This is Laurence Gardner's final book, written shortly before his death in 2010 and is the accompanying book to his Origin of God (published 2011 by dash house publishing). Together with Origin of God, this book outlines an irrefutable and searing indictment of conventional belief and exposes the evils and absurdities perpetuated over the millenia in the name of Christianity. In Revelation of the Devil, Laurence Gardner traces the history of the Devil, from its roots in Mesopotamia and the Old Testament all the way up to the modern world of today. Travelling through the New Testament, as well as the Koran, and then passing in turn through the Inquisitions, the Reformation and the Enlightenment, he unmasks what he has called "the myth of evil and the conspiracy of Satan." For nearly 2,000 years a supernatural entity known as the Devil has been held responsible by Church authorities for bringing sin and wickedness into the world. Throughout this period, the Devil has been portrayed as a constant protagonist of evil, although his origin remains a mystery and his personality has undergone many interpretive changes, prompting questions such as: If God is all good and all powerful, then why does evil exist? How can it exist? If God created everything, then where did the Devil come from? If the Devil exists, then why does he not feature in any pre-Christian document? Revelation of the Devil follows the Devil's sinister history, in the manner of a biography, from his scriptural introduction to the dark satanic cults of the present day. In a strict chronological progression, we experience the mood of each successive era as the Devil's image was constantly manipulated to suit the changing motives of his creators in their bid for threat-driven clerical control.

In the United States and Europe, an increasing emphasis on equality has pitted rights claims against each other, raising profound philosophical, moral, legal, and political questions about the meaning and reach of religious liberty. Nowhere has this conflict been more salient than in the debate between claims of religious freedom, on one hand, and equal rights claims made on the behalf of members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community, on the other. As new rights for LGBT individuals have expanded in liberal democracies across the West, longstanding rights of religious freedom - such as the rights of religious communities to adhere to their fundamental teachings, including protecting the rights of conscience; the rights of parents to impart their religious beliefs to their children; and the liberty to advance religiously-based moral arguments as a rationale for laws - have suffered a corresponding decline. Timothy Samuel Shah, Thomas F. Farr, and Jack Friedman's volume, Religious Freedom and Gay Rights brings together some of the world's leading thinkers on religion, morality, politics, and law to analyze the emerging tensions between religious freedom and gay rights in three key geographic regions: the United States, the United Kingdom, and continental Europe. What implications will expanding regimes of equality rights for LGBT individuals have on religious freedom in these regions? What are the legal and moral frameworks that govern tensions between gay rights and religious freedom? How are these tensions illustrated in particular legal, political, and policy controversies? And what is the proper way to balance new claims of equality against existing claims for freedom of religious groups and individuals? Religious Freedom and Gay Rights offers several explorations of these questions.

The paradigmatic Buddhist is the monk. It is well known that ideally Buddhist monks are expected to meditate and study-to engage in religious practice. The institutional structure which makes this concentration on spiritual cultivation possible is the monastery. But as a bureaucratic institution, the monastery requires administrators to organize and manage its functions, to prepare quiet spots for meditation, arrange audiences for sermons, or simply to make sure food is available, and rooms and bedding provided. The valuations placed on such organizational roles were, however, a subject of considerable controversy among Indian Buddhist writers, with some considering them significantly less praiseworthy than meditative concentration or teaching and study, while others more highly appreciated their importance. Managing Monks, as the first major study of the administrative offices of Indian Buddhist monasticism and of those who hold them, explores literary sources, inscriptions and other materials in Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan and Chinese in order to explore this tension and paint a picture of the internal workings of the Buddhist monastic institution in India, highlighting the ambivalent and sometimes contradictory attitudes toward administrators revealed in various sources.

