"Authentic Fakes "explores the religious dimensions of American popular culture in unexpected places: baseball, the Human Genome Project, Coca-Cola, rock 'n' roll, the rhetoric of Ronald Reagan, the charisma of Jim Jones, Tupperware, and the free market, to name a few. Chidester travels through the cultural landscape and discovers the role that fakery--in the guise of frauds, charlatans, inventions, and simulations--plays in creating religious experience. His book is at once an incisive analysis of the relationship between religion and popular culture and a celebration of the myriad ways in which invention can stimulate the religious imagination.
Moving beyond American borders, Chidester considers the religion of McDonald's and Disney, the discourse of W.E.B. Du Bois and the American movement in Southern Africa, the messianic promise of Nelson Mandela's 1990 tour to America, and more. He also looks at the creative possibilities of the Internet in such phenomena as Discordianism, the Holy Order of the Cheeseburger, and a range of similar inventions. Arguing throughout that religious fakes can do authentic religious work, and that American popular culture is the space of that creative labor, Chidester looks toward a future "pregnant with the possibilities of new kinds of authenticity."

Drugs and alcohol. Self-injury. Eating disorders. Puberty. Suicide. Sexual purity. These are just a few of the challenges facing teens and young adults today. This concise, topical guide to the Bible is the perfect tool for parents and youth pastors wanting to provide scriptural guidance to youth regarding the issues they face in their formative years. Now updated, revised, and expanded with new topics.

Now in its fourth edition, this classic reference book helps counselors, pastors, and individual Christians with specific personal needs find sound scriptural guidance for resolving problems and growing in faith. The updated cover and packaging will attract new buyers to this already popular reference tool.

This enlightening edited collection shows how migration shapes the lives of faith communities - and vice versa - through diverse prisms including diaspora, generational change, cultural conflict, conceptions of 'ministry' and artistic response. The contributors comprise writers, poets and artists from the three largest Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and beyond. They show how issues of migration are addressed through a variety of different media such as theological debate and shared community action, poetry and art. As issues of migration are an important factor in so many political and social debates, faith communities are looking for guidance on how to deepen their theological understanding of migration. This book helps them to reflect on their own practices and experiences, learn from their own traditions and engage in dialogue with diverse communities. *All royalties from book sales will be donated to The Helen Bamber Foundation - a UK-based charity that supports people who have survived extreme physical, sexual and psychological violence.*

Offering a model of care that the church can use with survivors of sexual abuse, this supportive book is backed up by Rene Girard's Mimetic Theory throughout. The book proposes that the treatment survivors receive in churches could be greatly improved if instead of adding to a survivor's sense of guilt, difference or isolation or trying to change survivors' thoughts, feelings or behaviour they adopt the role of God as benevolent other. It shows that by adopting these beliefs churches can move past unintentional scapegoating of sexual abuse survivors and into a healing community where survivors feel included on churchgoers' journeys towards health and wholeness.

This book is an attempt by the author to give us a brief human insight into life behind bars in one of our penal institutions.  It is written from the perspective of someone who has walked the walk with the prisoner for twenty years and now questions the effectiveness of our criminal justice system. She is an advocate for a Restorative Justice System and sees this model as the way forward. She argues that true justice lies in healing for all involved in criminal behaviour, including victim, perpetrator and society. The second part of the book hears the voices of the prisoners in emotionally charged reflections on the reality of life within a prison cell. The author challenges the use of prisons to deal with addictions, mental health issues and homelessness.Where prisons are needed, as they are for a small cohort of people, they should be open institutions dedicated to rehabilitation based on the needs of the individual and on societal needs of the time.  

A collection of readings and reflections for participants in the Inspiring Faith Communities programme.

The gospel of Mark is a regular staple in most churches. People gravitate towards it because of its brevity, action-packed nature and familiar content. However, we must be careful that familiarity and assumption doesn't blind us to the great depth, priceless treasure and awe-filled wonder there are within its pages. This gospel is all about The King, his cross and his word. This volume, Teaching Mark, will be a great guide for you as you read, study and teach the gospel of Mark. It will help you keep Mark's big purpose in view and help you see what is really there. Teaching Mark is a great addition to the growing 'Teaching the Bible' series. Robin will be a terrific guide as your enjoy the privilege of teaching or preaching this amazing book. Whether you are a small group leader, preacher, your worker or someone who simply wants help with the personal Bible study, this book will be an invaluable help as you seek to comprehend and communicate the message of Mark.

