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Spirituality and Religion September 2026 |
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Beyond Wellness: How Restoring the Religious Roots of Spiritual Practices Can Heal Us
by Liz Bucar
Go deeper than superficial self-care with the religious secret sauce you didn't know you were missing An emotionally and intellectually honest alternative for people who are seeking meaning beyond generic spirituality--Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, author of Real Self-Care In the chaos of today's world, we're all searching for meaning. The wellness industry has sold us a promise that we can find it if we just buy the right products, attend the right retreats, and follow the right celebrity gurus. But is this true? Or are we picking and choosing from a self-care salad bar in ways that satisfy our hunger but don't truly nourish us? When we approach practices like yoga and ayahuasca as fitness routines and life hacks, we miss out on the sacred wisdom they have to offer us. But by digging into the real and often ancient religious traditions behind these practices, from Buddhism to Christianity and beyond, we can make them more meaningful, ethical, and effective--without the often unpleasant baggage of joining an organized religion. In this engaging and deeply personal book, award-winning scholar and writer Liz Bucar embarks on a quest to get to the heart of spiritual but not religious activities from detox diets to sound baths. As she tries out each practice for herself, she asks how we can get more out of it by tuning out the hype and taking the religious meaning behind it seriously--with emotionally profound and often surprising results. Whether it's as simple as setting an intention for a yoga asana or as complex as reevaluating what a higher power is, it's time to understand, experience, and simply get more out of our spiritual practices. It's time to dig deeper with Beyond Wellness.
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| Imma See for Myself: A Stubborn Girl's Guide to Trusting God (the First Time Around) by Ariel Fitz-PatrickSinger and social media creator Ariel Fitz-Patrick shares an honest account of questioning and ultimately rebuilding her faith. Reflecting on family struggles (her father was a pastor), uncertainty, and the search for purpose, she offers encouragement for readers navigating their own doubts and discovering what a relationship with God looks like on their own terms.
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| Scavenging Beauty: A Memoir in Walks by Angelica GlassWhen a project to walk every street in Santa Cruz, California turns into something much larger, social worker Angelica Glass finds herself revisiting a difficult childhood and reckoning with its lasting impact. Blending nature writing, memoir, and quiet reflection, she explores how movement, curiosity, and attention can open unexpected paths toward healing things you might not have fully realized were broken. |
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| All That's Unseen: An Appalachian Memoir by Emilee HackneyAfter a devastating betrayal that called her Pentecostal faith into question, debut memoirist Emilee Hackney left her small Appalachian town in Virginia for Harvard. Amidst the culture shock, Hackney realized that leaving home was the right move for her. But it also made her see that home in a new light, and she found herself defending the land of her birth against those quick to dismiss and stereotype the South and its people. |
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A God-Shaped Nation: Five Hundred Years of Religion in America
by Brook Wilensky-Lanford
A kaleidoscopic American history of extraordinary religious transformations, told through the ordinary people who made them happenEver since conquistadores claimed Taino land in the name of their Catholic God and New England Puritans formed their strictly Protestant city on a hill, religion has been central to American life. Even as some found religious freedom--Rhode Island welcomed the Quakers, Jews, and Baptists that Massachusetts expelled as dissenters--indigenous people and Africans forced into slavery struggled to protect their religious practices. With the constitutional separation of church and state, it fell to the American people to decide: would they sharpen religion's formidable powers of division, or reimagine its creative possibilities?In A God-Shaped Nation, Brook Wilensky-Lanford follows this essential American tension from first contact through the 2024 election. This is an expansive history of extraordinary religious questions, told through the ordinary people who grappled with them. It is a story of defiance: Anne Hutchinson, preaching against Puritan clergy; Reform rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise serving soft-shell crab to his kosher guests at an 1883 banquet; and Wovoka, a Paiute man who envisioned the Ghost Dance movement, which persisted in the face of violent government repression at Wounded Knee. It is also a story of community: Millerites waiting together in vain for Jesus's return on a rainy October night in 1844; Chinese immigrants bringing Daoist and Buddhist gods to their California temples; Mormons pushing westward to build their new Zion in Utah. And in the last fifty years, it has been a story of muscular political power, as the religious right has sought to shape the present and paint the past in its own image.At a moment when religion penetrates even the most secular aspects of American life, understanding its history is more essential than ever before. It is in history that the very human work of religion happens, Wilensky-Lanford shows us, and in ordinary time that even the most carved-in-stone tenets can and do change.