This volume of essays explores the long-unstudied relationship between religion and human security throughout the world. The 1950s marked the beginning of a period of extraordinary religious revival, during which religious political-parties and non-governmental organizations gained power around the globe. Until now, there has been little systematic study of the impact that this phenomenon has had on human welfare, except of a relationship between religious revival to violence. The authors of these essays show that religion can have positive as well as negative effects on human wellbeing. They address a number of crucial questions about the relationship between religion and human security: Under what circumstances do religiously motivated actors tend to advance human welfare, and under what circumstances do they tend to threaten it? Are members of some religious groups more likely to engage in welfare-enhancing behavior than in others? Do certain state policies tend to promote security-enhancing behavior among religious groups while other policies tend to promote security-threatening ones? In cases where religious actors are harming the welfare of a population, what responses could eliminate that threat without replacing it with another? Religion and Human Security shows that many states tend to underestimate the power of religious organizations as purveyors of human security. Governments overlook both the importance of human security to their populations and the religious groups who could act as allies in securing the welfare of their people. This volume offers a rich variety of theoretical perspectives on the nuanced relationship between religion and human security. Through case studies ranging from Turkey, Egypt, and Pakistan, to the United States, Northern Ireland, and Zimbabwe, it provides important suggestions to policy makers of how to begin factoring the influence of religion into their evaluation of a population's human security and into programs designed to improve human security around the globe.

Tending Adam's Garden describes and explains the way in which our immune system works from a novel perspective. The book uses metaphors and examples to bring the immune system to life and explores the fundamental miracle of nature. Written in plain language for a broad audience, this book encompasses much more than just immunology, exploring more fundamental matters such as causality, information, energy, evolution, cognition and individuality, as well as the strategy of the immune system and its role in health and disease.
* Provides a unique perspective on the immune system from one of the keenest scientific and philosophical brains in the world
* Uses metaphors and case histories to explore themes in an accessible manner
* Written in plain language requiring no specialized vocabulary or specific scientific background in the subject

Buddhism in Mongolia explores the unique historical and cultural elements of Mongolian Buddhism while challenging its stereotyped image as a mere replica of Tibetan Buddhism. Vesna A. Wallace brings together an interdisciplinary group of leading scholars to explore the interaction between the Mongolian indigenous culture and Buddhism, the features that Buddhism acquired through its adaptation to the Mongolian cultural sphere, and the ways Mongols have been constructing their Mongolian Buddhist identity. In a collection of fifteen chapters, the book illuminates the historical, social, and cultural contexts within which Buddhism has operated as a major social and cultural force among various groups Mongolian ethnic groups. The volume covers an array of topics pertaining to the important historical events, social and political conditions, and influential personages in Mongolian Buddhism from the sixteenth century to the present. It shows how Buddhism underwent a series of transformations, adapting itself to the social, political, and nomadic cultures of the Mongols. The contributors demonstrate the ways that Buddhism retained unique Mongolian features through Qing and Mongol support. Most chapters bring to light the ways in which Mongolian Buddhists saw Buddhism as inseparable form "Mongolness". They posit that by being greatly supported by Mongol and Qing empires, suppressed by the communist governments, and experiencing revitalization facilitated by democratization and challenged posed by modernity, Buddhism underwent a series of transformations, while retaining unique Mongolian features. Wallace covers historical events, social and political conditions, and influential personages in Mongolian Buddhism from the sixteenth century to the present. Buddhism in Mongolia also addresses the artistic and literary expressions of Mongolian Buddhism and various Mongolian Buddhist practices and beliefs.

The term "Manifest Destiny" has traditionally been linked to U.S. westward expansion in the nineteenth century, the desire to spread republican government, and racialist theories like Anglo-Saxonism. Yet few people realize the degree to which "Manifest Destiny" and American republicanism relied on a deeply anti-Catholic civil-religious discourse. John C. Pinheiro traces the rise to prominence of this discourse, beginning in the 1820s and culminating in the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. Pinheiro begins with social reformer and Protestant evangelist Lyman Beecher, who was largely responsible for synthesizing seemingly unrelated strands of religious, patriotic, expansionist, and political sentiment into one universally understood argument about the future of the United States. When the overwhelmingly Protestant United States went to war with Catholic Mexico, this "Beecherite Synthesis" provided Americans with the most important means of defining their own identity, understanding Mexicans, and interpreting the larger meaning of the war. Anti-Catholic rhetoric constituted an integral piece of nearly every major argument for or against the war and was so universally accepted that recruiters, politicians, diplomats, journalists, soldiers, evangelical activists, abolitionists, and pacifists used it. It was also, Pinheiro shows, the primary tool used by American soldiers to interpret Mexico's culture. All this activity in turn reshaped the anti-Catholic movement. Preachers could now use caricatures of Mexicans to illustrate Roman Catholic depravity and nativists could point to Mexico as a warning about what America would be like if dominated by Catholics. Missionaries of Republicanism provides a critical new perspective on ''Manifest Destiny,'' American republicanism, anti-Catholicism, and Mexican-American relations in the nineteenth century.

