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Books > Religion & Spirituality > General
St. Thomas More, the light-hearted but heroic Chancellor of
England, comes to life in this biography by Elizabeth M. Ince from
the acclaimed "Vision Books" series of saints for youth 9 - 16
years old. Raised in the London of the late 1400's, Thomas was a
bright student eager for knowledge. When serving as a page for
Cardinal Morton, the Archbishop of Canterbury noticed his bright
wit and sent him to Oxford. There young Thomas became a scholar of
great repute, and later one of the greatest lawyers that England
had ever seen. Going on to serve his King, Thomas More soon became
one of Henry VIII's most trusted advisors. But then the unthinkable
happened. King Henry VIII defied Rome and set himself up as the
head of the Church in England, commanding all of his subjects to
acknowledge him as such. Sir Thomas resigned as Chancellor rather
than betray his faith, but his defiance came at a price. King Henry
had him arrested and charged with treason. On July 6, 1535, Sir
Thomas More was beheaded for high treason and became a martyr for
the Church.
From the senior pastor of New Life Church, a “timely,
thought-provoking, inspiring, and uplifting” (The Gazette,
Colorado) book that redefines the notion of extravagance by using
the parable of the Good Samaritan to demonstrate how to live a
truly compassionate and selfless life of giving freely without
expecting anything in return. We all know people in our lives who
have “yes” faces. They are calm but energetic, present but
still purposeful with their time. They’re genuine in their desire
to know about you—how you’re doing, what you’re up to, how
you feel. Even with full lives of their own, they somehow still
have the energy to inquire about others. These are extravagant
people. In Extravagant, Pastor Brady Boyd shows us that by
constantly offering up our time, talents, and hearts we can live
life more like these exceptional people. Drawing on the parable of
the Good Samaritan, he encourages us to stop living a life driven
by selfish desire and start building lasting relationships that
will be spiritually fulfilling. Discover how to begin this
transformation by ceasing to be a passerby and become one who
pauses in the course of daily life. By embracing the spirit of
generosity, Pastor Boyd shows us that the path to a happier life is
by living closer to God’s vision and building a community that
will be there in times of need. “Boyd’s illuminating insights
are a perfect primer for living a more self-aware, spiritually
fulfilling life” (Shelf Awareness) and just the remedy we need in
today’s fractured culture and troubled times.
A scholarly volume that reflects the rich diversity of Anglican
theology With contributions from an international panel of writers,
Twentieth-Century Anglican Theologians offers a wide-ranging view
that presents a survey of over twenty diverse Anglican thinkers.
The book explores well-known figures including William Temple,
Austin Farrer, Donald MacKinnon, and John A.T. Robinson. These
theologians are set in a wider context alongside others from India,
China, Australia, Ghana, and elsewhere. Notably, the subjects
include a number of women from Evelyn Underhill, the first woman to
teach the clergy of the Church of England, to Esther Mombo, a major
contemporary Anglican figure, from Kenya. The book reflects the
rich diversity of Anglicanism, suggesting the ongoing vitality of
this religious tradition. This important book: Contains information
on a number of prominent women Anglican thinkers Includes
contributions from experts from around the world Presents material
on both familiar figures and others that are unjustly little known
Written for students and teachers of Anglicanism, Anglican clergy,
and ecumenical colleagues, Twentieth-Century Anglican Theologians
is the first book to reflect the diversity of the Anglican
tradition by considering its global theological representatives.
The Anabaptist Vision, given as a presidential address before the
American Society of Church History in 1943, has become a classic
essay. In it, Harold S. Bender defines the spirit and purposes of
the original Anabaptists. Three major points of emphasis are: the
transformation of the entire way of life of the individual to the
teachings and example of Christ, voluntary church membership based
upon conversion and commitment to holy living, and Christian love
and nonresistance applied to all human relationships.48 Pages.
Recent discussion of the European Enlightenment has tended to
highlight its radical, atheist currents of thought and their
relation to modernity, but much less attention has been paid to the
importance of religion. Contributors to The Enlightenment in
Bohemia redress this balance by focusing on the interactions of
moral philosophy and Catholic theology in Central Europe. Bohemia's
vibrant plurality of cultures provides a unique insight into
different manifestations of Enlightenment, from the Aufklarung of
scholars and priests to the aristocratic Lumieres and the Jewish
Haskalah. Four key areas of interest are highlighted: the
institutional background and media which disseminated moral
knowledge, developments in secular philosophy, the theology of the
Josephist Church and ethical debates within the Jewish Haskalah. At
the centre of this fertile intellectual environment is the presence
of Karl Heinrich Seibt, theologian and teacher, whose pupils and
colleagues penetrated the diverse milieus of multicultural Bohemia.
The Enlightenment in Bohemia brings fresh insights into the nature
and transmission of ideas in eighteenth-century Europe. It
reaffirms the existence of a religious Enlightenment, and replaces
the traditional context of 'nation' with a new awareness of
intersecting national and linguistic cultures, which has a
particular relevance today.
