching and worship. Chapter two employs the concept of midrash to mine the history of congregational song as a resource for sermons. Chapter three introduces methods from musicology for creating sermons on instrumental and choral works and for integrating word and music more effectively. Chapter four explores how the close relationship between poetry and prayer can stir the homiletical imagination. Each of these chapters includes a selection of the author's sermons illustrating how preachers can use these varied art forms to open a congregation to the beauty of God.
A final chapter recounts the responses of congregation members to whom the sermons were delivered. It uses the insights gained from those experiences to affirm how the human heart hungers for a vision of wonder and beauty that empowers people to live more faithfully in the world.

Hindu Christian Faqir compares two colonial Indian saints from Punjab, the neo-Vedantin Hindu Rama Tirtha (1873-1906) and the Christian convert Sundar Singh (1889-1929). Timothy S. Dobe shows that varied asceticisms, personal exemplary models, and material religion exuded their ambivalent and powerful public presence in Protestant metropolitan centers as much as in colonial peripheries. Challenging ideas of the invention of modern Hinduism, the transparent translation of Christianity, and the construction of saints by devotees, this book focuses on the long-standing, shared religious idioms on which these two men creatively drew to appeal to transnational audiences and to pursue religious perfection. Following both men's usage of Urdu, the book adopts the word "faqir" to examine the vernacular and performative dimensions of Indian holy man traditions, thereby calling special attention to missionary and Orientalist anti-ascetic accounts of the "fukeer" indigenous Islamic traditions and this-worldly religion. Exploring Rama Tirtha and Sundar Singh's global tours in Europe and America, self-conscious sartorial styles, and intimate autobiographical writings, Dobe demonstrates that the vernacular holy man traditions of Punjab provided resources that both men drew on to construct their forms of modern monkhood. The rise of heroic, anti-colonial sannyasis or sadhus of modern Hinduism like Swami Vivekananda is thus repositioned in relation to global Christianity, Sufi, bhakti, and Sikh regional practices, religious boundary-crossing, contestation and conversion. A comparative and contextualized story of two Punjabi holy men's particular performance of sainthood, Hindu Christian Faqir reveals much about the broad, interactional history of religious modernities.

Why and How Should I Read the Bible? is a chapter from Nicky Gumbel's book, Questions of Life, and the sixth talk on Alpha. Nicky Gumbel looks at the reasons why to read the Bible and ways we can read the Word of God. This is a great booklet to pass along to family, friends, neighbors and co-workers. It can also be given to a guest who may have missed this Alpha talk. Alpha creates an environment of hospitality where people can bring their friends, family, and work colleagues to explore the Christian faith, ask questions and share their point of view. Alpha makes it easy to invite friends to have spiritual conversations which explore life's biggest questions in a safe and respectful way. Alpha's approach to hospitality, faith, and discussion is designed to welcome everyone, especially those who might not describe themselves as Christians or church-goers. Each session includes time for a large group meal, short teaching, and small group discussion.

In this new volume, prolific scholar Walter Brueggemann seeks to show Christian preachers how to consider the faith witnessed in several Old Testament traditions and to help them discover rich and suggestive connections to our contemporary faith challenges. The author also assumes that a wholesale sustained engagement with the Old Testament is worth the effort for the preacher. He recognizes what he calls the "sorry state" of Old Testament texts in the Revised Common Lectionary, which he claims often constitute a major disservice for the church and its preachers. The lectionary gerrymanders the Old Testament to make it serve other claims, most of the time not allowing it to have its own evangelical say. Brueggemann hopes that his exposition in this volume will evoke and energize fresh homiletical attention to the Old Testament, precisely because he believes the urgent work of the gospel in our society requires attentive listening to these ancient voices of bold insistent faith.

Cultural conflicts about the family-including those surrounding women's social roles, the debate over abortion, and in more recent years, debates about stem cell research, same-sex marriage, and contraception-have intensified over the last few decades among Catholics, as well as among American citizens generally. In fact, these conflicts comprise much of the substance of the moral polarization that currently characterizes our public politics. Scholars have demonstrated the importance of the media in the endurance of these conflicts, as well as the important role played by elites, particularly religious elites. But less is known about how individuals in local settings and cultures-especially religious settings-experience and participate in them. Why are these conflicts so resonant among ordinary Americans, and Catholics in particular? By exploring how religion and family life are intertwined in local parish settings, this book strives to understand how and why Catholics are divided around these cultural conflicts about the family. It presents a close and detailed comparative ethnographic analysis of the families and local religious cultures in two Catholic parishes: religiously conservative Our Lady of the Assumption Church and theologically progressive St. Brigitta Church. Through an examination of the activities of parish life, together with the faith stories of parishioners, this book reveals how two congregational social processes-the practice of central ecclesial metaphors, and the construction of Catholic identities-matter for the ways in which parishioners work out the routines of marriage, childrearing, and work-family balance, as well as to the ways they connect these everyday challenges to the public politics of the family. The analysis further demonstrates that these institutional processes promote polarization among Catholics through practices that unintentionally fragment the Catholic tradition in local religious settings.