This volume focuses on Catholic Church history in Australia by lookimg at certain figures (Archdeacon John McEencroe, Lwesi Harding, Bishop Chalres Henry Davis, Cardonal Gilroy) as well as themes: Catholc Social Justice and parliamentary politics, humanae vitae and Tridentine clericalism, and the emergence of Catholic education offices.

Revising dominant accounts of Puritanism and challenging the literary history of sentimentalism, Sympathetic Puritans argues that a Calvinist theology of sympathy shaped the politics, religion, rhetoric, and literature of early New England. Scholars have often understood and presented sentimentalism as a direct challenge to stern and stoic Puritan forebears: the standard history traces a cult of sensibility back to moral sense philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment, not Puritan New England. In contrast, Van Engen's work unearths the pervasive presence of sympathy in a large archive of Puritan sermons, treatises, tracts, poems, journals, histories, and captivity narratives. Sympathetic Puritans also demonstrates how two types of sympathy - the active command to fellow-feel (a duty), as well as the passive sign that could indicate salvation (a discovery) - pervaded Puritan society and came to define the very boundaries of English culture, affecting conceptions of community, relations with Native Americans, and the development of American literature. By analyzing Puritan theology, preaching, prose, and poetry, Van Engen re-examines the Antinomian Controversy, conversion narratives, transatlantic relations, Puritan missions, Mary Rowlandson's captivity narrative - and Puritan culture more generally - through the lens of sympathy. Demonstrating and explicating a Calvinist theology of sympathy in seventeenth-century New England, the book reveals the religious history of a concept that has largely been associated with more secular roots.

What happens when the Dalai Lama meets with leading physicists and a historian? This book is the carefully edited record of the fascinating discussions at a Mind and Life conference in which five leading physicists and a historian (David Finkelstein, George Greenstein, Piet Hut, Arthur Zajonc, Anton Zeilinger, and Tu Weiming) discussed with the Dalai Lama current thought in theoretical quantum physics, in the context of Buddhist philosophy. A contribution to the science-religion interface, and a useful explanation of our basic understanding of quantum reality, couched at a level that intelligent readers without a deep involvement in science can grasp. In the tradition of other popular books on resonances between modern quantum physics and Zen or Buddhist mystical traditions--notably The Dancing Wu Li Masters and The Tao of Physics, this book gives a clear and useful update of the genuine correspondences between these two rather disparate approaches to understanding the nature of reality.

English-born Francis Asbury was one of the most important religious leaders in American history. Asbury single-handedly guided the creation of the American Methodist church, which became the largest Protestant denomination in nineteenth-century America, and laid the foundation of the Holiness and Pentecostal movements that flourish today. John Wigger has written the definitive biography of Asbury and, by extension, a revealing interpretation of the early years of the Methodist movement in America. Asbury emerges here as not merely an influential religious leader, but a fascinating character, who lived an extraordinary life. His cultural sensitivity was matched only by his ability to organize. His life of prayer and voluntary poverty were legendary, as was his generosity to the poor. He had a remarkable ability to connect with ordinary people, and he met with thousands of them as he crisscrossed the nation, riding more than one hundred and thirty thousand miles between his arrival in America in 1771 and his death in 1816. Indeed Wigger notes that Asbury was more recognized face-to-face than any other American of his day, including Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.

What is the difference between an intellectual, factual knowledge of God and the actual change that occurs when you enter into an intimate relationship of love with Jesus?

Matthew Braden, a devoted servant of the Lord, explores that question in this heartfelt work, emphasizing that true faith means more than believing you are guaranteed a place in heaven. He illustrates that it is not enough to simply know all the right answers or to be born into a “Christian” home.

He looks back on how he lost his way after growing up in the church, giving in to “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16). All the while, he would have claimed that he loved God. But time slowly uncovered the reality that his “Christian” life was just a veil for the sin that held him captive.

The author reveals how the Holy Spirit ignited his faith, challenging his heart with questions such as:

What does it really mean to love God?
What does true, saving faith in Jesus Christ look like?
How can you engage in authentic discipleship?