Sacred Modernity argues how everyday non-secular experiences of the
natural world in Sri Lanka perpetuate ethno-religious identitarian
narratives. It demonstrates the relationships between spaces of
nature and environment and an ongoing aesthetic and spatial
constitution of power and the political in which Theravada Buddhism
is centrally implicated. To do this, the book works consecutively
through two in-depth case studies, both of which are prominent
sites through which Sri Lankan nature and environment are
commodified: first, the country's most famous national park, Ruhuna
(Yala), and second, its post-1950s modernist environmental
architecture, 'tropical modernism'. By engaging these sites, the
book reveals how commonplace historical understandings as well as
commonplace material negotiations of the seductions of Sri Lankan
nature are never far from the continued production of a
post-independent national identity marked ethnically as Sinhalese
and religiously as Buddhist. In the Sri Lankan context this
minoritizes Tamil, Muslim and Christian non-Sinhala difference in
the nation-state's natural, environmental and historical order of
things. To make this argument, the book writes against the grain of
Eurocentric social scientific understandings of the concepts
'nature' and 'religion'. It argues that these concepts and their
implicit binary mobilizations of nature/culture and the
sacred/secular respectively, struggle to make visible the pervasive
ways that Buddhism - thought instead as a 'structure of feeling' or
aesthetics - simultaneously naturalizes and ethnicizes the fabric
of the national in contemporary Sri Lanka. Sacred Modernity shows
the care and postcolonial methodological sensitivity required to
understand how 'nature' and 'religion' might be thought through
non-EuroAmerican field contexts, especially those in South Asia.
The Africa Study Bible (ASB) is the most ethnically diverse,
singlevolume, biblical resource to date. Written by 350
contributors from 50 countries, it includes the Holy Bible: New
Living Translation, Anglicized, and more than 2,600 features that
illuminate the truth of Scripture with a unique, African
perspective. The Africa Study Bible is a totally new kind of Bible,
built from the ground up by scholars and pastors in Africa who see
the critical need to make Scripture relevant to our everyday lives.
Its an all-in-one course in biblical content, theology, history,
and culture.
In this national bestseller, John Dominic Crossan, the world's leading expert on the historical Jesus, reveals how Christianity emerged in the period following Jesus' death. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Crossan shines new light on the theological and cultural contexts from which the Christian church arose. He argues powerfully that Christianity would have happened with or without Paul and contends that Jesus' "resurrection" meant something vastly different for his early followers than it does for many traditional Christians today--what mattered was Christina origins finally illuminates the mysterious period that set Western religious history in its decisive course.
Is the rigorous pursuit of scientific knowledge really compatible
with a sincere faith in God? Building on the arguments put forward
in God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?, Prof John Lennox
examines afresh the plausibility of a Christian theistic worldview
in the light of some of the latest developments in scientific
understanding. Prof Lennox focuses on the areas of evolutionary
theory, the origins of life and the universe, and the concepts of
mind and consciousness to provide a detailed and compelling
introduction to the science and religion debate. He also offers his
own reasoning as to why he continues to be convinced by a Christian
approach to explaining these phenomena. Robust in its reasoning,
but respectful in tone, this book is vital reading for anyone
exploring the relationship between science and God.
The God Delusion caused a sensation when it was published in 2006.
Within weeks it became the most hotly debated topic, with Dawkins
himself branded as either saint or sinner for presenting his
hard-hitting, impassioned rebuttal of religion of all types. His
argument could hardly be more topical. While Europe is becoming
increasingly secularized, the rise of religious fundamentalism,
whether in the Middle East or Middle America, is dramatically and
dangerously dividing opinion around the world. In America, and
elsewhere, a vigorous dispute between 'intelligent design' and
Darwinism is seriously undermining and restricting the teaching of
science. In many countries religious dogma from medieval times
still serves to abuse basic human rights such as women's and gay
rights. And all from a belief in a God whose existence lacks
evidence of any kind. Dawkins attacks God in all his forms. He
eviscerates the major arguments for religion and demonstrates the
supreme improbability of a supreme being. He shows how religion
fuels war, foments bigotry and abuses children. The God Delusion is
a brilliantly argued, fascinating polemic that will be required
reading for anyone interested in this most emotional and important
subject.
How did British Jewry respond to the Holocaust, how prominent was
it on the communal agenda, and what does this response tell us
about the values, politics, and fears of the Anglo-Jewish
community? This book studies the priorities of that community, and
thereby seeks to analyse the attitudes and philosophies which
informed actions. It paints a picture of Anglo-Jewish life and its
reactions to a wide range of matters in the non-Jewish world.
