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Spirituality and Religion May 2025 |
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| Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious by Ross DouthatFor searchers caught between doubt and belief and for believers struggling to reconcile faith with contemporary assumptions about science and progress, Believe by New York Times columnist Ross Douthat shows how religious faith makes better sense of reality than skepticism or disbelief. |
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| People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations by Jinger Duggar Vuolo Growing up, Jinger Duggar Vuolo followed the expectations of others, never taking the time to explore her own identity. She found herself growing increasingly anxious, indecisive, and fearful, often hiding from the possibility of meaningful relationships. It wasn't until she asked herself the question, 'Who am I?' that she realized she was a chronic people pleaser. As she began the journey to break free from the snare of people pleasing, Jinger Duggar Vuolo found her true identity and purpose in life through a relationship with Jesus and living in community with others. The fears and lies that create feelings of self-doubt can tempt you to "put on a show" to gain approval, instead of cultivating open and honest relationships without the pressure to measure up to others. |
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Ordinary Mysticism: Your Life As Sacred Ground by Mirabai StarrWelcome to the temple of your regular life. So begins beloved spiritual guide Mirabai Starr's stunning exploration of finding the extraordinary in the everyday. In Ordinary Mysticism, she helps readers discover their own inner mystic and let go of the limiting belief that spiritual life exists only in traditional places of worship. Mysticism, she explains, is a direct experience of the sacred--no church or clergy required. Our everyday life can be an encounter with the sacred if we pay attention.
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Aflame: Learning from Silence by Pico IyerPico Iyer has made more than 100 retreats over the past three decades to a small Benedictine hermitage, high above the sea in Big Sur, California. He's not a Christian--or a member of any religious group--but his life has been transformed by these periods of time spent in silence. That silence reminds him of what is essential and awakens a joy that nothing can efface. It's not just freedom from distraction and noise and rush: it's a reminder of some deeper truths he misplaced along the way. In Aflame, Iyer connects with inner stillness and joy in his many seasons at the monastery, even as his life is going through constant change: a house burns down, a parent dies, a daughter is diagnosed with cancer.
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Opus by Gareth GoreRecounting how members of Opus Dei—a secretive, ultra-conservative Catholic sect—pushed its radical agenda within the Church and around the globe, using billions of dollars siphoned from one of the world's largest banks.
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The Deepest Place : Suffering and the Formation of Hope by M.D. Thompson, CurtIn the face of personal and global suffering, is it possible to live with hope rather than despair? Join psychiatrist, speaker, and award-winning author Curt Thompson as he shows us how God transforms our grief into a lasting peace that surpasses all understanding. Suffering is a defining reality of life. Yet so many of us are so focused on avoiding discomfort that we've never learned how to actually suffer. But what if we could move from anxiety to durable hope? In The Deepest Place, Thompson invites us to explore how the Apostle Paul's experience of love, secure attachment, and the deeply felt sense of God's abiding presence carried him through the challenges he faced--and how it can help us not just survive, but flourish in the presence of suffering.
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How We Learn to be Brave : Decisive Moments in Life and Faith by Mariann Edgar BuddeIn recent years, Bishop Mariann Budde has become known for offering the right words at the right time, creating moments of healing amid turmoil. With How We Learn to Be Brave, she teaches readers to respond with clarity and grace even in the toughest times. Being brave is not a singular occurrence; it's a journey that we can choose to undertake every day. The decisive moments in life are those pivot points when we're called upon to push past our fears and act with strength. Bishop Budde seamlessly weaves together personal experiences with stories from scripture, history, and pop culture to underscore both the universality of these moments and the particular call each one of us must heed when they arrive.