Surviving Your Child's Adolescence helps parents meet the 10 deepest needs of their teenager. These needs include:

Since the advent of the cinema, Jesus has frequently appeared in our movie houses and on our television screens. Indeed, it may well be that more people worldwide know about Jesus and his life story from the movies than from any other medium. Indeed, Jesus' story has been adapted dozens of times throughout the history of commercial cinema, from the 1912 silent From the Manger to the Cross to Mel Gibson's 2004 The Passion of the Christ. No doubt there are more to come.
Drawing on a broad range of movies, biblical scholar Adele Reinhartz traces the way in which Jesus of Nazareth has become Jesus of Hollywood. She argues that Jesus films both reflect and influence cultural perceptions of Jesus and the other figures in his story. She focuses on the cinematic interpretation of Jesus' relationships with the key people in his life: his family, his friends, and his foes. She examines how these films address theological issues, such as Jesus' identity as both human and divine, political issues, such as the role of the individual in society and the possibility of freedom under political oppression, social issues, such as gender roles and hierarchies, and personal issues, such as the nature of friendship and human sexuality.
Reinhartz's study of Jesus' celluloid incarnations shows how Jesus movies reshape the past in the image of the present. Despite society's profound interest in Jesus as a religious and historical figure, Jesus movies are fascinating not as history but as mirrors of the concerns, anxieties, and values of our own era. As the story of Jesus continues to capture the imagination of filmmakers and moviegoers, he remains as significant a cultural figure today as he was 2000years ago.

A Year of Devotional Readings to Help You Abide in Him

Understanding God's heart is the key to understanding life. For, it is his heart that designed redemption through Jesus. From his heart sprang the beauty of world, the wonder of the universe, the creativity of all humankind, and a specific love for you. His heart is the blueprint of all human hearts, and knowing his heart reveals the origin of goodness and bounty he endowed to us.

In Knowing the Heart of God, 365 entries will take you closer to our vastly amazing and tenderly intimate God. You will encounter a daily instalment of encouragement and insight, guidance and wisdom to:

• Understand the heart of God and your own heart
• Discover the purpose of your heart's deep desires
• Unravel the dynamics between parents and children, husbands and wives
• Fight the spiritual battle for your heart
• Connect intimately with the Father each day

God longs for you to know his heart, to tap into his love and plans for you. He designed you to long for the same. Knowing the Heart of God will satisfy your hardwired need to know him and will take you? Day by day? Closer and closer to the God who loves you.

Luther and Liberation recovers the liberating and revolutionary impact of Luther's theology, read afresh from the perspective of the Latin American context. Altmann provides a much-needed reassessment of Luther's significance today through a direct engagement of Luther's historical situation with an eye keenly situated on the deeply contextual situation of the contemporary reader, giving a localized reading from the author's own experience in Latin America. The work examines with fresh vigor Luther's central theological commitments, such as his doctrine of God, Christology, justification, hermeneutics, and ecclesiology, and his forays into economics, politics, education, violence, and war. This new edition greatly expands the original text with fresh scholarship and updated sources, footnotes, and bibliography, and contains several additional new chapters on Luther's doctrine of God, theology of the sacraments, his controversial perspective on the Jews, and a new comparative account with the Latin American liberation theology tradition.

The writers of the Bible speak to us with their words, and the Bible's characters speak to us with their lives. Their powerful examples reveal the spiritual inspiration and brilliant insight the human writers and the divine Writer intended. Times, cultures, traditions, and societal values may change from century to century, but human nature does not.

We value people whose words and actions reflect their true thoughts and intentions. People of integrity purposely integrate their own thoughts, words, and behaviors. They work at making their own hearts and minds, thoughts and ideas consistent with the godly character portrayed in Scripture.

These twenty-five Bible personalities in Choose Your Character cultivate a desire to deepen the commitment to live a life of unfailing integrity. Their examples teach us how to increase our personal satisfaction and effectiveness while strengthening our ability to influence others.

