SHOPPING HOME
      >  The Books Store   >  Biographies & Memoirs   >  Leaders & Notable People   >  Religious   <<<   YOU ARE HERE

Shopper's Delight

Religious in The Books Store


 
Search Results:

Displaying records 11 through 20 of 4000
First      Previous
Next      Last

 

  Being Catholic Now: Prominent Americans Talk About Change in the Church and the Quest for Meaning

 
Being Catholic Now: Prominent Americans Talk About Change in the Church and the Quest for Meaning under Religious in The Books Store
Price: $24.95
Sale: $14.88
 
Manufacturer: Crown
Number of Items: 1
 
 
Binding: Hardcover
Author: Kerry Kennedy
Publisher: Crown
Dewey Decimal Number: 282.092273
Publication Date: 2008-09-09
Reading Level: 288
 
Description: For Kerry Kennedy, who grew up in a devoutly Catholic household coping with great loss, her family’s faith was a constant source of strength and solace. As an adult, she came to question some of the attitudes and teachings of the Catholic Church while remaining an impassioned believer in its role as a defender of the poor and oppressed.

“Generations ago,” says Kennedy, “the search for spirituality came predefined and prepackaged. [The Church] not only gave us all the answers, it even gave us the questions to ask.” Now many of the old certainties are being reexamined. In an attempt to convey this sea change, Kennedy asked thirty-seven American Catholics to speak candidly about their own faith—whether lost, recovered, or deepened—and about their feelings regarding the way the Church hierarchy is moving forward.

The voices included here range from respectful to reproachful and from appreciative to angry. Speaking their minds are businesspeople, actors and entertainers, educators, journalists, politicians, union leaders, nuns, priests—even a cardinal. Some love the Church; some feel intensely that the Church wronged them. All have an illuminating insight or perspective.

Kerry Kennedy herself speaks of the joy of growing up as one of Robert and Ethel Kennedy’s eleven children, of the tragedies that eventually befell her family, and of how religion was deeply woven through good times and bad. Journalist Andrew Sullivan talks about reconciling his devout Catholicism with the Church’s condemnation of his identity as a gay man. TV newswoman Cokie Roberts recalls the nuns who taught her and “took girls seriously when nobody else did.” Comedian Bill Maher declares, “I hate religion. It’s the worst thing in the world”—and goes on to defend his bold assertion. Writer Anna Quindlen depicts a common parental challenge: passing along traditions and values to a younger generation sometimes deaf to spiritual messages.

Through these and many other voices that speak not only to Catholics but to all of us, Being Catholic Now redefines an ancient institution in the most contemporary of terms.

From Being Catholic Now

“When my mom asked if I wanted to be a nun, I said I’d rather be a priest. . . . The nuns were always wonderful, but the power was with the priest.” —Nancy Pelosi

“There are aspects of studying the saints, with the candles, incense, and Latin Masses and some of the pageantry of the Church that, as an American historian, make me feel part of a larger wave of history. That it’s not a newfangled religion, which some people get great solace from. I feel that I’m connected to places.”
—Douglas Brinkley

“Faith isn’t like picking courses off a menu. It’s a journey, and it’s a path. If your path and journey have been within one structure your entire life, then simply leaving isn’t an option.” —Andrew Sullivan

“Why stay Catholic? Because the hierarchy is not the Church. . . .We [the people of God] are the Church. They can’t take that away from us.” —Cokie Roberts

“I was told very early on by the nuns that I had an ‘overabundance of original sin.’ I was a quiet kid, but I was curious. I asked the wrong questions.” —Susan Sarandon

“I don’t believe you can be authentically Catholic without being committed to the social doctrine of the Church. When I was in grammar school, we had these little boxes to help the poor. That was good, but that is half of it. The other half is to find out why there are so many poor people and how we can do something to help them.” —Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick

“I am reconciled to the oblivion that is coming. I see no proof of anything else, if it is a matter of faith. I admire people who have faith in God. It must be a great comfort to them, but I had to get out from under the fear and the guilt.” —Frank McCourt

