Religion Book reviews and recommendations

"in his book 'charistmatic chaos,' john macarthur has explained so much about what had confused and scarred me spiritually growing up. he has really done his homework, too, citing both sympathetic and critical sources. even the footnotes and index are helpful! i have skipped around the book to get my most pressing questions answered, and sometimes the Biblical truth just makes me cry because it makes so much sense--- i am so glad that i am out of the charismatic movement, and now i can more confidently say why. i highly recommend this book to anyone who has ever seen 'weird' church services or heard preachers on television say the most bizarre things. all praise be to unto our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!"

"The Companion Bible by E.W. Bullinger is the best study bible available in the world today. The factual information (historical, translational, etc) found in the many appendixes in the back of the bible is indispensible. There are some doctrinal information included, but it is no a deterent to purchasing such an indepth study bible as this. "

"Mitch Albom’s first non-fiction since Tuesdays with Morrie does not disappoint. It starts with a request from his childhood rabbi that Albom deliver his Eulogy. Needing a deeper understanding of the man behind the mission, he is brought back to the world of faith he left behind years ago. Albom also meets a convict turned pastor and soon realizes there are more similarities between Christian and Jewish faith than he thought possible. This is not a book about religion, but about the comfort of finding something to believe in. "

"If you are working with children this is a must read. The insight into the thinking of today's children is revealing."

" No one should leave church feeling manipulated, controlled, shamed, or condemned. But places of shelter and encouragement can become abusive if spiritual leaders begin to use their authority to meet their needs for importance, power, or spiritual gratification. Here you'll discover how to identify an abusive church and also how to break free from its destructive legalism. Topics covered include: How spiritual abuse develops, and why those under its grip often don't see it; The subtle ways that leaders and systems "hook" and controll believers, robbing them of their joy in Christ; Spiritual help in recovnizing healthy spiritual relationships; Effective strategies for escaping abusive situations. Insightful, practical and solidly grounded in Scripture, this book has what you need to recover a grace filled relationship with God and His Church."

"As a young journalist trying to establish his bona fides Schmidle chose to live in Pakistan for two years. He learned the native language and immersed himself in its culture. He describes the people, places, and events that he experienced in lyrical, almost poetical language. Despite the difficulty in following the unfamiliar Pakistani names of people, organizations, and cities, Schmidle takes the reader into the dynamics of life in this amazing country. Schmidle spent time visiting the hinterlands of Pakistan where factional groups are fighting each other, where tribal structure pits regions against each other and against the central government of the country, where antiAmerican sentiments dominate, and where Islamic extremism is persuasive to the people. He visited madrassas where young boys and girls are instructed and indoctrinatedin the Islamic faith; he became a confident of some we might consider terrorists; he talked with and witnessed the activities of Talabon fighters. While Schmidle makes great effort to be impartial in his reporting, he paints a picture of the Muscharef government, an ally of the United States, as a repressive regime that terrorized the people of Pakistan to hold onto power. Schmidle shows how ordinary Pakistanis view the Talibon as heroes who bring order and stability into ungoverned and lawless regions, but how their extremist religious views and cruel punishment of those who oppose them often turn the populace against them. TO LIVE OR TO PERISH will give you a different insight Pakistan and Afghanistan that will help you to make more informed judgment about American intervention in Afghanistan, how the people of the region perceive the world and particularly the West, and what we can expect from our efforts to bring democracy to those countries. It is a must-read for those who don't want to take for granted the standard media picture of American intervention in the Middle East, but rather want to make their own decisions about how we can best protect ourselves against the threat of global terrorism. "

"Excellent thought provoking essays, brave and challenging. Lewis here is more introspective and questioning, yet faithful and unswerving in the resolve for integrity. I have had to read and re-read each essay several times for the immense pleasure of rethinking through each issues. This compilation is not suited for casual reading, nor for the faint hearted. For example, Lewis addresses the subject of unanswered prayers in the first chapter with no definite answers or defense, that is why his treatment is so refreshing. "

"Great book. Classic Updike: lush prose, piercing observations of both the physical world and the human psyche, great sex, and terribly interesting examinations of various religious impulses. A booklover's book!"

