Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Islam: A Short History (Modern Library Chronicles)

Islam: A Short History (Modern Library Chronicles)

by Karen Armstrong

No religion in the modern world is as feared and misunderstood as Islam. It haunts the popular imagination as an extreme faith that promotes terrorism, authoritarian government, female oppression, and civil war. In a vital revision of this narrow view of Islam and a distillation of years of thinking and writing about the subject, Karen Armstrong’s short history demonstrates that the world’s fastest-growing faith... (more)

The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalen and the Holy Grail

The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalen and the Holy Grail

by Margaret Starbird

Margaret Starbird’s theological beliefs were profoundly shaken when she read Holy Blood, Holy Grail , a book that dared to suggest that Jesus Christ was married to Mary Magdalen and that their descendants carried on his holy bloodline in Western Europe. Shocked by such heresy, this Roman Catholic scholar set out to refute it, but instead found new and compelling evidence for the existence of the bride of... (more)

Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?: The Search for the Secret of Qumran

Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?: The Search for the Secret of Qumran

by Norman Golb

Since their discovery in the Qumran caves beginning in 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls have been the object of intense fascination and extreme controversy. Here Professor Norman Golb intensifies the debate over the scrolls' origins, arguing that they were not the work of a small, desert-dwelling fringe sect, as other scholars have claimed, but written by different groups of Jews and the smuggled out of Jerusalem's... (more)

The Second Messiah: Templars, the Turin Shroud and the Great Secret of Freemasonry

The Second Messiah: Templars, the Turin Shroud and the Great Secret of Freemasonry

by Christopher; Lomas, Robert Knight

The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore

The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore

by Deepak Chopra

Who is Jesus Christ? In The Third Jesus , bestselling author and spiritual leader Deepak Chopra provides an answer to this question that is both a challenge to current systems of belief and a fresh perspective on what Jesus can teach us all, regardless of our religious background. There is not one Jesus, Chopra writes, but three. First, there is the historical Jesus, the man who lived more than two thousand... (more)

The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why

The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why

by Phyllis Tickle

Rooted in the observation that massive transitions in the church happen about every 500 years, Phyllis Tickle shows readers that we live in such a time right now. She compares the Great Emergence to other "Greats" in the history of Christianity, including the Great Transformation (when God walked among us), the time of Gregory the Great, the Great Schism, and the Great Reformation. Combining history, a look at... (more)

The Goddess in the Gospels: Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine

The Goddess in the Gospels: Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine

by Margaret Starbird

In an era that has reclaimed many aspects of the feminine, Margaret Starbird’s The Woman with the Alabaster Jar stands out as a courageous exploration of the scorned feminine in the Western religious tradition. But espousing the marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene created a personal crisis for this Catholic scholar. In The Goddess in the Gospels the author tells how she was guided in her ever-deepening... (more)

Islam: A Short HistoryKaren Armstrong

Islam: A Short History

by Karen Armstrong

In the public mind, Islam is a religion of extremes: it is the world’s fastest growing faith; more than three-quarters of the world’s refugees are Islamic; it has produced government by authoritarian monarchies in Saudi Arabia and ultra- republicans in Iran. Whether we are reading about civil war in Algeria or Afghanistan, the struggle for the soul of Turkey, or political turmoil in Pakistan or Malaysia, the... (more)

The open secret : sketches for a missionary theology

The open secret : sketches for a missionary theology

by Lesslie Newbigin

The Jesus sutras : rediscovering the lost scrolls of Taoist Christianity

The Jesus sutras : rediscovering the lost scrolls of Taoist Christianity

by Martin Palmer

“The Jesus Sutras tells a valuable history of the beautiful teachings of a faith built on living practices of brotherhood and peace. The Sutras show us the interbeing nature of Jesus, Buddha, Tao, peoples, cultures, transformation, salvation and unity through deep and mindful living.” --Thich Nhat Hanh, author of LIVING BUDDHA, LIVING CHRIST "In offering a tantalizing glimpse of a distant past when... (more)

The Practicing Congregation: Imagining a New Old Church

The Practicing Congregation: Imagining a New Old Church

by Diana Butler Bass

The conventional wisdom about mainline Protestantism maintains that it is a dying tradition, irrelevant to a postmodern society, unresponsive to change, and increasingly disconnected from its core faith tenets. In her provocative new book, historian and researcher Diana Butler Bass argues that there are signs that mainline Protestant churches are indeed changing, finding a new vitality intentionally grounded in... (more)