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Braving the Truth: Essential Essays for Reckoning with and Reimagining Faith
by Rachel Held Evans
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * INDIE BESTSELLERNew York Times bestselling author Rachel Held Evans inspired a generation of questioning and evolving believers. This book offers a collection of her most impactful essays--in print for the first time.For a generation finding their footing in life after evangelicalism, Rachel Held Evans was one of the most trusted and beloved voices of our time. Stubborn in her hope, courageous in her questions, and devoted to inclusivity, her online writing was a sanctuary to the millions who read her words daily. Her death to a sudden illness in 2019 invoked a global outpouring of stories of her legacy and influence.Today, her words still speak, and now for the first time, fans old and new can experience her most viral and enduring essays in print--from those tackling patriarchy, white supremacy, and religious nationalism to those offering new interpretations of Scripture, freeing perspectives on doubt, and a better way forward. Braving the Truth is an anthology and keepsake collection letting readers borrow the bravery Rachel was best known for. Edited by New York Times bestselling author and Rachel's dear friend Sarah Bessey, this special volume is interspersed with reflections from: Shauna Niequist on the practice of braveryGlennon Doyle on the decision to stay and complicateJen Hatmaker on LGBTQ+ allyship and affirming theologyLisa Sharon Harper on fighting white patriarchy in the churchMatthew Paul Turner on the freedom of the slippery slope of asking questionsKaitlin B. Curtice on solidarity, kinship, and tending the spiritual fireAnd more from Candice Marie Benbow, Micha Boyett, Cindy Wang Brandt, Alise Chaffins, Shane Claiborne, Monica A. Coleman, Shannon Dingle, Peter Enns, Kathy Escobar, Kathleen Gleason, Austen Hartke, Peter Held, Carol Howard, Kristen Howerton, Zack Hunt, Emmy Kegler, Kathy Khang, Mihee Kim-Kort, Rachel Kurtz, Tanya Marlow, Sarah McCammon, Mike McHargue, Scot McKnight, Brian D. McLaren, Mason Mennenga, Osheta Moore, Amanda Held Opelt, Matthias Roberts, Winnie Varghese, Matthew Vines, and Kelsey Hanson WoodruffIf you want to understand the Church today, you need to understand Rachel Held Evans, so writes Sarah Bessey. Thoughtful yet down-to-earth, immediate and timeless, this essay collection is a gift from the past to bring into the future--a treasury to revitalize, validate, embolden, and return to again and again.
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| This Is the Main Event: Discovering the Life You Long for in the Life You Have by Joshua Luke SmithPoet Joshua Luke Smith writes about learning to stop chasing a different life and begin paying attention to the one already in front of him. Using three spiritual practices which he names as Lamentation, Consecration, and Adoration, he weaves together reflections on loss, addiction, faith, and family, exploring how sorrow and joy can deepen our experience of the sacred.
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| The Green Soul: Returning to Our Sacred Belonging in Nature by Lucinda M. VardeyWritten over two decades, this reflective work grew out of a period of illness that led the author to rediscover the natural world in a new way. Blending Christian spirituality, personal experience, and insights from mystics and saints, she invites readers into a deeper relationship with creation and the sacred rhythms of life, connecting with God in the here and now.
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Reality in Ruins: How Conspiracy Theory Became an American Evangelical Crisis
by PhD Stacy, Jared
For anyone who has ever said, It feels like we're living in different realities, an unforgettable read and definitive explainer of the strange history of evangelical conspiracy theory.Conspiracy theories are at the root of the most pressing political problems of our time, yet their influence cuts just as personal. Suspicion has fractured families, communities, churches, and our very social fabric, as one person's fact is another's fake news.In Reality in Ruins, Dr. Jared Stacy braves the untold history of conspiracism in American evangelicalism and the anxiety at the heart of this radioactive movement that affects us all. In a new age of what he calls Disreality, many are left reeling in the ruins of what was once a common world, now splintered by warring ideologies, religious and political extremism, and cults of certainty. Dr. Stacy reports from the inside as someone raised and even ordained in one of the nation's most conservative denominations. Now, as a historian and post-evangelical theologian, Dr. Stacy traces the currents of pain, panic, and power that have thrust the evangelical church into a theological crisis with consequence for everyone.For concerned citizens, Christians who are sounding the alarm on Christian Nationalism, and anyone grieving the relationships paranoia has ruptured, Reality in Ruins profiles the problem, validates your pain, prepares you for good resistance, and empowers you to become the truth-tellers a common world deserves.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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Longwood Public Library800 Middle Country RoadMiddle Island, New York 11953
(631) 924-6400
longwoodlibrary.org |
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