Religion & Spirituality:

The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions by Karen Armstrong

In The Great Transformation, one of the world's leading writers on religion, Karen Armstrong, chronicles of one of the most important intellectual revolutions in world history and its relevance to our own time. In the ninth century BCE, the peoples of India, China, the area now known as Israel and Greece created the religious and philosophical traditions that have continued to nourish humanity to the present day: Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Historians call this the Axial Age because of its central importance to humanity's spiritual development.

Armstrong traces the development of the Axial Age chronologically, examining the contributions of such figures as the Buddha, Socrates, Confucius, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the mystics of the Upanishads, Mencius, and Euripides. All of the Axial Age faiths began in principled and visceral recoil from the unprecedented violence of their time. Despite some differences of emphasis, there was a remarkable consensus in their call for an abandonment of selfishness and a spirituality of compassion. The traditions of the Axial Age were not about dogma. All insisted on the primacy of compassion even in the midst of suffering. In each Axial Age case, a disciplined revulsion from violence and hatred proved to be the major catalyst of spiritual change.

The Great Transformation is an extraordinary investigation of a critical moment in the evolution of religious thought. An intensely revealing and enlightening spiritual and philosophical history that could very possibly be one of the greatest intellectual histories ever written. Both liberals and conservatives in all the world's religious and political camps could benefit from the historical insights gathered in this eminently significant volume.

http://www.amazon.com/Great-Transformation-Beginning-Religious-Traditions/dp/0375413170/ref=ed_oe_h/104-2634422-0243111

Challenging Nature: The Clash of Science and Spirituality at the New Frontiers of Life by Lee M. Silver

Biotechnology is the oldest and most widespread of inventions, providing sustenance for humankind since the beginning of civilization. Until recently, however, its tools were crude and its implementation was opaque. Today new understanding in the life sciences brings both precision and transparency to the process. Modern inventions could alleviate human suffering, feed the world, and, at the same time, stem the tide of earth's ecological degradation. Yet ironically, biotechnology becomes evermore contentious. On the left, New Age secularists rail against genetically modified crops. On the right, religious Americans want embryo stem-cell research to be a felony. While they share seemingly little beyond mutual contempt, Lee M. Silver argues that both political camps are driven - consciously or subconsciously - by a fundamental fear of violating a higher spiritual authority, imagined either as the creator God of the Bible, who rules from above, or a vague Mother Nature goddess here on earth.

In Challenging Nature, Silver offers a provocative look at the collision of science, religion, pseudoscience, and politics. Silver is professor of molecular biology and public affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, and holds a Ph.D. in biophysics from Harvard University. A hands-on scientist who has actually manipulated genes, Silver leaves the laboratory, traveling the globe in what he calls “one scientist's journey from a cloistered community, in which life is assumed to be combinations of complex molecules and information flow between them, to a world of humanity dominated by soul and spirits, and to the intense chaos of Mother Nature at large.”

The result is a fascinating book that could provide a wake-up call for the West, where the economic ramifications of pseudoscience may be enormous: a future in which Asia becomes dominant in biotechnological advances. This book will surely fuel precisely the kind of debate Silver recognizes as essential in a democracy sorting out perplexing scientific possibilities.

http://www.amazon.com/Challenging-Nature-Science-Spirituality-Frontiers/dp/0060582677/ref=sr_1_1/103-5265685-5295040?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196893720&sr=1-1

The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? by Rick Warren

In his bestselling book, megachurch pastor and author Rick Warren enables readers to see the big picture of what life is all about and begin to live the life God created them to live. The Purpose-Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? is a groundbreaking manifesto on the meaning of life and Christian living in the 21st century...a lifestyle based on eternal purposes, not cultural values. Using biblical stories and letting the Bible speak for itself, Warren clearly explains God’s five purposes for each of us. The most basic questions everyone faces in life are “Why am I here?” and “What is my purpose?” Self-help books suggest that people should look within, at their own desires and dreams, but Warren says the starting place must be with God and his eternal purposes for each life. Real meaning and significance comes from understanding and fulfilling God’s purposes for putting us on earth.