Contributing to the ongoing excavation of the spiritual lifeworld of Dorothy Day—“the most significant, interesting, and influential person in the history of American Catholicism�—The Bread of the Strong offers compelling new insight into the history of the Catholic Worker movement, including the cross-pollination between American and Quebecois Catholicism and discourse about Christian antimodernism and radicalism. The considerable perseverance in the heroic Christian maximalism that became the hallmark of the Catholic Worker’s personalism owes a great debt to the influence of Lacouturisme, largely under the stewardship of John Hugo, along with Peter Maurin and myriad other critical interventions in Day’s spiritual development. Day made the retreat regularly for some thirty-five years and promoted it vigorously both in person and publicly in the pages of The Catholic Worker. Exploring the influence of the controversial North American revivalist movement on the spiritual formation of Dorothy Day, author Jack Lee Downey investigates the extremist intersection between Roman Catholic contemplative tradition and modern political radicalism. Well grounded in an abundance of lesser-known primary sources, including unpublished letters, retreat notes, privately published and long-out-of-print archival material, and the French-language papers of Fr. Lacouture, The Bread of the Strong opens up an entirely new arena of scholarship on the transnational lineages of American Catholic social justice activism. Downey also reveals riveting new insights into the movement’s founder and namesake, Quebecois Jesuit Onesime Lacouture. Downey also frames a more reciprocal depiction of Day and Hugo’s relationship and influence, including the importance of Day’s evangelical pacifism on Hugo, particularly in shaping his understanding of conscientious objection and Christian antiwar work, and how Hugo’s ascetical theology animated Day’s interior life and spiritually sustained her apostolate. A fascinating investigation into the retreat movement Day loved so dearly, and which she claimed was integral to her spiritual formation, The Bread of the Strong explores the relationship between contemplative theology, asceticism, and radical activism. More than a study of Lacouture, Hugo, and Day, this fresh look at Dorothy Day and the complexities and challenges of her spiritual and social expression presents an outward exploration of the early- to mid–twentieth century dilemmas facing second- and third-generation American Catholics.

Are you depressed? Do you feel hopeless? Do you feel distant from God?

There are many Christians who suffer from depression, but many feel alone in their struggle with it. There is still much stigma attached to the illness of depression, but this stigma is two-fold for Christians. They have stigma attached to them not only from society as a whole, but also in the place where they are supposed to find support and understanding-the church.

Those suffering from depression may see the cause of their depression attributed to being weak, not being a good Christian, not having enough faith, or having some hidden sin. If a Christian is receiving care through a community agency that provides counseling, psychiatric services, or case management services, there is a tendency to find limited support for their Christian views or encouragement from the Bible.

In this guide, author Derrin Drake relies on his twelve years of work experience in the mental health field as well as the Bible to provide hope, encouragement, stability, and direction through the illness of depression. Regardless of where a person is at in dealing with the illness of depression, "Hope Is Not Lost: Staying Connected with God in the Midst of Depression" can help you once again feel connected to God, find encouragement, find strength, and find hope for the journey.

"Religion and Social Justice for Immigrants captures the fascinating diversity of faith-based resistance around U.S. immigration issues. While much attention is given to the destructive aspects of fundamentalism, this book reveals that other religious groups are working constructively and tenaciously for the rights of those who are marginalized and mistreated."-Sharon Erickson Nepstad, author of Convictions of the Soul: Religion, Culture, and Agency in the Central America Solidarity Movement "This timely volume is the first social science analysis to focus on the influence of religion on social justice issues for immigrants."-Helen Rose Ebaugh, coauthor of Religion and the New Immigrants Religion has jumped into the sphere of global and domestic politics in ways that few would have imagined a century ago. Some expected that religion would die as modernity flourished. Instead, it now stares at us almost daily from the front pages of newspapers and television broadcasts. Although it is usually stories about the Christian Right or conservative Islam that grab headlines, there are many religious activists of other political persuasions that are working quietly for social justice. This book examines how religious immigrants and religious activists are working for equitable treatment for immigrants in the United States. The essays in this book analyze the different ways in which organized religion provides immigrants with an arena for mobilization, civic participation, and solidarity. Contributors explore topics including how non-Western religious groups such as the Vietnamese Caodai are striving for community recognition and addressing problems such as racism, economic issues, and the politics of diaspora; how interfaith groups organize religious people into immigrant civil rights activists at the U.S.-Mexican border; and how Catholic groups advocate governmental legislation and policies on behalf of refugees. Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo is a professor in the department of sociology at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

The Road of the Heart’s Desire focuses on the emergence of the human race and the individual from an undifferentiated oneness and the return of the individual to the human community and to reflective and differentiated oneness with God. Dunne expresses this reunion through music and language. “Thinking of the human essence, we can discern in story and song a double emergence and separation, that of the human race and that of the individual,� he writes. Dunne traces four cycles of story and song: the unity of all things, an emergence and separation of the human race, the emergence of the individual, and finally a reunion of humanity with “all in all.� The “road of the heart’s desire� is the path each person takes toward this reunion.