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| Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus by Elaine PagelsOver the past two thousand years, countless personalities have been projected onto the enigma we know as Jesus: a first-century rabbi, capable of miraculous healing, or a magician faking cures; a Prophet, or a deluded visionary; a heretical Jew, or God in human form. In this groundbreaking work of accessible scholarship, Princeton University professor and bestselling author Elaine Pagels explores a wide range of sources-including the Bible, the earliest reports of Jesus's life, and the secret "gnostic gospels," discovered in the 20th century-to break down these contradictions and paint a richer and more complex portrait of Jesus in his own time than ever before. |
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Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church by Eliza GriswoldAmericans have been leaving their churches. Some drift away. Some stay home. And some have been searching for-and finding-more authentic ways to find and follow Jesus. This is the story of one such “radical outpost of Jesus followers” dedicated to service, the Sermon on the Mount, and working toward justice for all in this life, not just salvation for some in the next. Part of a little-known yet influential movement at the edge of American evangelicalism, Philadelphia’s Circle of Hope grew for forty years, planted four congregations, and then found itself in crisis. The story that follows is an American allegory full of questions with urgent relevance for so many of us, not just the faithful: How do we commit to one another and our better selves in a fracturing world? Where does power live? Can it be shared? How do we make "the least of these" welcome? Building on years of deep reporting, the Pulitzer Prize winner Eliza Griswold has crafted an intimate, immersive, tenderhearted portrait of a community, as well as a riveting chronicle of its transformation, bearing witness to the ways a deeply committed membership and their team of devoted pastors are striving toward change that might help their church survive.
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The punk-rock Queen of the Jews: a memoir by RossiThis is Rossi's wild, queer coming-of-age story. Rossi was taught only to aspire to marry a nice Jewish boy and to be a good kosher Jewish girl. At sixteen she flowers into a rebellious punk-rock rule-breaker who runs away to seek adventure. Her freedom is cut short when her parents kidnap her and dump her with a Chasidic rabbi-a "cult buster" known for "reforming" wayward Jewish girls-in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Rossi spends the next couple of years in a repressive, misogynistic culture straight out of the nineteenth century, forced to trade in her pink hair and Sex Pistols T-shirt for maxi skirts and long-sleeved blouses and endure not only bone-crunching boredom but also outright abuse and violence.
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Begetting : What Does It Mean to Create a Child? by Mara Van Der Lugt"Do you want to have children?" is a question we routinely ask each other. But what does it mean to create a child? Is this decision always justified? Does anyone really have the moral right to create another person? In Begetting, Mara van der Lugt attempts to fill in the moral background of procreation. Drawing on both philosophy and popular culture, van der Lugt does not provide a definitive answer on the morality of having a child; instead, she helps us find the right questions to ask.
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God's Long Summer : Stories of Faith and Civil Rights by Charles MarshIn the summer of 1964, the turmoil of the civil rights movement reached its peak in Mississippi, with activists across the political spectrum claiming that God was on their side in the struggle over racial justice. This was the summer when violence against blacks increased at an alarming rate and when the murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi resulted in national media attention. Charles Marsh takes us back to this place and time, when the lives of activists on all sides of the civil rights issue converged and their images of God clashed. He weaves their voices into a gripping narrative: a Ku Klux Klansman, for example, borrows fiery language from the Bible to link attacks on blacks to his "priestly calling"; a middle-aged woman describes how the Gospel inspired her to rally other African Americans to fight peacefully for their dignity; a SNCC worker tells of harrowing encounters with angry white mobs and his pilgrimage toward a new racial spirituality called Black Power. Through these emotionally charged stories, Marsh invites us to consider the civil rights movement anew, in terms of religion as a powerful yet protean force driving social action.
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| Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln's Union by Richard CarwardineFor readers interested in the entanglement of faith and politics, this exploration of the Civil War reframes the conflict through the lens of religious nationalism. Drawing on Lincoln’s own spiritual conception of the war, it highlights how competing religious visions shaped the nation -- and still echo in church–state debates today. |
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| Godstruck: Seven Women's Unexpected Journeys to Religious Conversion by Kelsey OsgoodThis intimate, searching portrait of modern religious conversion focuses on women who find faith in unexpected places. With curiosity and care, the author explores how belief intersects with identity, tradition, and fulfillment -- offering insight for anyone intrigued by the tension between contemporary life and ancient faith. |
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| The Jewish Way to a Good Life: Find Happiness, Build Community, and Embrace... by Rabbi Shira StutmanFor readers curious about applying spiritual tradition to modern life, this accessible guide explores Jewish values as tools for self-understanding and connection. With warmth and clarity, Rabbi Shira Stutman blends ancient teachings with practical insight into relationships, generosity, and the everyday ethics of living well. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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