“I went to church and the door was locked. I was knocking and ringing the bell. I waited and waited and nobody came. [The priest thought] there was an emergency, because of all the banging and ringing. He looked down at me and said, ‘What is it?’ I said, ‘I’m sorry to bother you, Father, but I’ve been away from the Church many, many years and I’d like to come back. I’d like to go to confession.’ He looked at me and something behind his eyes said, ‘You came to the right place.’ He knew that it was an important moment for me; he got it instantly.” —Martin Sheen

 

  Love & Death: My Journey through the Valley of the Shadow (Complete Works of Forrest Church)

 
Love & Death: My Journey through the Valley of the Shadow (Complete Works of Forrest Church) under Religious in The Books Store
Price: $22.00
Sale: $11.72
 
Manufacturer: Beacon Press
Number of Items: 1
 
 
Binding: Hardcover
Author: Forrest Church
Publisher: Beacon Press
Edition: 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 289.1092
Publication Date: 2008-09-17
Reading Level: 145
 
Description: On a February day in 2008, Forrest Church sent a letter to the members of his congregation, informing them that he had terminal cancer; his life would now be measured in months, not years. In that remarkable letter, he wrote: "In more than one respect, I feel very lucky." He went on to promise that he would sum up his thoughts on the topics that had been so pervasive in his work—love and death—in a final book.

Church has been justly celebrated as a writer of American history, but his works of spiritual guidance have been especially valued for their insight and inspiration. As a minister, Church defined religion as "our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die." The goal of life, he tells us "is to live in such a way that our lives will prove worth dying for." This last book in his impressive oeuvre is imbued with ideas and exemplars for achieving that goal. The stories he offers—drawn from his own experiences and from the lives of his friends, family, and parishioners—are both engrossing and enlightening. Forrest Church's final work may be his most lasting gift to his readers.

"Forrest Church, a deeply spiritual but always practical visionary, is a minister to us all with this moving and instructive book on the lessons of life and death. A lovely, important book."
—Tom Brokaw

"Truly a gift, one that will echo in my own preaching and teaching, and in my own life as well. Like Moses gazing at the Promised Land he would not enter, Forrest Church blesses us with his eloquence, his faith, and, mostly, his love."
—Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People

"Love & Death is transformative. I was not prepared for the power of this splendid, soaring book. It totally captured me."
—Sylvia Ann Hewlett, author of Creating a Life

"In the midst of an extremity for which there is no euphemism—the prospect of his own imminent death—Forrest Church has written a book that defies the usual adjectives. It is poignant, moving, candid, and eloquent; but it is also so much more. Love & Death, a meditation on the end of life, is really a book about life—a book that shows us how to love ourselves and others, how to know God, how to live. I read it with inexpressible gratitude."
—James Atlas, author of My Life in the Middle Ages

"Forrest Church is one of our great prophetic intellectuals and compassionate voices. His poignant and wise words on the two ultimate realities of our journey—love and death—reveal his grand courage and vision."
—Cornel West, author of Race Matters

"This beautiful book by a matchless preacher, poet, and author is Forrest Church in his finest hour."
—Senator George McGovern

 

  Escape

 
Escape under Religious in The Books Store
Price: $24.95
Sale: $9.90
 
Manufacturer: Broadway
Number of Items: 1
 
 
Binding: Hardcover
Author: Carolyn Jessop::Laura Palmer
Publisher: Broadway
Dewey Decimal Number: 289.3092
Publication Date: 2007-10-16
Reading Level: 432
 
Description:

The dramatic first-person account of life inside an ultra-fundamentalist American religious sect, and one woman’s courageous flight to freedom with her eight children.

When she was eighteen years old, Carolyn Jessop was coerced into an arranged marriage with a total stranger: a man thirty-two years her senior. Merril Jessop already had three wives. But arranged plural marriages were an integral part of Carolyn’s heritage: She was born into and raised in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), the radical offshoot of the Mormon Church that had settled in small communities along the Arizona-Utah border. Over the next fifteen years, Carolyn had eight children and withstood her husband’s psychological abuse and the watchful eyes of his other wives who were locked in a constant battle for supremacy.

