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Books > Language & Literature > Biography & autobiography > Religious & spiritual
He was Nixon's hatchet man. A jailed felon. And now, one of the
most significant Christian leaders of our time. Here is his life
story.
Charles Colson has become one of the most revered leaders of our
time. His ministry outreach, Prison Fellowship, has swelled to
40,000 volunteers working in 100 countries. His Angel Tree
Christmas program provides presents to more than half a million
children of prison inmates every year. His daily radio broadcast,
"BreakPoint, " airs daily on more than 1,000 radio outlets across
the country. And his twenty books have sold more than five million
copies in the U.S.
But God had to work some mighty miracles to bring this unusual
servant to this prominent place of service. After all, Colson was
known as President Nixon's "hatchet man." His involvement in the
Watergate conspiracy led him to prison-and then to a life-changing
encounter with God.
Now, noted author Jonathan Aitken has written the first biography
that compellingly presents a first-rate understanding of the
political, historical, and spiritual journeys of Charles W.
Colson... a life redeemed.
Six year-old Charles Mulli wakes up in his Kenyan hut to discover
his parents have abandoned him. Forced to beg from hut to hut in
search of food, Charles scrapes out a meagre existence while trying
to come to terms with his abusive past. Then, in a dramatic turn of
events, Charles experiences unprecedented success. He finds a
wonderful wife, raises a family, excels in business to such a
degree that he creates an empire that is noticed by the President
of Kenya, and he becomes a pinnacle in the church movement. Charles
is on top of the world. And then his world changes. In spite of his
tremendous achievements, the plight of the growing street children
problem in his country remains strong in Charles' heart. He is
unable to shut out their cries, the cries he understands so well,
and he realizes he must respond. Father to the Fatherless tells the
true story of a man who makes a decision to sell everything he has
to help the poor. It's a decision that goes so counter-intuitive to
those around him that he is soon completely ostracized, forcing him
to carry out what seems like an impossible and unexplainable
mission. Now, armed only with his relationship with God, Charles
and his family struggle on physical, financial and spiritual fronts
to rescue street children from the slums of Kenya and provide them
with the hope of new life.
Why did Life Magazine dub her "the most hated woman in America"?
Did she unravel the moral fiber of America or defend the
Constitution? They found her heaped in a shallow grave, sawed up,
and burned. Thus ended Madalyn Murray O'Hair, the articulate
"atheist bitch" whose 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case ended school
prayer. Her Christian-baiting lawsuits spanned three more decades;
she was on TV all over the country, foul-mouthed, witty, and
passionate, launching today's culture wars over same-sex marriage
and faith-based initiatives. She was a man-hater who loved sex, a
bully whose heart broke for the downtrodden. She was accused of
schizophrenia, alcoholism, and embezzlement, but never cowardice or
sloth. She was an ideologue who spewed toxic rage even at the
followers who made her a millionaire. She was a doting mother who
accosted people to ask them to be sexual partners for her lonely
children, and whose cannibalistic love led her children to their
grave. She thrived on her fame, but just as the curtain of
obscurity began to lower, the family vanished in one of the
strangest of America's true crimes. This is the real story of "the
most hated woman in America," by the only author to interview the
killer and those close to him and to witness the family's secret
burial in Austin, Texas. From the First Chapter The sky was gray
and drizzling, but it had stopped at the funeral home by quarter to
nine. Billy Murray hadn't spoken to his three family members for
more than twenty years, but he wanted to give them a decent burial.
Bill was an ordained minister, but he didn't pray over the charred,
sawed-up remains. "Baptists don't pray for the dead," he said.
"They either accept Christ before they died or they didn't." He had
his mother cremated in accordance with her oft-expressed wish. Her
urn sat at the head of the burial vault, as was appropriate, for
she had ruled the other two with an iron hand. She was Madalyn
Murray O'Hair, 76, founder of American Atheists, and the Most Hated
Woman in America-a sobriquet she relished. The other two were his
half-brother, Jon Garth Murray, 40, and his daughter, Robin
Murray-O'Hair, 30. It had taken five years to find them and bring
them to the cemetery for the service, which was kept secret from
the public. It was their second burial. Jerry Carruth, the
prosecutor who had searched for the family for nearly four years,
had watched them being excavated from their shallow mass grave on a
South Texas ranch some months before. He was watching the
shoveling, looking for the hip replacement joint Madalyn had gotten
in 1988. When they found that, he'd know he'd found Madalyn. "There
it was," he said, "shining in the sun like a trailer hitch."
