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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Aspects of religions (non-Christian) > Religious institutions & organizations
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.
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