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Spirituality and Religion Recent Releases |
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Hell Bent: How the Fear of Hell Holds Christians Back from a Spirituality of Love by Brian ReckerA former evangelical pastor explains why we can stop worrying about hell and start focusing on love "If you’ve ever struggled with...the idea of eternal conscious torment, Hell Bent is for you.”—Pete EnnsThere is a black hole at the center of Christian spirituality: the doctrine of hell. No matter how hard we try to believe in a loving God, the fear of eternal torment always lurks at the back of our minds, warping our sense of what love means. Worse still, many churches act as if the point of Christianity is not to follow Jesus but to secure a get-out-of-hell-free card—and to “save” everyone you know by converting them to your religion. For many of us, the whole story of Christianity has punishment at the very center. But does the Bible really say we’re going to hell if we don’t do or believe the “right” things? In this taboo-shattering book, former evangelical pastor Brian Recker takes an honest look at scripture and reveals what has been true all along: Hell isn’t real, and God’s universal love is radically inclusive, in this life and the next. By removing punishment from Christianity's center, Recker boldly reimagines the core questions of faith, such as why Jesus lived and died, and what it means to be “saved.” It’s time to rediscover spirituality as Jesus taught it: loving God, and loving our neighbors as ourselves. Whether you’re Christian, exvangelical, or anywhere along a deconstruction journey, Hell Bent is the perfect resource to help you replace fear and church hurt with healing and peace.
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I've Got Questions: The Spiritual Practice of Having It Out with God by Erin Hicks MoonWhen your faith as you know it has been commodified, nationalized, scandalized, and rebranded beyond recognition, is it even possible to recover the "good" of Jesus from this cluster of epic proportions? Writer and podcaster Erin Moon has questions, and this book is her open letter for anyone who feels iffy, conflicted, or just downright devastated by this disconnect. With empathy, insight, and the therapy of memes and a good laugh, Erin maps out not a rigid prescription but an open-hearted pathway for you to reclaim what you once loved about your faith home and light a match to the rest. As it turns out, God is not afraid of your questions. To the contrary, the fullness of the Christian story is found not in a certainty checklist but a vision of a people who wrestle with God. This is the story to which Erin turns and guides you through, as you understand the good, bad, ugly, and just plain bizarre of your faith origins; find permission to lament, ask questions, and name pressure points; and make peace as you set your own new boundaries and rebuild. Consider this your open invitation to get gut-level honest about where it started, and heart-level hopeful about where it can go from here.
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Here Be Dragons: Treading the Deep Waters of Motherhood, Mean Girls, and Generational Trauma by Melanie ShankleMedieval cartographers marked maps with "Here Be Dragons" to warn of unknown dangers ahead, and now Melanie Shankle humorously applies this to raising teenage daughters. Navigating the tumultuous teenage years can be daunting, with mean girls, dramatic breakups, and self-worth struggles often occurring in a single day. As a mom, you might long for a guide to help you through these unpredictable times. When her daughter, Caroline, faced high school challenges, Melanie felt overwhelmed. She embarked on a journey to break the vicious cycles rooted in her past, realizing that to help Caroline face her dragons, she first needed to confront her own. In Here Be Dragons, Melanie candidly explores past struggles and generational wounds that shaped her approach to parenting. With deep insight and empathy, she demonstrates how facing your own dragons empowers you to help your daughter confront hers. Here Be Dragons is a heartfelt--and aptly humorous--source of camaraderie and practical advice for those feeling overwhelmed by raising a teenage daughter. It serves as a road map to thriving amid chaos and trusting God to transform you into a healthier woman, mom, wife, and friend. Laugh, cry, and find solidarity in Melanie's transformative journey as you embrace your own path toward building an unbreakable mother-daughter bond and a more empowered future together.
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Single, Dating, Engaged, Married: Navigating Life and Love in the Modern Age by Ben StuartGod gives us purpose in each relational season we experience: singleness, dating, engagement, and marriage. Discover how to thrive in each one in the updated edition of the bestselling Single, Dating, Engaged, Married, now with a new chapter. In a society where everyone is supposedly more connected, why do more people than ever feel so lonely? Even as marriage rates decline, studies show that most single adults still hope to get married. But how can we navigate life and love in this disconnected culture? Has social media eroded the institutions that brought us together—and the deeper emotional intimacy they provided? Pastor and author Ben Stuart guides you in navigating the four stages of a relational life and embracing the intentions and truths God has established for each one. This updated edition includes an additional chapter on how to end dating relationships well. As you embark on this journey, you will discover how to: Leverage singleness to make an impact for the kingdom of God; Pursue dating with clarity and purity; Break up in a healthy and respectful way; Use the season of engagement wisely to prepare for marriage; Maximize your life as a married couple for shared mission; Continually seek God and His will throughout each stage Discover how to embrace God's design, invest your life in what matters most, and find meaning in whatever season of life you're in.