Richard Bolchover charts the transmission of the news of the
European catastrophe and discusses the various theories regarding
reactions to these exceptional circumstances. He investigates the
structures and political philosophies of Anglo-Jewry during the war
years and covers the reactions of Jewish political and religious
leaders as well as prominent Jews acting outside the community's
institutional framework. Various co-ordinated responses, political
and philanthropic, are studied, as are the issues which dominated
the community at that time, namely internal conflict and the fear
of increased domestic antisemitism: these preoccupations inevitably
affected responses to events in Europe. The latter half of the book
looks at the ramifications of the community's socio-political
philosophies including, most radically, Zionism, and their
influence on communal reactions. This acclaimed study raises major
questions about the structures and priorities of the British Jewish
community. For this paperback, the author has added a new
Introduction summarizing research in the field since the book's
first appearance.
Christians are called to model a way of life that challenges the
status quo and infuses the world with hope and possibility. We are
to be people who see possibility where others see failure, beauty
where others see ugliness and freedom where others see chains. This
is the Upside Down Kingdom, where the forgotten are noticed, the
silenced are given back their voice and love is stronger than hate.
By exploring the teaching of Jesus, as recorded in the Gospel of
Matthew, Malcolm Duncan in Flipped traces the key components of
this new community, this life-giving way of living. He explores the
five key discourses in Matthew and invites us to a radical new way
of living and being centred around the reign and the rule of King
Jesus. The message of Flipped: The Upside Down Kingdom is one that
our churches need to hear - that God's Kingdom is unshakeable,
local churches are its vanguard and Christians are its citizens.
Flipped paints a vision of what is possible when ordinary people
catch a glimpse of God's radical call to follow the Lord Jesus.
This book is a novel and ambitious attempt to map the Muslim
American nonprofit sector: its origins, growth and impact on
American society. Using theories from the fields of philanthropy,
public administration and data gathered from surveys and
interviews, the authors make a compelling case for the Muslim
American nonprofit sector's key role in America. They argue that in
a time when Islamic schools are grossly misunderstood, there is a
need to examine them closely, for the landscape of these schools is
far more complex than meets the eye. The authors, who are both
scholars of philanthropy, examine how identity impacts philanthropy
and also the various forces that have shaped the landscape of
Muslim American giving in the US. Using a comparative method of
analysis, they showcase how this sector has contributed not only to
individual communities but also to the country as a whole. National
surveys and historical analysis offer data that is rich in insights
and offers a compelling narrative of the sector as a whole through
its focus on Islamic schools. The authors also critically examine
how nonprofit leaders in the community legitimize their own roles
and that of their organizations, and offer a compelling and
insightful examination of how Muslim American leaders perceive
their own role in institution building. This is a must read for
anyone seeking to understand this important and growing sector of
American society, including nonprofit leaders in the Muslim
community, leaders of Islamic schools, nonprofit leaders with
interest in private schools, activists, and scholars who study
philanthropy and Islamic education.
This A-Z of the Christian faith is written for beginners of all
ages. It suitable for anyone aged 9 - 90. It introduces the key
words and concepts of the Christian faith and tells the story of
how God's heart's is open to everyone through the life, death and
resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ.
From a renowned historian who writes with "maximum vividness"
("The New Yorker") comes the most authoritative, readable
single-volume history of the brutal struggle for the holy land
Nine hundred years ago, a vast Christian army, summoned to holy
war by the Pope, rampaged through the Muslim world of the eastern
Mediterranean, seizing possession of Jerusalem, a city revered by
both faiths. Over the two hundred years that followed, Islam and
Christianity fought for dominion of the Holy Land, clashing in a
succession of chillingly brutal wars: the Crusades. Here for the
first time is the story of that epic struggle told from the
perspective of both Christians and Muslims. A vivid and fast-paced
narrative history, it exposes the full horror, passion, and
barbaric grandeur of the Crusading era, revealing how these holy
wars reshaped the medieval world and why they continue to influence
events today.
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Ramayana
(Paperback, 3rd edition)
William Buck; Introduction by B A Van Nooten; Illustrated by Shirley Triest
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R775
R646
Discovery Miles 6 460
Save R129 (17%)
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Out of stock
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Few works in world literature have inspired so vast an audience, in
nations with radically different languages and cultures, as the
"Ramayana" and "Mahabharata", two Sanskrit verse epics written some
2,000 years ago. In "Ramayana" (written by a poet known to us as
Valmiki), William Buck has retold the story of Prince Rama - with
all its nobility of spirit, courtly intrigue, heroic renunciation,
fierce battles, and triumph of good over evil - in a length and
manner that will make the great Indian epics accessible to the
contemporary reader. The same is true for the "Mahabharata" - in
its original Sanskrit, probably the longest Indian epic ever
composed. It is the story of a dynastic struggle, between the Kurus
and Pandavas, for land. In his introduction, Sanskritist B. A. van
Nooten notes, "Apart from William Buck's rendition [no other
English version has] been able to capture the blend of religion and
martial spirit that pervades the original epic". Presented
accessibly for the general reader without compromising the spirit
and lyricism of the originals, William Buck's "Ramayana" and
"Mahabharata" capture the essence of the Indian cultural heritage.
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