Carolyn’s every move was dictated by her husband’s whims. He decided where she lived and how her children would be treated. He controlled the money she earned as a school teacher. He chose when they had sex; Carolyn could only refuse—at her peril. For in the FLDS, a wife’s compliance with her husband determined how much status both she and her children held in the family. Carolyn was miserable for years and wanted out, but she knew that if she tried to leave and got caught, her children would be taken away from her. No woman in the country had ever escaped from the FLDS and managed to get her children out, too. But in 2003, Carolyn chose freedom over fear and fled her home with her eight children. She had $20 to her name.

Escape exposes a world tantamount to a prison camp, created by religious fanatics who, in the name of God, deprive their followers the right to make choices, force women to be totally subservient to men, and brainwash children in church-run schools. Against this background, Carolyn Jessop’s flight takes on an extraordinary, inspiring power. Not only did she manage a daring escape from a brutal environment, she became the first woman ever granted full custody of her children in a contested suit involving the FLDS. And in 2006, her reports to the Utah attorney general on church abuses formed a crucial part of the case that led to the arrest of their notorious leader, Warren Jeffs.


 

  Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

 
Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith under Religious in The Books Store
Price: $14.95
Sale: $3.49
 
Manufacturer: Anchor
Number of Items: 1
 
 
Binding: Paperback
Author: Anne Lamott
Publisher: Anchor
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
Publication Date: 2000-02-15
Reading Level: 288
 
Description: Anne Lamott admits that she's "ever so slightly more anxious than the average hypochondriac." When faced with a small, irregular mole and a family history of skin cancer, however, she remembers her faith in God and enjoys some peace--despite behaving "a little more like Nathan Lane in The Birdcage than I would have hoped." Author Lamott reads these wonderfully detailed postcards from her meandering journey to faith. With sharp and bittersweet humor, she recounts a past full of bad relationships with men, with food, with drugs, with alcohol, and worst of all, with herself. She battles her demons thanks to the love of her friends and family and her "lurch of faith" to embrace religion, that "puzzling thing inside me that had begun to tug on my sleeve from time to time, trying to get my attention." Inspiring but not dogmatic, Traveling Mercies is a treasure. (Running time: 4 hours, 3 cassettes) --C.B. Delaney

 

  Mistaken Identity: Two Families, One Survivor, Unwavering Hope

 
Mistaken Identity: Two Families, One Survivor, Unwavering Hope under Religious in The Books Store
Price: $21.99
Sale: $8.24
 
Manufacturer: Howard Books
Number of Items: 1
 
 
Binding: Hardcover
Author: Don & Susie Van Ryn::Newell, Colleen & Whitney Cerak
Publisher: Howard Books
Dewey Decimal Number: 617.4810440922
Publication Date: 2008-03-25
Reading Level: 288
 
Description: Meet Laura Van Ryn and Whitney Cerak: one buried under the wrong name, one in a coma and being cared for by the wrong family.

This shocking case of mistaken identity stunned the country and made national news. Would it destroy a family? Shatter their faith? Push two families into bitterness, resentment, and guilt?

Read this unprecedented story of two traumatized families who describe their ordeal and explore the bond sustaining and uniting them as they deal with their bizarre reversal of life lost and life found.

And join Whitney Cerak, the sole surviving student, as she comes to terms with her new identity, forever altered, yet on the brink of new beginnings.

Mistaken Identity weaves a complex tale of honesty, vulnerability, loss, hope, faith, and love in the face of one of the strangest twists of circumstances imaginable.