Published three years ago, the book was already a hit among America's evangelical Christian movement, selling around 21 million copies worldwide. The book broke into the US mainstream in March 2005 following the dramatic 13-hour ordeal faced by Ashley Smith, the young woman held in her apartment by the suspect in the Atlanta courthouse shootings. Smith was seized by Brian Nichols, who earlier in the day had murdered four people in a shooting spree, sought shelter in Smith's apartment and took her hostage. As the hours rolled on, Smith read Nichols portions of the book and convinced him that his life had a purpose, given to him by God. Smith told reporters later that The Purpose-Driven Life was instrumental in keeping Nichols calm and helped her get through the ordeal unharmed.

Warren didn't turn out to be just any ambitious minister. Today he heads Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., one of the largest congregations in the country with weekend attendance of about 16,000. Warren, also happens to be one of the best-selling American authors of all time because of The Purpose-Driven Life. The book has sold 20 million copies since its initial publication in October 2002.

http://www.amazon.com/Purpose-Driven-Life-What-Earth/dp/0310276993/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-5197854-3009503?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196893746&sr=1-1

More Money Than God: Living a Rich Life Without Losing Your Soul by Steven Z. Leder

More Money Than God explores how money affects our families, friends, work, loves, ethics, and feelings of self­-worth. Where does money lust come from? How do you teach your children the value of money and giving? What do you do when money is tearing apart your marriage or relationship? How do you deal with losing money through death, divorce, or job loss?

More Money Than God will show you how to balance your life as carefully as your bank account. Readers will learn why money and spirituality are not mutually exclusive and, as many unscrupulous company heads are discovering, why you must conduct your business affairs as if God were the ultimate CEO. With the guidance of this book, readers will learn:

· How to keep money from being a focal point

· How to understand the difference between wants and needs

· What kind of moral code to live by while seeking the comfort that money brings

· How to teach children well, not wealth

· How much is too much

Author Steven Leder uses his 15 years of experience as a religious leader and spiritual counselor to tackle the ques­tions with which all of us wrestle on a daily basis.

http://www.amazon.com/More-Money-Than-God-Without/dp/1566251958/ref=sr_1_1/102-1804988-8889759?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196893778&sr=1-1

God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible by Adam Nicolson

A net of complex currents flowed across Jacobean England. This was the England of Shakespeare, Jonson, and Bacon, of the Gunpowder Plot, the worst outbreak of the plague England had ever seen, murderous, toxic slums: and, above all, of sometimes overwhelming religious passion. Jacobean England was both more godly, and less godly, than it had ever been, and the entire culture was drawn taut between the polarities. This was also the world that created the King James Bible. It is no coincidence that the translation was made at the moment Englishness and the English lan­guage had come into its first passionate maturity. The age, with all its conflicts, explains the book.

The sponsor and guide of the whole Bible project was the King himself, the brilliant, ugly, and profoundly, peace-lov­ing James - the Sixth of Scotland and First of England. Trained from birth to manage the rivalries of political factions at home, James saw in England the chance for a sort of ironic Eden over which the new translation of the Bible was to preside. It was to be a Bible for everyone, and as God's lieutenant on earth, he would use it to unify his kingdom. The dream of Jacobean peace, guaranteed by an elision of royal power and divine glory, lies behind a Bible of extraordinary grace and everlasting literary power.

About fifty scholars from Cambridge, Oxford and London did the work, drawing on many previous versions, and cre­ated a text which, for all its failings, has never been equaled. That is the central question of this book: How did this group of near-anonymous divines, muddled, drunk, self-serving, ambitious, ruthless, obsequious, pedantic and flawed as they were, manage to bring off this astonishing translation? How did such ordinary men make such extraor­dinary prose?

