PBS's Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, which Bob Abernethy conceived and anchors, has been described as "the best spot on the television landscape to take in the broad view of the spiritual dimension of American life . . ." by the Christian Science Monitor. "Finally," wrote the San Francisco Chronicle, "something intelligent on TV about religion." Now, together with his coauthor William Bole, Abernethy has turned his attention to making a book that asks all the big questions—and elicits the m...

Karen Armstrong explains how to practise the religion of compassion that her last books have preached.In November 2009 Armstrong and TED launched The Charter of Compassion, which states that "We call upon all men and women to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion...to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings — even those regarded as enemies." To date, it's been signed by over 48,000 people on the Web, including such figures as The Dal...

Diana Butler Bass, one of contemporary Christianity’s leading trend-spotters, exposes how the failings of the church today are giving rise to a new “spiritual but not religious” movement. Using evidence from the latest national polls and from her own cutting-edge research, Bass, the visionary author of A People’s History of Christianity, continues the conversation began in books like Brian D. McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity and Harvey Cox’s The Future of Faith, examining the connectio...

A Concise, Easy-to-Understand Overview of the World's ReligionsWhat religions are represented in your neighborhood, your workplace, and your children's school? Things seem to be changing every day, and it can be hard to keep up. You may know a little about some of these religions. Others are new to you. You'd like to learn about them and how they differ from your beliefs, but who has time to do all the research?In Understanding World Religions in 15 Min...

“This book could well be the most highly readable, accurate, and up-to-date introduction to the world’s major religions.” - Harvey Cox, Hollis Research Professor of Divinity, Harvard University, and author of The Future of FaithIn God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World, New York Times bestselling author of Religious Literacy and religion scholar Stephen Prothero argues that persistent attempts in modern theo...

When four religious leaders walk across the road, it's not the beginning of a joke. It's the start of one of the most important conversations in today's world.Can you be a committed Christian without having to condemn or convert people of other faiths? Is it possible to affirm other religious traditions without watering down your own?In his most important book yet, widely acclaimed author and speaker Brian McLaren proposes a new faith alternative, one built...

“The discourse of our common life inclines towards despair. In my field of journalism, where we presume to write the first draft of history, we summon our deepest critical capacities for investigating what is inadequate, corrupt, catastrophic, and failing. The ‘news’ is defined as the extraordinary events of the day, but it is most often translated as the extraordinarily terrible events of the day. And in an immersive 24/7 news cycle, we internalize the deluge of bad news as the no...

Christianity gets plenty of media attention—but often for all the wrong reasons. If you’ve ever felt disillusioned by the loudest, most rigid voices in modern Christianity, Kissing Fish: Christianity for People Who Don’t Like Christianity offers a refreshing alternative.Roger Wolsey presents an accessible and engaging introduction to progressive Christianity—a growing movement that reclaims the radical love, inclusivity, and transformative message at the heart of the Gospe...

A provocative and positive response to Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and other New Atheists, Good Without God makes a bold claim for what nonbelievers do share and believe. Author Greg Epstein, the Humanist chaplain at Harvard, offers a world view for nonbelievers that dispenses with the hostility and intolerance of religion prevalent in national bestsellers like God is Not Great and The God Delusion. Epstein's Good Without God provi...

This compendium of obscure facts about the world's religions highlights the political, cultural, and philosophical aspects of the history of religion.If you're waiting for the world's "Holy Men" to tell you the truth about their religions, do you suppose they'll mention that:The Tao Te Ching was only created because Lao Tzu was thrown in jail by a disciple who didn't want to let him leave town without writing down his teachings?"Passover" cel...

In our fast-paced secular world, God and theology are second-class citizens. Money, politics, sports, and science seem better suited to the hard realities of our world. As the church steeple has been eclipsed by the skyscraper as the centerpiece of the urban landscape, so has the divine realm been set aside in favor of more immediate human experience. One sad consequence of this shift is the loss of spiritual and theological bearings, most clearly evident in our inability to understand or ...

In this follow-up to her marvelous book, Mother God, Sylvia gives us many insights into our often-misunderstood Father God and the viewpoints about Him.From His history as put forth by humankind in the early days of organized religion to how we view Him today, Sylvia reveals His true attributes in a logical and truthful manner to give us a better understanding of our Father in heaven.Using her uncanny psychic skills and her ability to communicate w...