 

  Character Makes a Difference: Where I'm From, Where I've Been, and What I Believe

 
Character Makes a Difference: Where I'm From, Where I've Been, and What I Believe under Religious in The Books Store
Price: $11.99
Sale: $9.09
 
Manufacturer: B&H Books
Number of Items: 1
 
 
Binding: Paperback
Author: Mike Huckabee
Publisher: B&H Books
Dewey Decimal Number: 320.973
Publication Date: 2007-06-01
Reading Level: 227
 
Description:
How powerful is integrity? Just ask minister-turned-statesman, Mike Huckabee.  As lieutenant governor of Arkansas in 1996, he was publicly cast between the ultimate rock and hard place when his boss, governor Jim Guy Tucker, refused to resign despite his felony convictions in the Whitewater scandal.  Holding fast to the tenets of honor and faith, and his concern over what was best for the state’s people, Huckabee led the impeachment charge against his superior before a televised audience. That same day, Tucker resigned, and Huckabee would serve as governor of Arkansas until 2007, winning many national honors along the way. Character Makes a Difference is Mike Huckabee’s biographical account of how he handled that potentially major constitutional crisis and why he believes character is the key issue in everyone’s life, “in the work you do, the candidates you vote for, the people who look to you for leadership.”

 

  St. Augustine Confessions (Oxford World's Classics)

 
St. Augustine Confessions (Oxford World's Classics) under Religious in The Books Store
Price: $7.95
Sale: $3.94
 
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number of Items: 1
 
 
Binding: Paperback
Author: Saint Augustine
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Dewey Decimal Number: 230
Publication Date: 1998-06-25
Reading Level: 352
 
Description: In his own day the dominant personality of the Western Church, Augustine of Hippo today stands as perhaps the greatest thinker of Christian antiquity, and his Confessions is one of the great works of Western literature. In this intensely personal narrative, Augustine relates his rare ascent from a humble Algerian farm to the edge of the corridors of power at the imperial court in Milan, his struggle against the domination of his sexual nature, his renunciation of secular ambition and marriage, and the recovery of the faith his mother Monica had taught him during his childhood. Now, Henry Chadwick, an eminent scholar of early Christianity, has given us the first new English translation in thirty years of this classic spiritual journey. Chadwick renders the details of Augustine's conversion in clear, modern English. We witness the future saint's fascination with astrology and with the Manichees, and then follow him through scepticism and disillusion with pagan myths until he finally reaches Christian faith. There are brilliant philosophical musings about Platonism and the nature of God, and touching portraits of Augustine's beloved mother, of St. Ambrose of Milan, and of other early Christians like Victorinus, who gave up a distinguished career as a rhetorician to adopt the orthodox faith. Augustine's concerns are often strikingly contemporary, yet his work contains many references and allusions that are easily understood only with background information about the ancient social and intellectual setting. To make The Confessions accessible to contemporary readers, Chadwick provides the most complete and informative notes of any recent translation, and includes an introduction to establish the context. The religious and philosophical value of The Confessions is unquestionable--now modern readers will have easier access to St. Augustine's deeply personal meditations. Chadwick's lucid translation and helpful introduction clear the way for a new experience of this classic.

 

  Gandhi An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth

 
Gandhi An Autobiography:  The Story of My Experiments With Truth under Religious in The Books Store
Price: $15.00
Sale: $6.79
 
Manufacturer: Beacon Press
Number of Items: 1
 
 
Binding: Paperback
Author: Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi::Mahadev H. Desai
Publisher: Beacon Press
Dewey Decimal Number: 954.035092
Publication Date: 1993-11-01
Reading Level: 528
 
Description: Gandhi's nonviolent struggles in South Africa and India had already brought him to such a level of notoriety, adulation, and controversy that when asked to write an autobiography midway through his career, he took it as an opportunity to explain himself. Although accepting of his status as a great innovator in the struggle against racism, violence, and, just then, colonialism, Gandhi feared that enthusiasm for his ideas tended to exceed a deeper understanding. He says that he was after truth rooted in devotion to God and attributed the turning points, successes, and challenges in his life to the will of God. His attempts to get closer to this divine power led him to seek purity through simple living, dietary practices (he called himself a fruitarian), celibacy, and ahimsa, a life without violence. It is in this sense that he calls his book The Story of My Experiments with Truth, offering it also as a reference for those who would follow in his footsteps. A reader expecting a complete accounting of his actions, however, will be sorely disappointed.

