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Spirituality and Religion July 2017
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| From the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, a revelatory portrait of religion in China today—its history, the spiritual traditions of its Eastern and Western faiths, and the ways in which it is influencing China’s future.
The Souls of China tells the story of one of the world’s great spiritual revivals. Following a century of violent anti-religious campaigns, China is now filled with new temples, churches, and mosques—as well as cults, sects, and politicians trying to harness religion for their own ends. Driving this explosion of faith is uncertainty—over what it means to be Chinese and how to live an ethical life in a country that discarded traditional morality a century ago and is searching for new guideposts.
Ian Johnson first visited China in 1984; in the 1990s he helped run a charity to rebuild Daoist temples, and in 2001 he won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the suppression of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. While researching this book, he lived for extended periods with underground church members, rural Daoists, and Buddhist pilgrims. Along the way, he learned esoteric meditation techniques, visited a nonagenarian Confucian sage, and befriended government propagandists as they fashioned a remarkable embrace of traditional values. He has distilled these experiences into a cycle of festivals, births, deaths, detentions, and struggle—a great awakening of faith that is shaping the soul of the world’s newest superpower. (Amazon review)
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| My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew by Abigail PogrebinThe much-dissected Pew Research Center study of 2013, “A Portrait of Jewish Americans,” revealed that most U.S. Jews locate their Jewishness in their ancestry and culture―not in religion. Abigail Pogrebin wondered if perhaps that’s because we haven’t all looked at religion closely enough.
Although she grew up following some holiday rituals, Pogrebin realized how little she knew about their foundational purpose and current relevance. She wanted to understand what had kept these holidays alive and vibrant, in some cases for thousands of years. Her curiosity led her to embark on an entire year of intensive research, observation, and writing about the milestones on the Jewish calendar.
My Jewish Year travels through this calendar’s signposts with candor, humor, and a trove of information, capturing the arc of Jewish observance through the eyes of a relatable, wandering―and wondering―Jew. The chapters are interspersed with brief reflections from prominent rabbis and Jewish thinkers.
Maybe you’re seeking an accessible, digestible roadmap for Jewish life. Maybe you’d appreciate a fresh exploration of what you’ve mastered. Whatever your motivation, you’ll be educated, entertained, and inspired by Pogrebin’s unusual journey―and by My Jewish Year. (Amazon review) |
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| In The Face of Water, Sarah Ruden brilliantly and elegantly explains and celebrates the Bible’s writings. Singling out the most famous passages, such as the Genesis creation story, the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Beatitudes, Ruden reexamines and retranslates from the Hebrew and Greek what has been obscured and misunderstood over time.
Making clear that she is not a Biblical scholar, cleric, theologian, or philosopher, Ruden—a Quaker—speaks plainly in this illuminating and inspiring book. She writes that while the Bible has always mattered profoundly, it is a book that in modern translations often lacks vitality, and she sets out here to make it less a thing of paper and glue and ink and more a live and loving text.
Ruden writes of the early evolution, literary beauty, and transcendent ideals of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament, exploring how the Jews came to establish the greatest, most enduring book on earth as their regional strategic weakness found a paradoxical moral and spiritual strength through their writings, and how the Christians inherited and adapted this remarkable literary tradition. She writes as well about the crucial purposes of translation, not only for availability of texts but also for accountability in public life and as a reflection of society’s current concerns.
She shows that it is the original texts that most clearly reveal our cherished values (both religious and secular), unlike the standard English translations of the Bible that mask even the yearning for freedom from slavery. The word “redemption” translated from Hebrew and Greek, meaning mercy for the exploited and oppressed, is more abstract than its original meaning—to buy a person back from captivity or slavery or some other distress.
The Face of Water is as much a book about poetry, music, drama, raw humor, and passion as it is about the idealism of the Bible. Ruden’s book gives us an unprecedented, nuanced understanding of what this extraordinary document was for its earliest readers and what it can still be for us today. (Amazon review) |
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| Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World by Alec RyrieFive hundred years ago a stubborn German monk challenged the Pope with a radical vision of what Christianity could be. The revolution he set in motion toppled governments, upended social norms and transformed millions of people's understanding of their relationship with God. In this dazzling history, Alec Ryrie makes the case that we owe many of the rights and freedoms we have cause to take for granted--from free speech to limited government--to our Protestant roots.Fired up by their faith, Protestants have embarked on courageous journeys into the unknown like many rebels and refugees who made their way to our shores. Protestants created America and defined its special brand of entrepreneurial diligence. Some turned to their bibles to justify bold acts of political opposition, others to spurn orthodoxies and insight on their God-given rights. Above all Protestants have fought for their beliefs, establishing a tradition of principled opposition and civil disobedience that is as alive today as it was 500 years ago. In this engrossing and magisterial work, Alec Ryrie makes the case that whether or not you are yourself a Protestant, you live in a world shaped by Protestants. (Amazon review) |
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| The Birth of the West: Rome, Germany, France, and the Creation of Europe in the Tenth... by Paul CollinsAccording to historian Paul Collins, European civilization arose from the achievements of 10th-century Christian leaders. In this "lively narrative with a comprehensible story line" (Publishers Weekly), he gives credit to organized Germanic monarchs and the Roman Catholic Church for reducing chaos and anarchy to manageable levels. Though many of the Popes and secular kings engaged in barbaric behavior, and ordinary people lived in terror, stable centralized rule coalesced and eventually took over. For history buffs, this is a page-turner not to be missed. |
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Genghis Khan and the Quest for God: How the World's Greatest Conqueror Gave Us...
by Jack Weatherford
Though Mongol Emperor Genghis Khan's conquering armies were merciless to those who resisted, Khan's techniques for uniting his conquests into the largest empire in history were based on tolerance. In addition to promoting justice and peace (after the bloodshed was over), he allowed his subjects to practice their religions without restriction. Drawing on recently discovered documents, anthropologist Jack Weatherford also finds that Khan became a student of religion in his later years, learning from the peoples he had conquered. Though Genghis Khan and the Quest for God doesn't minimize Khan's bloodthirstiness, it presents a more peaceable aspect than history usually acknowledges.
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| In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire by Tom HollandTracing the varied and complex influences of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity in the first few centuries A.D., acclaimed historian Tom Holland portrays shifts in Arab culture that led ultimately to the rise of Islam. Holland shows how the teachings recorded in the Qur'an offered God's prophecies to those willing to listen. This "smoothly composed history and fine scholarship" (Kirkus Reviews) offers a plausible explanation for the success of Islam and the rise of Arab political power. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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