A new generation of teachers envisions a liberal arts education that is good for everyone.Why would anyone study the liberal arts? It’s no secret that the liberal arts have fallen out of favor and are struggling to prove their relevance. The cost of college pushes students to majors and degrees with more obvious career outcomes.A new cohort of educators isn’t taking this lying down. They realize they need to reimagine and r...

Letters from Abu Ghraib, a collection of email messages sent by Joshua Casteel to his friends and family during his service as a US Army interrogator and Arabic linguist in the 202nd Military Intelligence Battalion, is the raw and intimate record of a solider in moral conflict with his duties. Once a cadet at the US Military Academy at West Point and raised in an Evangelical Christian home, Casteel finds himself stationed at Abu Ghraib prison in the wake of the prisoner abuse scandal. He i...

Reading Augustine presents concise, personal readings of St. Augustine of Hippo from leading philosophers and religion scholars.The looming crisis in higher education appears to be a matter of soaring costs and crushing student debt, but the problem is actually much deeper. It is a crisis of soul; a question of the very purpose of learning and the type of people that our educational system produces. Today, in the age of academic hyper-specialization and professional knowledge, the ...

Discerning the Good in the Letters and Sermons of Augustine turns to the vast collection of moral advice found in Augustine's letters and sermons, mining these neglected and highly illuminating texts for examples of Augustine's application of his own moral concepts. It focuses on letters and sermons in which Augustine offers concrete advice on how to interact with the various goods relevant to social and political life. A special set of goods reappears throughout the letters and s...

Dissolve the distractions of ego to find our authentic selves in GodIn his bestselling book Falling Upward, Richard Rohr talked about ego (or the False Self) and how it gets in the way of spiritual maturity. But if there's a False Self, is there also a True Self? What is it? How is it found? Why does it matter? And what does it have to do with the spiritual journey? This book likens True Self to a diamond, buried deep within us, formed under the intense pr...

By his writings, the surviving bulk of which exceeds that of any other ancient author, Augustine came to influence not only his contemporaries but also the West since his time. This Very Short Introduction traces the development of Augustine's thought, discussing his reaction to the thinkers before him, and themes such as freedom, creation, and the trinity.

Envisioning a future in which the Christian church plays a viable and transformative role in shaping society, Gretta Vosper argues that if the church is to survive at all, the heart of faith must undergo a radical change. Vosper, founder of the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity and a minister in Toronto, believes that what will save the church is an emphasis on just and compassionate living -- a new and wholly humanistic approach to religion. Without this reform, the church as w...

Thomas Aquinas, an Italian Catholic priest in the early thirteeth century, is considered to be one of the great Christian thinkers who had, and who still has, a profound influence on Western thought. He was a controversial figure who was exposed and engaged in conflict. This Very Short Introduction looks at Aquinas in a historical context, and explores the Church and culture into which Aquinas was born. It considers Aquinas as philosopher, and looks at the relationship between phi...

The renowned philosopher expounds on the ideas he introduced in Homo Sacer with this analysis of the theological foundations of political power.In the early centuries of the Church, in order to reconcile monotheism with God's threefold nature, the doctrine of Trinity was introduced in the guise of an economy of divine life. It was as if the Trinity amounted to nothing more than a problem of managing and governing the heavenly house and the world.In

Archbishop Angelo Roncali (later Pope John XXIII) read True and False Reform during his years as papal nuncio in France and asked, A reform of the church 'is such a thing really possible?" A decade later as pope, he opened the Second Vatican Council by describing its goals in terms that reflected Congar's description of authentic reform: reform that penetrates to the heart of doctrine as a message of salvation for the whole of humanity, that retrieves the meaning of prophecy in a ...

Since his retirement as Archbishop of Canterbury and his return to academic life (Master of Magdalene College Cambridge) Rowan Williams has demonstrated a massive new surge of intellectual energy. In this new book he turns his attention to St Augustine.St Augustine not only shaped the development of Western theology, he also made a major contribution to political theory (City of God) and through his Confessions to the understanding of human psycho...

The life and times of the most important theological work of medieval ChristendomThis concise book tells the story of the most important theological work of the Middle Ages, the vast Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas, which holds a unique place in Western religion and philosophy. Written between 1266 and 1273, the Summa was conceived by Aquinas as an instructional guide for teachers and novices and a compendium of all the approved teachings of th...