Restless Souls : The Making of American Spirituality

Restless Souls : The Making of American Spirituality

by Leigh Eric Schmidt

Yoga classes and Zen meditation, New-Age seminars and holistic workshops, The Oprah Winfrey Show and books by Deepak Chopra&#8212all are part of the ongoing religious experimentation that has surprisingly deep roots in American history. By tracing our unique spiritual heritage along its many colorful highways and eccentric byways, Restless Souls profiles a rich spirituality that is distinctively American. (more)

The Lost Sutras of Jesus: Unlocking the Ancient Wisdom of the Xian Monks

The Lost Sutras of Jesus: Unlocking the Ancient Wisdom of the Xian Monks

by Thomas Moore

The Lost Sutras of Jesus is a fascinating historical journey and spiritual quest into the heart of Jesus's teachings and the essence of Eastern religion. Around A.D. 640, Christian missionaries entered China from the west and had their message translated with a Taoist and Buddhist overlay. These sutras were eventually sealed in a cave, where they remained hidden for 900 years. The Lost Sutras of Jesus combines... (more)

The Quest for the City A.D. 740-1100 - Pursing the Next World, They Founded This One (The Christians Their First Two Thousand Years, Volume 6)

This 6th volume of the series covers 360 years - from 740 to 1100. During these years four momentous developments take place. (1) The monk and the nun become the central figures of Christianity. (2) Eastern and Western Christianity divided, to the ultimate detriment of both. (3)The thorough conversion of the Slavic peoples and the establishment of Christianity across Eastern Europe. (5) Islamic forces took over... (more)

Errand into the Wilderness

by Perry Miller

The title of this book by Perry Miller, who is world-famous as an interpreter of the American past, comes close to posing the question it has been Mr. Miller's lifelong purpose to answer: What was the underlying aim of the first colonists in coming to America? In what light did they see themselves? As men and women undertaking a mission that was its own cause and justification? Or did they consider themselves... (more)

The Inner West (New Consciousness Reader)

The Inner West (New Consciousness Reader)

by Jay Kinney

The founder of the influential Gnosis magazine collects essays by some of today's finest spiritual writers to explore the West's magical and esoteric traditions. Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, Gnosticism, The Knights Templar . . . Even before the success of The Da Vinci Code , many readers knew of these and other aspects of Western esoterica. But few understand their true meaning. In The Inner West ,... (more)

Jesus in America: Personal Savior, Cultural Hero, National Obsession

Jesus in America: Personal Savior, Cultural Hero, National Obsession

by Richard Wightman Fox

Where else but America do people ask: What Would Jesus Do? What Would Jesus Drive? What Would Jesus Eat? "This book is for believers and non-believers alike. It is not a book about whether one should believe in Jesus, but about how Americans have believed in and portrayed him." -- from the Introduction Jesus in America is a comprehensive exploration of the vital role that the figure of Jesus has played... (more)

Eros and Magic in the Renaissance (Chicago Original Paperback)

Eros and Magic in the Renaissance (Chicago Original Paperback)

by Ioan P. Culianu

It is a widespread prejudice of modern, scientific society that "magic" is merely a ludicrous amalgam of recipes and methods derived from primitive and erroneous notions about nature. Eros and Magic in the Renaissance challenges this view, providing an in-depth scholarly explanation of the workings of magic and showing that magic continues to exist in an altered form even today. Renaissance magic, according to... (more)

The Book of Mormon

Another Testament of Jesus Christ

by Joseph Smith

The Book of Mormon is a volume of scripture comparable to the Bible. It is a record of God's dealings with the ancient inhabitants of the Americas and contains, as does the Bible, the fullness of the everlasting gospel. The book was written by many ancient prophets by the spirit of prophecy and revelation. Their words, written on gold plates, were quoted and abridged by a prophet-historian named Mormon. The... (more)

History of Christianity

by Paul Johnson

First published in 1976, Paul Johnson's exceptional study of Christianity has been loved and widely hailed for its intensive research, writing, and magnitude. In a highly readable companion to books on faith and history, the scholar and author Johnson has illuminated the Christian world and its fascinating history in a way that no other has. In "the best one-volume history of Christianity ever done," according... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: history of religion

by Karen Armstrong

by Margaret Starbird

by Norman Golb

by Christopher; Lomas, Robert Knight

by Deepak Chopra

by Phyllis Tickle

by Margaret Starbird

by Karen Armstrong

by Lesslie Newbigin

by Martin Palmer

by Diana Butler Bass

by Leigh Eric Schmidt

by Thomas Moore

by Perry Miller

by Jay Kinney

by Richard Wightman Fox

by Ioan P. Culianu

Another Testament of Jesus Christ

by Joseph Smith

by Paul Johnson