In God's Secretaries, Adam Nicolson gives a fascinating and dramatic account of the accession and ambition of the first Stuart king: of the scholars who labored for seven years to create his Bible, of the influences that shaped their work and of the beliefs that colored their world, immersing us in an age whose greatest monument is not a painting or a building, but a book.

http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Secretaries-Making-James-Bible/dp/0060185163/ref=sr_oe_1_2/103-8689030-7911856?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196893805&sr=1-1

Living a Life That Matters: Resolving the Conflict Between Conscience and Success by Harold S. Kushner

Rabbi Kushner celebrated author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People outlines a common human struggle between the need to feel successful and the need to think of oneself as a good person. Indeed, he relates, the biblical Jacob wrestled with the impulse to succeed through cleverness and fraud, and "to become someone exemplary." Kushner's wide-ranging book focuses on the basic question of a meaningful life.

Citing examples from both contemporary life and the Bible, he observes that revenge and retribution cannot heal victims, whereas the new trend toward restorative justice which works "toward the... restoration of the victim" and holds "the offender accountable" might do so. Kushner sees Isaac Bashevis Singer's character Gimpel the Fool as achieving the utmost integrity because he is "the same person all the time." Love and friendship, Kushner writes, not only signify bonds between people, but help bring God into a selfish world. To avoid feeling insignificant, he urges readers to help someone needy and to think not of themselves but of the next generation. He concludes with words that are more comforting than challenging: simply "by being good people" doing honest work, helping a neighbor, delighting a child "we have an impact on the world."

http://www.amazon.com/Living-Life-Matters-Harold-Kushner/dp/0385720947/ref=ed_oe_p/103-6034372-4813468

Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit by Huston Smith

Why Religion Matters will open a new dialogue about the appropriate place of religion in human experience and society. The passionate and balanced perspective advanced here will help restore a respectful understanding of the undeniable primacy of religion, and give a fresh appreciation of the curative effects of correcting its marginal cultural status.

Huston Smith offers his passionate, vital message about the suffocation of the human spirit in a world dominated by materialism, consumerism, educational elitism, and a government and legal system without morality. Despite the widespread opinion that these are halcyon days for religion, Smith shows how current popular spiritual trends merely mask a deeper disease. In the tradition of Stephen Carter's The Culture of Disbelief, this compelling social critique probes the three major historical periods -traditional, modem and postmodern - that have brought us to our current spiritual crisis.

Illustrated with stories from Huston Smith's per­sonal experience and encounters with many of the leading scientific and religious thinkers of our time, Why Religion Matters is a highly original and thought-provoking read that will generate debate for years to come.

http://www.amazon.com/Why-Religion-Matters-Spirit-Disbelief/dp/0060671025/ref=ed_oe_p/002-5418242-7938454

The Four Witnesses: The Rebel, the Rabbi, the Chronicler, and the Mystic by Robin Griffin-Jones

Robin Griffin-Jones brings the story of Jesus to life for the modern reader as he revives the original power and intent of the Gospel of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John as individual witnesses. He presents a lively discussion of how and why each of the four Gospels was written considering the substance and style of the testimony itself as well as the unique context of each story and personality of each author, and examines the distinct light shed by each on Jesus’ life, work, and death. Readers, then, can discover which perspective most clearly speaks to them and their own needs, hopes, and fears to decide how to respond to Jesus’ challenge. Most importantly, readers can encounter in all four Gospels what one alone could not provide: a remarkably full and compelling presentation of Jesus and his powerful message.

The Four Witnesses offers a judicious, skilled and closely integrated analysis of Christian gospels. The literary coloration of each gospel is dealt with in the light of the community and culture out of which it rose. The scholarship is impeccable, the style light of heart and hand. And the entire work is suffused in faith.

http://www.amazon.com/Four-Witnesses-Rebel-Chronicler-Mystic/dp/0062516485/ref=ed_oe_p/102-4301597-0679330