"I TRY TO READ THIS BOOK ONCE EVERY YEAR. THIS BOOK GETS INTO A DEPTH THAT NO OTHER AUTHOR I HAVE READ EVER HAS. THIS BOOK GIVES YOU A DIFFERENT LOOK AT WHO GOD IS. IT ALSO TELLS US WHO WE ARE IN RELATION TO GOD. PINK WAS NOT A POPULAR WRITER IN HIS TIME, BUT HAS BECOME ONE OF THE GREATEST THEOLOGIANS EVER. I HAVE MANY OF HIS BOOKS. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK FOR EVERYONE, BUT ESPECIALLY FOR NEW BELIEVERS. IT WILL HELP THEM GET A GREATER UNDERSTANDING OF GOD."

"This book was awesome!!!! If you love Dee Henderson like i do you will not be disappointed by this book. I enjoyed the characters, and the courtship of Bruce. "

"This review is about Cardinal Avery Dulles and his 1946, 1996 book, A TESTIMONIAL TO GRACE AND REFLECTIONS ON A THEOLOGICAL JOURNEY ISBN 10: 1556129041, ISBN 13: 9781556129049. *** Ten years ago my wife and I first read the now 90 year old American Cardinal, when we led adult education discussions in our parish community of Avery Dulles's best known work, MODELS OF THE CHURCH. Years went by until, throughout 2008, I immersed myself in Father Leonard Feeney, SJ and his "Boston Heresy Case" of 1948. This research soon led me to rediscover Cardinal Dulles, who, be it noted, is the son of Eisenhower's "brinksmanship" Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles. For Avery Dulles (1918 - ), in early 1941 as a recent Harvard University graduate and convert to Roman Catholicism, co-founded the Saint Benedict Center in Cambridge, MA which later became Father Feeney's launching pad for noisily and publicly reminding (not entirely unsuccessfully -- witness the growing body today of ultra-conservative Latin Mass Catholics)the people of Boston that all Catholics had been taught for centuries as dogma that "extra ecclesiam nulla salus": i. e., "outside the church there is no salvation." *** A naval officer in World War II, Avery Dulles spent time just after World War II working briefly but intensely and co-operatively with Father Feeney and associates before Dulles went off to a Jesuit novitiate. He always admired the radical priest, who would be excommunicated (not for heresy but for disobedience) by Pope Pius XII in 1953. Avery Dulles even wrote a powerful, appreciative eulogy of Feeney on his death in 1978, for years reconciled to Rome without having to retract a word of his narrow doctrine of no salvation for Protestants, unbaptized Jews, pagans and other non-Catholics. Dulles writes of Feeney and Saint Benedict Center in his 1946 spiritual memoir, reissued and updated in 1996 as A TESTIMONIAL TO GRACE AND REFLECTIONS ON A THEOLOGICAL JOURNEY." *** For a brilliant, famous man and Roman Catholic cardinal, theologian Dulles is modest and unpretentious in both his voluminous writings and in his self-presentation in A TESTIMONIAL TO GRACE. Deeper, I believe, than his modesty are Dulles's serenity and balance. He can love and honor a radical Roman Catholic schismatic like Leonard Feeney, present his views fairly and without passion and then politely disagree. Watch this style at work in A TESTIMONIAL TO GRACE as Protestant Dulles absorbs and synthesizes the world views of his Professors at Harvard, and of his much later partners in Lutheran-Catholic ecumenical give and take. Like Aristotle, Dulles is serene. Like another of his masters, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Dulles learns from everyone: from orthodox and heterodox, from conservative and liberal. These qualities cannot be missed in the warm, almost conversational pages of a now 90 year old Prince of the Church. He is now retired, feeble, but still keeping abreast of this world and trying his best to make his master, Jesus of Nazareth, speak to today's secular society in the contemporary language that it speaks and, Dulles argues, has every right to expect to be spoken to in. -OOO-"