Publisher: Riverhead Books
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 11/13/2012
ISBN-13: 9781594631290
ISBN-10: 1594631298

Books that use hilarious -- even irreverent -- anecdotes to explore the definitions and nature of prayer are unusual -- but so is the spiritual life of author Anne Lamott. In Help, Thanks, Wow she explains that it doesn't matter how you address the One you pray to, be it "God" or "Howard" (as in "Howard be thy name"). Grouping three kinds of prayer under the headings "Help," "Thanks," and "Wow," Lamott immerses readers in a life of prayer that is anything but stereotypical. For beginners in prayer, this book is an engaging introduction. For everyone, it's an irresistible odyssey through real-life examples of when and what to pray. Anyone interested in the subject -- and all fans of Lamott -- will say, "Thanks!"

Publisher: Schocken Books
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 09/11/2012
ISBN-13: 9780805243017
ISBN-10: 0805243011

Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, applies his wisdom and insight to the knotty problem of reconciling science and religion. Sacks shows how science and religion are naturally complementary, rather than necessarily opposed. Science finds out how things work, while religion searches for what things mean. In The Great Partnership, Sacks avoids simplistic answers while calling for secular and religious thinkers to search together for ways to improve the world. If you want to see what one scientist says about the question, read Christian and geneticist Francis Collins' The Language of God.

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Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 11/13/2012
ISBN-13: 9781439123317
ISBN-10: 1439123314

Professor James Tabor, a biblical scholar at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, asserts in Paul and Jesus that the key to interpreting the New Testament is understanding the apostle Paul and his relationship to another early leader, James the brother of Jesus. Paul's followers, who eventually dominated Christian doctrine, were more interested in taking Christianity to the gentiles, while James' community wanted to preserve the Jewish identity of Jesus' followers. In this "enjoyable read" (Booklist), Tabor explains that, since Paul's faction prevailed, the New Testament and the history of Christianity must be read in light of Paul's theology. For another engaging book about Paul's influence on Christian teachings, read Marcus Borg's Evolution of the Word.

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Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 10/02/2012
ISBN-13: 9780312604219
ISBN-10: 0312604211

During World War II, the German occupation of Italy made it extremely difficult to defend Jewish Italians, so any work to rescue Jews from Hitler's "final solution" had to be carried out in secret. Numerous critics have claimed that the Vatican deliberately maintained silence on the Jewish question to protect the church. In The Pope's Jews, author Gordon Thomas proposes instead that Pope Pius XII supported a secret plan to protect Jews in Italy. Drawing on convincing documentary sources and oral interviews, Thomas argues that the Vatican saved over 700,000 Jews. Though his conclusions will remain controversial, other books support his point of view, for example, Ralph McInerny's The Defamation of Pius XII.

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Publisher: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 09/20/2012
ISBN-13: 9780674049673
ISBN-10: 0674049675

Brigham Young, who was at first skeptical of the gospel proclaimed by Prophet Joseph Smith, eventually embraced Smith's teachings from the Book of Mormon wholeheartedly. After Smith's shocking death at the hands of a mob in Carthage, Illinois, Young led the Mormon community westward to settle in a new territory, now Utah. In Brigham Young, John Turner, a professor of religious studies at George Mason University, draws on his access to the Latter-Day Saints' archives in this accessible account of Young's life and balanced portrait of his religious leadership. Library Journal says, "there aren't enough superlatives for this book."

Anne Lamott finds God's grace in unexpected circumstances; here are some spiritual memoirs whose authors also have encountered God in unusual ways.

Publisher: Little Brown & Company
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 07/02/2008
ISBN-13: 9780316066310
ISBN-10: 0316066311

After her husband's fatal car accident, novelist Kate Braestrup decided to pursue his unfinished goal: become a Unitarian minister. In Here If You Need Me, Braestrup explains how she received this unexpected call to ordained ministry and describes how she became the first female chaplain in the Maine Game Warden Service. Her funny, touching, sometimes self-mocking anecdotes about working with the mostly male search-and-rescue service -- and with the families of missing people and crime victims -- show how "hope and grief are two sides of the same coin" (Library Journal).

Publisher: HarperSanFrancisco
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 11/01/2000
ISBN-13: 9780062516398
ISBN-10: 0062516396

For many people, grief may lead to a loss of faith. For Presbyterian minister and writer Frederick Buechner, such challenges lead to stronger beliefs, as he relates in The Eyes of the Heart. His father's suicide when Buechner was a boy, his grandmother's death, and other significant losses prompt him to ask profound questions that strengthen his religion. He also explains where he finds inexpressible joy -- often through the many books he reads and collects. Buechner's engaging, touching, and sometimes funny memoir will inspire all those who doubt and still believe.

Publisher: Harcourt Brace
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 11/01/1995
ISBN-13: 9780151001859
ISBN-10: 0151001855

C.S. Lewis, best known for his Christian children's books, the Narnia Chronicles, was a professor at Oxford and Cambridge. As a young man Lewis was an atheist, having decided while at prep school that religion was a bad idea and God did not exist. In Surprised by Joy, Lewis explains how, over the course of many years, he came to realize that God did exist and that the experience he had called "Joy" since he was a young child was pointing him towards God. Recounted with dry wit, laugh-out-loud humor, and ironic self-mocking, Lewis' memoir presents a conversion story that -- though written in a more formal style -- resembles Anne Lamott's spiritual memoir, Traveling Mercies.

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 04/06/2001
ISBN-13: 9780618127245
ISBN-10: 0618127240

After poet Kathleen Norris moved to her mother's homeplace in North Dakota, she began to realize how bleak both the land and the people's lives were. In brief, lyrical, often humorous passages, Dakota describes Norris' internal spiritual desert, which mirrored the severe High Plains around her. Looking for ways to nourish her Protestant Christian faith, she found a Benedictine monastery, where the spiritual practice is rooted in the ancient monastic traditions of Middle Eastern deserts. Their liturgical practices and communal life helped her to enliven her own faith and -- despite her doubts -- find God's grace in the middle of the harsh land.

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Publisher: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 09/16/2002
ISBN-13: 9781565123090
ISBN-10: 1565123093

Born to a Southern Baptist mother and a Reform Jewish father (neither of whom was particularly religious), Lauren Winner grew up as a member of a liberal synagogue, and as a young woman decided to undergo formal conversion to Judaism. Despite this, and to her own surprise, Winner found herself increasingly drawn to Jesus and Christianity. With the help of an Anglican priest, she arrived at a better understanding of herself and her faith, ultimately seeking baptism while in graduate school. Winner recounts her spiritual journey in Girl Meets God, a thoughtful, humorous memoir that Kirkus Reviews calls "intriguing, absorbing, puzzling, surprisingly sexy, and very smart."

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