Paid in Full, a riveting account of Jesus' final hours, takes you on a journey that does just that. It powerfully explains the significance--for every person ever born--of each step Jesus willingly took along the way of His suffering, His death, and His resurrection. Noted Bible teacher Rick Renner draws a brilliant backdrop to the passion of Jesus Christ, interjecting fresh insights into the human and divine drama that took place in Jerusalem more than 2,000 years ago.

When the Christian Right burst onto the scene in the late 1970s, many political observers were shocked. But, God's Own Party demonstrates, they shouldn't have been. The Christian Right goes back much farther than most journalists, political scientists, and historians realize. Relying on extensive archival and primary source research, Daniel K. Williams presents the first comprehensive history of the Christian Right, uncovering how evangelicals came to see the Republican Party as the vehicle through which they could reclaim America as a Christian nation. The conventional wisdom has been that the Christian Right arose in response to Roe v. Wade and the liberal government policies of the 1970s. Williams shows that the movement's roots run much deeper, dating to the 1920s, when fundamentalists launched a campaign to restore the influence of conservative Protestantism on American society. He describes how evangelicals linked this program to a political agenda-resulting in initiatives against evolution and Catholic political power, as well as the national crusade against communism. Williams chronicles Billy Graham's alliance with the Eisenhower White House, Richard Nixon's manipulation of the evangelical vote, and the political activities of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and others, culminating in the presidency of George W. Bush. Though the Christian Right has frequently been declared dead, Williams shows, it has come back stronger every time. Today, no Republican presidential candidate can hope to win the party's nomination without its support. A fascinating and much-needed account of a key force in American politics, God's Own Party is the only full-scale analysis of the electoral shifts, cultural changes, and political activists at the movement's core-showing how the Christian Right redefined politics as we know it.

A fun, concise and attractive introduction to a fascinating and challenging subject. This is the ideal book for secondary school students and undergraduate students coming to theology for the first time, or indeed for anyone who just doesn't know where to start. The book examines key thinkers from the New Testament to Feminist Theology. It starts by considering some of the authors of New Testament writings and then focuses on representatives of the western tradition of theological speculation. Nearly half the work concentrates on 20th century thinkers and problems. It puts them in their historical, social and cultural settings, emphasizing that theology is as much a reflection on the world we live in as it is on God. Technical terms are explained in simple language throughout the text. This makes the book an ideal reference tool for a clear first overview of theology.

Rethinking the Wittenberg Concord for Today One of the mostly forgotten gems of the sixteenth century Reformations is the Wittenberg Concord. Signed in 1536 by representatives of evangelical southern German imperial cities and territories and the Lutherans, the dialogue that led to the concord provided space for the participants to have a meaningful dialogue that led to the recognition of each other's understanding of the sacraments as orthodox. This was remarkable, given the very public failures at Marburg in 1529 and Augsburg in 1530. The lack of agreement threatened the unity of the evangelical estates and made them, along with the Reformation teachings, vulnerable to attack by the Holy Roman Empire and the Roman Catholic Church. The dialogue participants created enough space in their own understandings of the sacraments of baptism, absolution, and the Lord's Supper to allow the agreement to occur--and function reasonably well, at least until the beginning of the Thirty Years War in 1618. The final two chapters explore how this concord has impacted the church since its acceptance, and how the lessons learned from this dialogue can assist churches today in providing healthy spaces for ecumenical dialogue to discuss controversial issues.

Why Did Jesus Die? is a chapter from Nicky Gumbel's book, Questions of Life. Nicky Gumbel examines the extraordinary implications of Jesus' death and resurrection. This booklet may be given to any guest who missed this Alpha talk. He answers questions about Jesus such as, "What historical evidence is there, other than the Bible, that Jesus actually existed?" He also discusses how what Jesus said and did two thousand years ago could still be relevant to us today. This is a great booklet to pass along to family, friends, neighbors and co-workers. It can also be given to a guest who may have missed this Alpha talk. Alpha creates an environment of hospitality where people can bring their friends, family, and work colleagues to explore the Christian faith, ask questions and share their point of view. Alpha makes it easy to invite friends to have spiritual conversations which explore life's biggest questions in a safe and respectful way. Alpha's approach to hospitality, faith, and discussion is designed to welcome everyone, especially those who might not describe themselves as Christians or church-goers. Each session includes time for a large group meal, short teaching, and small group discussion.