Venturing into "impossible" territory once again with Christian Satanism, this book provides its reader with the option to be both as only real wisdom could allow.

On January 29, 2001, President George W. Bush signed an executive order creating the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. This action marked a key step toward institutionalizing an idea that emerged in the mid-1990s under the Clinton administration--the transfer of some social programs from government control to religious organizations. However, despite an increasingly vocal, ideologically charged national debate--a debate centered on such questions as: What are these organizations doing? How well are they doing it? Should they be supported with tax dollars?--solid answers have been few.

"In Saving America?" Robert Wuthnow provides a wealth of up-to-date information whose absence, until now, has hindered the pursuit of answers. Assembling and analyzing new evidence from research he and others have conducted, he reveals what social support faith-based agencies are capable of providing. Among the many questions he addresses: Are congregations effective vehicles for providing broad-based social programs, or are they best at supporting their own members? How many local congregations have formal programs to assist needy families? How much money do such programs represent? How many specialized faith-based service agencies are there, and which are most effective? Are religious organizations promoting trust, love, and compassion?

The answers that emerge demonstrate that American religion is helping needy families and that it is, more broadly, fostering civil society. Yet religion alone cannot save America from the broad problems it faces in providing social services to those who need them most.

Elegantly written, "Saving America?" represents an authoritative and evenhanded benchmark of information for the current--and the coming--debate.

In 1960, five young men arrived at the imposing gates of Parkminster, the largest centre of the most rigorous and ascetic monastic order in the Western world: the Carthusians. This is the story of their five-year journey into a society virtually unchanged in its behaviour and lifestyle since its foundation in 1084. An Infinity of Little Hours is a uniquely intimate portrait of the customs and practices of a monastic order almost entirely unknown until now. It is also a drama of the men's struggle as they avoid the 1960s,the decade of hedonism, music, fashion, and amorality,and enter an entirely different era and a spiritual world of their own making. After five years each must face a choice: to make "solemn profession" and never leave Parkminster or to turn his back on his life's ambition to find God in solitude. A remarkable investigative work, the book combines first-hand testimony with unique source material to describe the Carthusian life. And in the final chapter, which recounts a reunion forty years after the events described elsewhere in the book, Nancy Klein Maguire reveals which of the five succeeded in their quest, and which did not.

In 16th and 17th century Ireland religion and nationality fused together in a people’s struggle to survive.  In that struggle the country’s links with Europe provided a life line.  Members of religious orders, with their international roots, played an important role. Among them were the Irish Jesuits, who adapted to a variety of situations – from quiet work in Irish towns to serving as an emissary for Hugh O’Neill in the south of Ireland and in the courts of Rome and Spain, and then founding seminary colleges in Spain and Portugal from which young Irishmen returned to keep faith and hope alive. In the seventeenth century persecution was more haphazard.  There were opportunities for preaching and teaching and, at time, especially during the Confederation of Kilkenny in the 1640s, for the open celebration of one’s religion. This freedom gave way to the savage persecution under Cromwell, which resulted in the killing of some Jesuits and others being forced to find shelter in caves, sepulchres, and bogs, the Jesuit superior dying alone in a shepherd’s hut on an island off Galway. There followed a time of more relaxed laws during which Irish Jesuits publicly ran schools in New Ross and, for Oliver Plunkett, in Drogheda, but persecution soon resumed and Oliver Plunkett was arrested and martyred. At the end of the century, as the forces of King James II were finally defeated, some Jesuits lived and worked through the sieges of Limerick and then nerved themselves to face the Penal Laws in the new century.

No Future Without Forgiveness is a quintessentially humane account of an extraordinary life. Desmond Tutu describes his childhood and coming of age in the apartheid era in South Africa. He examines his reactions on being able to vote for the first time at the age of 62 - and on Nelson Mandela's election, also his feelings on being Archbishop of Cape Town and his award of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984. No Future Without Forgiveness is also his fascinating experience as head of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The latter was a pioneering international experiment to expose many of the worst atrocities committed under apartheid, and to rehabilitate the dignity of its victims. Tutu draws important parallels between the Commissioners' approach to the situation in South Africa with other areas of conflict such as Northern Ireland, the Middle East, Rwanda and the Balkans.

In life we have moments in time in which we have an opportunity before us to make a change or to respond to a situation. According to Michael Lindsay, president of Gordon College, what follows these instances will depend intrinsically on the decisions we make and the actions we take. These are what he calls "hinge moments"-opportunities to open (or close) doors to various pathways of our lives. Lindsay maintains that getting these moments right can change our lives for the better, and getting them wrong can pose problems for years to come: "Some transitions have a disproportionate impact on our happiness, our contribution to society, and our family's well-being." In these pages Lindsay shares faith-based stories of success and failure from his ten-year study of 550 PLATINUM leaders. He has charted seven phases of transition, providing both practical and spiritual insights for making the most of each stage. In uncertain and tumultuous times, there is no better advantage than wisdom gained early.

Change is an essential part of life. How we meet that change is where it can get interesting. When a person goes through a conversion experience, there is an automatic assumption that they have it all figured out immediately, and they know exactly what God wants them to do. This is not the case. We only have to look at St. Paul. While his conversion was dramatic, Paul tells us in his letters that he had to spend considerable time in the wilderness pondering what had happened to him, and figuring out what exactly God wanted him to do. The same is true of St. Ignatius of Loyola. St. Ignatius had a dramatic conversion which shattered not only his leg but all his previous dreams and aspirations. Such a change was not easy to get his head around, and he was forced to enter into his own period in the wilderness. This time of reflection not only brought him closer to God, but it also gave him a greater insight into himself. In this booklet, you will be able to witness the transformation which took place in the life of Ignatius from a vainglorious young man obsessed with his own success, to one who put the service of God and other people before anything else. This transformation, while dramatic, was not immediate. It took time and reflection and took him across various locations. In all of his travels, Ignatius was focused on one thing, what was God calling him to do? Ignatius conversion will allow the reader to get a perspective on how Ignatius faced the challenges which transformed his life, and hopefully, the reader may be able to make time in their own life to explore things which brought about changes in their life and see how God was operating within this change.