Shirley describes her family, and their early struggles, the trials and tribulations she went through during the Civil Rights movement, her early singing career, and her callilng to become a pastor and concert performer.
A history of unparalleled scope that charts the global transformation of Christianity during an age of profound political and cultural changeChristianity in the Twentieth Century charts the transformation of one of the world's great religions during an age marked by world wars, genocide, nationalism, decolonization, and powerful ideological currents, many of them hostile to Christianity.
Two decades after radiocarbon dating declared the Turin Shroud a mediaeval fake, brand-new historical discoveries strongly suggest that this famous cloth, with its extraordinary photographic imprint, is genuinely Christ's shroud after all.
A revelatory account of a spiritual leader who dared to assert the value of rabbinic doubt in the face of messianic certaintyIn 1665, Sabbetai Zevi, a self-proclaimed Messiah with a mass following throughout the Ottoman Empire and Europe, announced that the redemption of the world was at hand.
A compelling look at the Fatimid caliphate's robust culture of documentationThe lost archive of the Fatimid caliphate (909-1171) survived in an unexpected place: the storage room, or geniza, of a synagogue in Cairo, recycled as scrap paper and deposited there by medieval Jews.
The life and many afterlives of one of the most enduring mystical testaments ever writtenThe Life of Saint Teresa of Avila is among the most remarkable accounts ever written of the human encounter with the divine.
A gripping biography by the author of Brave New WorldIn 1634 Urbain Grandier, a handsome and dissolute priest of the parish of Loudun was tried, tortured and burnt at the stake.
Although very little is known for certain about Pontius Pilate, the man who crucified Christ, this has not stopped writers in every age from imagining his life.
No matter where you are in your own spiritual work, Where Two Worlds Touch can show you how to harness the power of an experience we all share and often fear: change.
A new historical framework integrating Islam into European and Asian historyIslam emerged amid flourishing Christian and Jewish cultures, yet students of Antiquity and the Middle Ages mostly ignore it.
The Harlot by the Side of the Road is the first book to shed light on strange biblical passages which have largely been ignored by ministers, priests and rabbies because they semed too awkward to examine.
In Made for Goodness, Archbishop Desmond Tutu explains that, though we sometimes act out of depravity and despair, we do know in our heart of hearts that we are not as we were meant to be, and were created to be so much more.
The life and times of this iconic and enduring biblical bookThe Book of Job raises stark questions about the nature and meaning of innocent suffering and the relationship of the human to the divine, yet it is also one of the Bible's most obscure and paradoxical books, one that defies interpretation even today.
The life and times of an enduring work of Jewish spiritualityThe Babylonian Talmud, a postbiblical Jewish text that is part scripture and part commentary, is an unlikely bestseller.
Si alguna vez confundiste el arca del pacto con el arca de Noé, o Jericó con Jeroboam, el clásico de Max Anders, 30 días para entender la Biblia, es para ti.
A sweeping history of Judaism over more than three millenniaJudaism is one of the oldest religions in the world, and it has preserved its distinctive identity despite the extraordinarily diverse forms and beliefs it has embodied over the course of more than three millennia.
A groundbreaking study of one of the greatest encyclopedias of the medieval Islamic world-al-Nuwayri's The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of EruditionShihab al-Din al-Nuwayri was a fourteenth-century Egyptian polymath and the author of one of the greatest encyclopedias of the medieval Islamic world-a thirty-one-volume work entitled The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition.
Much of what we know about life in the medieval Islamic Middle East comes from texts written to impart religious ideals or to chronicle the movements of great men.
The untold story of how the Arabic Qur'an became the English KoranFor millions of Muslims, the Qur'an is sacred only in Arabic, the original Arabic in which it was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century; to many Arab and non-Arab believers alike, the book literally defies translation.
The definitive account of the life and thought of the medieval Arab genius who wrote the MuqaddimaIbn Khaldun (13321406) is generally regarded as the greatest intellectual ever to have appeared in the Arab world--a genius who ranks as one of the world's great minds.
A unique history of the Hebrew language from biblical times to the modern Jewish stateThis book explores the extraordinary hold that Hebrew has had on Jews and Christians, who have invested it with a symbolic power far beyond that of any other language in history.
A compelling history of atheism in American public lifeA much-maligned minority throughout American history, atheists have been cast as a threat to the nation's moral fabric, barred from holding public office, and branded as irreligious misfits in a nation chosen by God.
A comprehensive and accessible guide to the Hebrew BibleThis book brings together some of the world's most exciting scholars from across a variety of disciplines to provide a concise and accessible guide to the Hebrew Bible.
An essential biography of the most important book of the Protestant ReformationJohn Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion is a defining book of the Reformation and a pillar of Protestant theology.
A "e;powerful text"e; (Tavis Smiley) about how religion drove the fight for social justice in modern AmericaAmerican Prophets sheds critical new light on the lives and thought of seven major prophetic figures in twentieth-century America whose social activism was motivated by a deeply felt compassion for those suffering injustice.
What Jewish tradition can teach us about human dignity in a scientific ageThis book explores one of the great questions of our time: How can we preserve our sense of what it means to be a person while at the same time accepting what science tells us to be true-namely, that human nature is continuous with the rest of nature?
From the first centuries of Islam to well into the Middle Ages, Jews and Christians produced hundreds of manuscripts containing portions of the Bible in Arabic.
A sweeping, authoritative, and entertaining history of the Christian cult of the saints from its origin to the ReformationFrom its earliest centuries, one of the most notable features of Christianity has been the veneration of the saints-the holy dead.
A comprehensive and accessible account of the life and thought of Judaism's most celebrated philosopherMaimonides was the greatest Jewish philosopher and legal scholar of the medieval period, a towering figure who has had a profound and lasting influence on Jewish law, philosophy, and religious consciousness.
A groundbreaking account of how religion made society possibleHow did human societies scale up from tight-knit groups of hunter-gatherers to the large, anonymous, cooperative societies of today-even though anonymity is the enemy of cooperation?
A new historical framework integrating Islam into European and Asian historyIslam emerged amid flourishing Christian and Jewish cultures, yet students of Antiquity and the Middle Ages mostly ignore it.
How The Book of Common Prayer became one of the most influential works in the English languageWhile many of us are familiar with such famous words as, "e;Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here.
The life and times of this iconic and enduring biblical bookThe Book of Job raises stark questions about the nature and meaning of innocent suffering and the relationship of the human to the divine, yet it is also one of the Bible's most obscure and paradoxical books, one that defies interpretation even today.
How the Jewish people went from farmers to merchantsIn 70 CE, the Jews were an agrarian and illiterate people living mostly in the Land of Israel and Mesopotamia.