Matthew uses many thought provoking questions to challenge his readers to examine what they believe and how it affects the way they live. He also notes that choosing to put your faith in Jesus and surrender your will is not an intellectual determination—it is a decision of the heart.

Forget what you think you know, challenge what you have heard, and investigate the Word of God for yourself with the insights in Factual or Actual?

Jacob Kinnard offers an in-depth examination of the complex dynamics of religiously charged places. Focusing on several important shared and contested pilgrimage places-Ground Zero and Devils Tower in the United States, Ayodhya and Bodhgaya in India, Karbala in Iraq-he poses a number of crucial questions. What and who has made these sites important, and why? How are they shared, and how and why are they contested? What is at stake in their contestation? How are the particular identities of place and space established? How are individual and collective identity intertwined with space and place? Challenging long-accepted, clean divisions of the religious world, Kinnard explores specific instances of the vibrant messiness of religious practice, the multivocality of religious objects, the fluid and hybrid dynamics of religious places, and the shifting and tangled identities of religious actors. He contends that sacred space is a constructed idea: places are not sacred in and of themselves, but are sacred because we make them sacred. As such, they are in perpetual motion, transforming themselves from moment to moment and generation to generation. Places in Motion moves comfortably across and between a variety of historical and cultural settings as well as academic disciplines, providing a deft and sensitive approach to the topic of sacred places, with awareness of political, economic, and social realities as these exist in relation to questions of identity. It is a lively and much needed critical advance in analytical reflections on sacred space and pilgrimage.

This book is dedicated to those Aboriginal women, men andchildren who gave their lives for this land, and to those who survived but have lost their spiritual connection with the land

"Sainthood" has been, and remains, a contested category in China, given the commitment of China's modern leadership to secularization, modernization, and revolution, and the discomfort of China's elite with matters concerning religion. However, sainted religious leaders have succeeded in rebuilding old institutions and creating new ones despite the Chinese government's censure. This book offers a new perspective on the history of religion in modern and contemporary China by focusing on the profiles of these religious leaders from the early 20th century through the present. Edited by noted authorities in the field of Chinese religion, Making Saints in Modern China offers biographies of prominent Daoists and Buddhists, as well as of the charismatic leaders of redemptive societies and state managers of religious associations in the People's Republic. The focus of the volume is largely on figures in China proper, although some attention is accorded to those in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other areas of the Chinese diaspora. Each chapter offers a biography of a religious leader and a detailed discussion of the way in which he or she became a "saint." The biographies illustrate how these leaders deployed and sometimes retooled traditional themes in hagiography and charismatic communication to attract followers and compete in the religious marketplace. Negotiation with often hostile authorities was also an important aspect of religious leadership, and many of the saints' stories reveal unexpected reserves of creativity and determination. The volume's contributors, from the United States, Canada, France, Italy, and Taiwan, provide cutting-edge scholarship-some of which is available here in English for the first time. Taken together, these essays make the case that vital religious leadership and practice has existed and continues to exist in China despite the state's commitment to wholesale secularization.

Scholars disputing the identity of the Church of England during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries describe it as either forming a Calvinist consensus or partaking of an Anglican middle way steeped in an ancient catholicity. Debating Perseverance argues that these conversations have given insufficient attention to the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints (the belief that a person who is saved can never be lost), which became one of the most distinctive doctrines of the Reformed tradition. In this book, Jay Collier sheds light on the influence of the early church and the Reformed churches on the fledgling Church of England by surveying several debates on perseverance in which readings of Augustine were involved. Collier begins with a reassessment of the Lambeth Articles (1595) and the heated Cambridge debates in which they were forged, demonstrating how readings of Augustine on perseverance influenced the final outcome of that document. He then investigates the failed attempt of the British delegation to the Synod of Dort to achieve solidarity with the international Reformed community on perseverance in a way that was also respectful of different readings of Augustine and the early church. The study returns to English soil to evaluate the Synod of Dort's effect on the supposedly Arminian Richard Montagu and his strategy to distance the Church of England from the consensus of the Reformed churches. It finishes by surveying a Puritan debate that occurred following England's civil war in which Augustine's teachings on perseverance continued to influence the way the English made policy and drafted confessional statements. In surveying these debates, Collier uncovers competing readings and receptions of Augustine on perseverance within the English church-one favoring the perseverance of the saints and the other denying it. Debating Perseverance recognizes England's struggles with perseverance as emblematic of its troubled pursuit of a Reformed and ancient catholicity.