Although Gandhi presents his episodes chronologically, he happily leaves wide gaps, such as the entire satyagraha struggle in South Africa, for which he refers the reader to another of his books. And writing for his contemporaries, he takes it for granted that the reader is familiar with the major events of his life and of the political milieu of early 20th-century India. For the objective story, try Yogesh Chadha's Gandhi: A Life. For the inner world of a man held as a criminal by the British, a hero by Muslims, and a holy man by Hindus, look no further than these experiments. --Brian Bruya


 

  Autobiography of a Yogi: with bonus CD

 
Autobiography of a Yogi: with bonus CD under Religious in The Books Store
Price: $12.50
Sale: $7.89
 
Manufacturer: Self-Realization Fellowship
Number of Items: 1
 
 
Binding: Paperback
Author: Paramahansa Yogananda
Publisher: Self-Realization Fellowship
Dewey Decimal Number: 294.55
Publication Date: 2006-06-01
Reading Level: 520
 
Description: Autobiography of a Yogi is at once a beautifully written account of an exceptional life and a profound introduction to the ancient science of Yoga and its time-honored tradition of meditation. This acclaimed autobiography presents a fascinating portrait of one of the great spiritual figures of our time. With engaging candor, eloquence, and wit, Paramahansa Yogananda tells the inspiring chronicle of his life: the experiences of his remarkable childhood, encounter with many saints and sages during his youthful search throughout India for an illumined teacher, ten years of training in the hermitage of a revered yoga master, and the thirty years that he lived and taught in America. Also recorded here are his meetings with Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Luther Burbank, the Catholic stigmatist Therese Neumann, and other celebrated spiritual personalities of East and West. The author clearly explains the subtle but definite laws behind both the ordinary events of everyday life and the extraordinary events commonly termed miracles. His absorbing life story becomes the background for a penetrating and unforgettable look at the ultimate mysteries of human existence. Selected as "One of the 100 Best Spiritual Books of the Twentieth Century," Autobiography of a Yogi has been translated into 20 languages, and is regarded worldwide as a classic of religious literature. Several million copies have been sold, and it continues to appear on best-seller lists after more than sixty consecutive years in print. Profoundly inspiring, it is at the same time vastly entertaining, warmly humorous and filled with extraordinary personages. Self-Realization Fellowship's editions, and none others, include extensive material added by the author after the first edition was published, including a final chapter on the closing years of his life.

A bonus audio CD is included, featuring the first four chapters of the full audio-book (also available from Self-Realization Fellowship), as narrated by Academy Award-winning actor Sir Ben Kingsley.


 

  The Seven Storey Mountain

 
The Seven Storey Mountain under Religious in The Books Store
Price: $16.00
Sale: $6.98
 
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
Number of Items: 1
 
 
Binding: Paperback
Author: Thomas Merton
Publisher: Harvest Books
Edition: Anv
Dewey Decimal Number: 271.12502
Publication Date: 1999-10-04
Reading Level: 496
 
Description: In 1941, a brilliant, good-looking young man decided to give up a promising literary career in New York to enter a monastery in Kentucky, from where he proceeded to become one of the most influential writers of this century. Talk about losing your life in order to find it. Thomas Merton's first book, The Seven Storey Mountain, describes his early doubts, his conversion to a Catholic faith of extreme certainty, and his decision to take life vows as a Trappist. Although his conversionary piety sometimes falls into sticky-sweet abstractions, Merton's autobiographical reflections are mostly wise, humble, and concrete. The best reason to read The Seven Storey Mountain, however, may be the one Merton provided in his introduction to its Japanese translation: "I seek to speak to you, in some way, as your own self. Who can tell what this may mean? I myself do not know, but if you listen, things will be said that are perhaps not written in this book. And this will be due not to me but to the One who lives and speaks in both." --Michael Joseph Gross

First      Previous
Next      Last
Displaying records 11 through 20 of 4000