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Conversations on Faith by Martin ScorseseFrom his Italian-American upbringing as a Catholic in New York to the meditations on religion, belief, and the divine found in his filmography, Martin Scorsese's relationship to his faith has touched every aspect of his life and work. When Italian journalist Father Antonio Spadaro and Martin Scorsese first sat down together in Scorsese's home, neither could have predicted the depth of the conversation, intellectual exchange, or friendship that would result. While discussing the acclaimed director's film Silence, about the persecution of Jesuits in Japan, they began a dialogue about faith that continues to this day. In their often-profound conversations, he and Father Spadaro have left no stone unturned, discussing this relationship along with everything from Scorsese's childhood to the concept of the soul. And as a result of their long friendship and communication, Scorsese met with Pope Francis. Readers will gain new insight into one of the most famous directors of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in these honest, moving, and ultimately inspiring Conversations on Faith.
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A Dangerous Idea: The Scopes Trial, the Original Fight Over Science in Schools by Debbie LevyIn 1925, when Tennessee lawmakers banned the teaching of evolution in public schools, teacher John Scopes challenged the law--and set off a gripping circus of a legal battle. Two masterminds faced off in a blistering courtroom debate over creationism and natural selection, each armed with the books they believed belonged in classrooms. Celebrity politician William Jennings Bryan relied on the Bible to make his case, while legal luminary Clarence Darrow defended Charles Darwin's groundbreaking books On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man. Their clash would go down in history as the Scopes Monkey Trial. A century later, here is the riveting truth of what happened and why it matters. For a nation still arguing about the books and ideas that young people should encounter, award-winning author Debbie Levy delivers an important, insightful and expertly-researched account of our history that illuminates the challenges we face today.
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Rebel Hearts: Journeys Within the IRA's Soul by Kevin ToolisFor ten years Kevin Toolis investigated the lives of the IRA soldiers who wage a secret battle against the British State. His journeys took him from the back kitchens of Belfast, where men joked while making two-thousand-pound bombs, to prisons for interviews with men serving life sentences, and to the graveyards where mourners weep. Each chapter explores a world where history, faith, and human savagery determine life and death. At once moving and harrowing, Rebel Hearts is the most authoritative and insightful book ever written on the IRA.
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The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church by Sarah McCammonGrowing up in a deeply evangelical family in the Midwest in the '80s and '90s, Sarah McCammon was strictly taught to fear God, obey him, and not question the faith. Persistently worried that her gay grandfather would go to hell unless she could reach him, or that her Muslim friend would need to be converted, and that she, too, would go to hell if she did not believe fervently enough, McCammon was a rule-follower and--most of the time--a true believer. But through it all, she was increasingly plagued by fears and deep questions as the belief system she'd been carefully taught clashed with her expanding understanding of the outside world. After spending her early adult life striving to make sense of an unraveling worldview, by her 30s, she found herself face-to-face with it once again as she covered the Trump campaign for NPR, where she witnessed first-hand the power and influence that evangelical Christian beliefs held on the political right. Sarah also came to discover that she was not alone: she is among a rising generation of the children of evangelicalism who are growing up and fleeing the fold, who are thinking for themselves and deconstructing what feel like the "alternative facts" of their childhood. Rigorously reported and deeply personal, The Exvangelicals is the story of the people who make up this generational tipping point, including Sarah herself. Part memoir, part investigative journalism, this is the first definitive book that names and describes the post-evangelical movement: identifying its origins, telling the stories of its members, and examining its vast cultural, social, and political impact.
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In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife by Sebastian JungerFor years as an award-winning war reporter, Sebastian Junger traveled to many front lines and frequently put his life at risk. And yet the closest he ever came to death was the summer of 2020 while spending a quiet afternoon at the New England home he shared with his wife and two young children. Crippled by abdominal pain, Junger was rushed to the hospital by ambulance. Once there, he began slipping away. As blackness encroached, he was visited by his dead father, inviting Junger to join him. "It's okay," his father said. "There's nothing to be scared of. I'll take care of you." That was the last thing Junger remembered until he came to the next day when he was told he had suffered a ruptured aneurysm that he should not have survived. This experience spurred Junger--a confirmed atheist raised by his physicist father to respect the empirical--to undertake a scientific, philosophical, and deeply personal examination of mortality and what happens after we die. How do we begin to process the brutal fact that any of us might perish unexpectedly on what begins as an ordinary day? How do we grapple with phenomena that science may be unable to explain? And what happens to a person, emotionally and spiritually, when forced to reckon with such existential questions?
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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The Public Library
501 Copper NW
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87102
505-768-5141abqlibrary.org |
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