Conservative evangelicalism has transformed American politics, disseminating a sometimes fearful message not just through conventional channels, but through subcultures and alternate modes of communication. Within this world is a "Religion of Fear," a critical impulse that dramatizes cultural and political conflicts and issues in frightening ways that serve to contrast "orthodox" behaviors and beliefs with those linked to darkness, fear, and demonology. Jason Bivins offers close examinations of several popular evangelical cultural creations including the Left Behind novels, church-sponsored Halloween "Hell Houses," sensational comic books, especially those disseminated by Jack Chick, and anti-rock and -rap rhetoric and censorship. Bivins depicts these fascinating and often troubling phenomena in vivid (sometimes lurid) detail and shows how they seek to shape evangelical cultural identity.
As the "Religion of Fear" has developed since the 1960s, Bivins sees its message moving from a place of relative marginality to one of prominence. What does it say about American public life that such ideas of fearful religion and violent politics have become normalized? Addressing this question, Bivins establishes links and resonances between the cultural politics of evangelical pop, the activism of the New Christian Right, and the political exhaustion facing American democracy.
Religion of Fear is a significant contribution to our understanding of the new shapes of political religion in the United States, of American evangelicalism, of the relation of religion and the media, and the link between religious pop culture and politics.

The al-Qaeda Franchise asks why al-Qaeda adopted a branching-out strategy, introducing seven franchises spread over the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. After all, transnational terrorist organizations can expand through other organizational strategies. Forming franchises was not an inevitable outgrowth of al-Qaeda's ideology or its U.S.-focused strategy. The efforts to create local franchises have also undermined one of al-Qaeda's primary achievements: the creation of a transnational entity based on religious, not national, affiliation. The book argues that al-Qaeda's branching out strategy was not a sign of strength, but instead a response to its decline in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Franchising reflected an escalation of al-Qaeda's commitments in response to earlier strategic mistakes, leaders' hubris, and its diminished capabilities. Although the introduction of new branches helped al-Qaeda create a frightening image far beyond its actual capabilities, ultimately this strategy neither increased the al-Qaeda threat, nor enhanced the organization's political objectives. In fact, the rise of ISIS from an al-Qaeda branch to the dominant actor in the jihadi camp demonstrates how expansion actually incurred heavy costs for al-Qaeda. The al-Qaeda Franchise goes beyond explaining the adoption of a branching out strategy, also exploring particular expansion choices. Through nine case studies, it analyzes why al-Qaeda formed branches in some arenas but not others, and why its expansion in some locations, such as Yemen, took the form of in-house franchising (with branches run by al-Qaeda's own fighters), while other locations, such as Iraq and Somalia, involved merging with groups already operating in the target arena. It ends with an assessment of al-Qaeda's future in light of the turmoil in the Middle East, the ascendance of ISIS, and US foreign policy.

What if sex, gender, and sexuality were designed to tell a much greater story than we could ever imagine? What if we had a part to play in that story? With gentle compassion and steadfast truth, Ryan Andrew Smith explores what the Bible says about sex, gender, marriage, and sexuality in a way that will appeal to Christians and non-Christians alike. A great resource for individuals, groups, and churches, Trust the Circle also presents ways that Christians can engage our sexually evolving culture with grace, love, and truth. Regardless of your views regarding sex and sexuality, you will find this resource helpful in understanding what the Bible says about these important and timely topics.

Gary Miller shares more heralded articles that have appeared in newspapers and magazines throughout the nation in this fourth volume of Outdoor Truths. Each entry is brief and stands alone from the other articles. It is the perfect deer-stand or coffee table book that can be enjoyed at different times. While some people may think of these articles as devotionals for hunters and fishers, the author has never viewed them that way. The reason is because he's never envisioned his audience as only faithful Christians but instead as people who may be unsure about Christianity or the church. The only thing he's always been sure about his readers is that by and large, hunters and fishers are not atheists. They see the handiwork of someone bigger whenever they spend time in the woods or on the water. These articles will help you navigate what you already know. If you love the outdoors, aren't sure about faith, but believe in God-or if you're a dedicated Christian-then you'll treasure these writings.