Almost every day, one of Amy Julia’s children says something or asks something that prompts her to think more carefully: “What ‘lasting’ mean?” William wonders when he hears a song about God being an everlasting God. "If the children who died went to...

The secret to happiness is to acknowledge and transform suffering, not to run away from it. Here, Thich Nhat Hanh offers practices and inspiration transforming suffering and finding true joy.Thich Nhat Hanh acknowledges that because suffering can feel so...

This modern spiritual classic highlights a trick we play on ourselves and offers a brighter reality: liberation by letting go of the self rather than working to improve it   The Tibetan meditation master Chögyam Trungpa calls attention to the commonest...

Dating back to the eighth century C.E., the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch is a foundational text of Chan/Zen Buddhism that reveals much about the early evolution of Chinese Chan and the ideological origins of Japanese Zen and Korean Son...

Fundamentalism is seen as the major threat to world peace today, a conclusion impossible to ignore since the events in New York on September 11, 2001. But what does "fundamentalism" really mean?Since it was coined by American Protestant evangelicals in...

An eminent anthropologist examines the foundings of the first celibate Buddhist monasteries among the Sherpas of Nepal in the early twentieth century--a religious development that was a major departure from "folk" or "popular" Buddhism. Sherry Ortner is...

This volume is a selection of recollections, by friends and family, of things Luther said informally. It is therefore not as heavily theological as his writings, but rather an easily accessible and personal account of the German Reformation.

The first translation into English of Life of the Fathers, a collection of twenty lives of saints which lives present a cross-section of the Gallic Church and are a counterpart to the secular society described in Gregory’s History of the Franks.

Drawing on speeches, essays, sermons, reminiscences, and works of theological speculation from 1800 to 1950, Christopher Z. Hobson offers an in-depth study of prophetic traditions in African American religion. He shows how African American prophets...

From "Dr. Cross ..charts[s] the rivalry between clergy and laity. and shows how political and social developments between 1450 and 1660 were decisively influence by this conflict." The "Good historical writing is a rare commodity and it is a pleasure to...

In this series of notes, opinions, experiences, and reflections, Thomas Merton examines some of the most urgent questions of our age. With his characteristic forcefulness and candor, he brings the reader face-to-face with such provocative and...

A beloved Buddhist teacher and a psychologist specializing in Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT) provide practical methods for living a life filled with compassion.      A life overflowing with compassion. It sounds wonderful in theory, but how do you do...

Galileo, Copernicus, Newton, Niels Bohr, Einstein. Their insights shook our perception of who we are and where we stand in the world, and in their wake have left an uneasy coexistence: science vs. religion, faith vs. empirical inquiry. Which is the...

" A riveting picture, generously rendered, of the stubborn, argumentative miracle of Jewish survival against the odds... Schama has made an eloquent and a far-reaching case for why Jews needed a small piece of earth they could call home.” -- The New York...

Working from existing translations, Thomas Merton composed a series of his own versions of the classic sayings of Chuang Tzu, the most spiritual of Chinese philosophers. Chuang Tzu, who wrote in the fourth and third centuries B.C., is the chief authentic...

By establishing a dialogue in which the meditative practices of Buddhism and Christianity speak to the theories of modern philosophy and science, B. Alan Wallace reveals the theoretical similarities underlying these disparate disciplines and their...

Jews, Christians, and Muslims supposedly share a common religious heritage in the patriarch Abraham, and the idea that he should serve only as a source of unity among the three traditions has become widespread in both scholarly and popular circles...

From one of the most revered scholars of religion, an incisive explanation of how the word "God" functions in the world's great faiths "Hart marshals powerful historical evidence and philosophical argument to suggest that atheists--if they want to...

In this groundbreaking work, Peter Brown explores how the worship of saints and their corporeal remains became central to religious life in Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. During this period, earthly remnants served as a heavenly...

The mystics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were, writes Karen Armstrong, like "the astronauts of our own day.  They broke into a new religion, blazed a new trail to God and to the depths of the self, a trail far from the beaten pilgrimage paths...