The years following the Great Awakening in New England saw a great
theological struggle between proponents of Calvinism and the
champions of Christian liberty, setting the stage for American
Unitarianism. The adherents of Christian liberty, who were branded
Arminians by their opponents, were contending for the liberty of
the mind and the soul to pursue truth and salvation free from prior
restraint. The Arminian movement took shape as a major,
quasi-denominational force in New England under the guidance of
particular clergymen, most notably Ebenezer Gay, minister of the
First Parish in Hingham, Massachusetts, from 1718 to 1787. Despite
his ubiquitous presence in the history of Arminianism, however, Gay
has been a historical enigma. Robert J. Wilson's purpose in this
biography is to trace Gay's long and fascinating intellectual
odyssey against the evolving social, political, and economic life
of eighteenth-century Hingham as well as the religious history of
the coastal region between Boston and Plymouth.
In the prime of his life, William Hendricks surrendered his wife to
breast cancer. Yet he could say, 'Give thanks to the Lord, for He
is good.' In a warm gentle style, Bill shares God's goodness, not
just even in the midst of suffering, but especially in that
personal pain.
An American Band, the America Story, tells the story of the
formative years of AMERICA, Dan's personal road to success in music
and the turbulent times that followed, leading ultimately to his
spiritual awakening.
The extraordinary life of the man who founded Islam, and the world
he inhabited - and remade. Muhammad's was a life of almost
unparalleled historical importance; yet for all the iconic power of
his name, the intensely dramatic story of the prophet of Islam is
not well known. In The First Muslim, Lesley Hazleton brings him
vibrantly to life. Drawing on early eyewitness sources and on
history, politics, religion, and psychology, she renders him as a
man in full, in all his complexity and vitality. Hazleton's account
follows the arc of Muhammad's rise from powerlessness to power,
from anonymity to renown, from insignificance to lasting
significance. How did a child shunted to the margins end up
revolutionizing his world? How did a merchant come to challenge the
established order with a new vision of social justice? How did the
pariah hounded out of Mecca turn exile into a new and victorious
beginning? How did the outsider become the ultimate insider?
Impeccably researched and thrillingly readable, Hazleton's
narrative creates vivid insight into a man navigating between
idealism and pragmatism, faith and politics, non-violence and
violence, rejection and acclaim. The First Muslim illuminates not
only an immensely significant figure but his lastingly relevant
legacy.
The true story of a successful Hindu priest whose world was changed
by an unexpected encounter with the love of Jesus Christ.
The author traveled to South Africa to interview surviving members
of Murray's family in order to produce this biography of the
19th-century missionary statesman, revivalist, evangelist, pastor,
and one of the best-loved and most widely read writers on faith and
spirit-filled living.
Love and Liberation reads the autobiographical and biographical
writings of one of the few Tibetan Buddhist women to record the
story of her life. Sera Khandro Kunzang Dekyong Chonyi Wangmo (also
called Dewe Dorje, 1892-1940) was extraordinary not only for
achieving religious mastery as a Tibetan Buddhist visionary and
guru to many lamas, monastics, and laity in the Golok region of
eastern Tibet, but also for her candor. This book listens to Sera
Khandro's conversations with land deities, dakinis, bodhisattvas,
lamas, and fellow religious community members whose voices
interweave with her own to narrate what is a story of both love
between Sera Khandro and her guru, Drime Ozer, and spiritual
liberation. Sarah H. Jacoby's analysis focuses on the status of the
female body in Sera Khandro's texts, the virtue of celibacy versus
the expediency of sexuality for religious purposes, and the
difference between profane lust and sacred love between male and
female tantric partners. Her findings add new dimensions to our
understanding of Tibetan Buddhist consort practices, complicating
standard scriptural presentations of male subject and female aide.
Sera Khandro depicts herself and Drime Ozer as inseparable
embodiments of insight and method that together form the Vajrayana
Buddhist vision of complete buddhahood. By advancing this
complementary sacred partnership, Sera Khandro carved a place for
herself as a female virtuoso in the male-dominated sphere of early
twentieth-century Tibetan religion.
Author Annette Adams shares the remarkable story of Aileen Coleman,
an Australian missionary to the Arab world. Known by many names
including the Desert Rat, Angel of the Desert, Blood Brother to the
Bedouin, Aileen has been honored by queen Noorah of Jordan and
Queen Elizabeth of England and celebrated by the princely and noble
as well as the lowly and oppressed.
Franklin Graham of Samaritan's Purse, asks: "How in the world
could a lady from the Outback of Australia turn ... the Arab world
upside down?"
Rabble-Rouser for Peace is the first book to tell the full story of
how a boy from South Africa's poverty-stricken black townships
became one of the world's best-known religious figures, a moral
icon to those who work for peace and justice everywhere. Drawn from
30 years of the author's first-hand contact with Desmond Tutu, this
is not only a vivid character study of a public figure with a
unique capacity to communicate warmth, humour and compassion; it is
also a rich account of his dynamic place in history. The story of
Desmond Tutu's life tells a crucial part of South Africa's history
and its movement from Apartheid towards peace, but it also follows
the growth of one of the best loved and globally most recognised
men of our time.
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