Church Body

Much of the church has forgotten that we worship a disabled God whose wounds survived resurrection, says Amy Kenny. It is time for the church to start treating disabled people as full members of the body of Christ who have much more to offer than a miraculous cure narrative and to learn from their embodied experiences. Written by a disabled Christian, this book shows that the church is missing out on the prophetic witness and blessing of disability.

The evangelical church is hemorrhaging. Over 40 million Americans have dechurched in the last 25 years alone, and multiple generations have been raised to believe the most spiritual thing they can do is follow God by following their heart—right out of the church. Yet, this shift is happening right as society is hitting record levels of loneliness, stress, and anxiety. In The Reason for Church, pastor Brad Edwards connects the dots of our current church crisis and provides compelling reasons to come back.

When a young writer accepts a job at a university in the remote English countryside, it's meant to be a fresh start, away from the bustle of London and the scene of a violent assault she is desperate to forget. But a vicious debate about violence against women inflames the tensions and mounting rivalries in her creative-writing class. When a troubled student starts turning in chapters that blur the lines between fiction and reality, the professor recognizes herself as the main character in his book - and he has written her a horrific fate.

Every era has its challenges, but ours seem to be majoring in anxiety. Bombarded (via screens) by constant global conflicts, rancorous politics, and church scandals, today we endure seemingly endless external stressors. The reasons are easy to find—division in politics and the pews, caring for kids or aging parents, and the rapid impact of social media on our psyches, to name a few. While exploring these origins may hold some benefit, Sara Billups is concerned with right now: How do we live well in the presence of pervasive personal and collective anxiety?

Since a global pandemic abruptly closed places of worship, many Christians have skipped church life, even neglecting virtual services. But this was a trend even before COVID-19. Polarizing issues, including political and racial strife, convinced some people to pull away from the church and one another. Now it’s time to recommit to gathering as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Most discussions on the subject of the Roman Catholic - Eastern Orthodox schism are written by apologists, typically with the agenda to prove that one side is ‘exclusively right.’ Often, these books focus on specific topics such as ‘Peter’s primacy’ and never tackle the underlying issues, such as ecclesiology, or the meaning of words, such as “church” or “primacy.” In this comprehensive, scholarly, yet easy-to-read study, the author cuts through the fog of popular apologetics and lays bare all the facts with unprecedented objectivity. Writing from an Orthodox perspective ...

In Jezebel Unhinged Tamura Lomax traces the use of the jezebel trope in the Black church and in Black popular culture, showing how it is pivotal to reinforcing men's cultural and institutional power to discipline and define Black girlhood and womanhood. Drawing on writing by medieval thinkers and travelers, Enlightenment theories of race, the commodification of women's bodies under slavery, and the work of Tyler Perry and Bishop T. D. Jakes, Lomax shows how Black women are written into religious and cultural history as sites of sexual deviation.

The Bible has plenty to say about the human body and clothing in ancient times, but modern translations and socially conditioned assumptions have drifted significantly away from ancient cultures and the intent of the earliest texts. Do you you know what the Bible really says in the original Greek and Hebrew, or have you trusted what you hear? Perhaps it is time to make a detailed exposition of what the Bible has to say about clothing and nakedness for a believer's life. In these pages, journey with me through a comprehensive study of nearly every passage relating directly to the topic so ...

Do you want to know the secret to success according to Ecclesiastes 9:11? Be in the right place at the right time. That principle forms the foundation of "The Mystery of Time". Yet, it all starts with seeing time through the eyes of The One who created it; God. Time is more than the numbers on a clock or dates on a calendar. It’s more than the span between the beginning of Genesis and the end of Revelation. It’s more than what can be measured with any man-made tool or instrument. God has fit time into the continuum of eternity in such a way that it governs the human experience. In this,...

When news outlets reveal church scandals or we hear stories about people leaving the church, it can seem as though we are in a bit of a crisis as the Body of Christ. In Being a Sanctuary, Pricelis Perreaux-Dominguez—who has experienced abuse, trauma, and racism within the church—takes us on an honest, biblical, and reflective journey as she examines the state of the church and offers us a hopeful path forward.

Many believe Charles Colson and Ellen Vaughn¿s The Body to be the watershed book of the past decade. It impacted the Church worldwide, encouraging Christians of diverse backgrounds to see themselves as part of the universal body of Christ. It challenged many to a new sense of unity, realizing that we blunt the Gospel message every time we divide over petty issues and personal turf.

Brendan Roberts, author of five books and co-author of "Worth the Chase: Finding Love God's Way" challenges the reader to deepen their knowledge of history and deepen their understanding of their faith. Is the Catholic Church really hung up about sex? This book can give you insight into why America actually chose Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. Clinton endorsed abortion up to birth, including partial-birth abortion. Read the philosophy behind such a crazy notion. Also read why the Church is so pro-life and will stand up for the dignity of the helpless. You can discover in-depth the ...

"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." - Albert Einstein From the dawn of the universe to the advent of the metaverse, significant events have resulted in cosmic shifts that have permanently reshaped life as we know it. Like the year 0 that separated BC from AD, 2020 was a dividing line in time. It marked the end of one significant era of human existence and the beginning of another. What happened before 2020 would be distinct from what happened after. In this, his 8th book, author Donnell Duncan zeroes in on the changing landscape of the ...

Confused by the overtly philosophical, wordy, and Biblically lacking treatises on the Trinity? Then this is for you. In The Image Of God by Samuel Garcia attempts to tackle one of the core doctrines of Christianity by paying attention to the ignored singular analogy of the Trinity in the Bible text itself: the trinity of man, and how it fits nicely with the traditional and current perception of the Trinity with little contradiction, yet confident in its assertion of the importance of rightly dividing the word of God and make solid statements about the Trinity that few dare make. The ...

In 1987, when Hilary Mantel was first published in the London Review of Books, she wrote to the editor, Karl Miller, ‘I have no critical training whatsoever, so I am forced to be more brisk and breezy than scholarly.’ This collection of 20 reviews, essays and pieces of memoir from the next three decades tells the story of what happened next.

As a Black autistic pastor and disability scholar, Lamar Hardwick lives at the intersection of disability, race, and religion. Tied to this reality, he heeded the call to write How Ableism Fuels Racism to help Christian communities engage in critical conversations about race by addressing issues of ableism. Hardwick believes that ableism—the idea that certain bodies are better than others—and the disability discrimination fueled by this perspective are the root causes of racial bias and injustice in American culture and in the church.

Hollywood, the music industry, and large corporations promise happiness, pleasure, popularity, and power if we would just buy what they are selling. But their tactics are smoke and mirrors, and their promises are hollow. From photoshop to misleading advertising to the use of paid celebrities, a cocktail of lies tell us how we are supposed to look and feel about ourselves.

Two years ago, a man broke into James Blakely’s apartment and shot him in his sleep, killing him instantly. Dead and confused, James discovered he had a choice: move on into the afterlife or stay behind. Knowing his past sins would lead him straight to the fires of Hell, James chose to haunt his old apartment building instead. Now, James spends his days visiting his daughter and ex-wife, welcoming new neighbors, and conversing with those who can see the dead. It’s a simple, peaceful existence, but with each passing day, his memories of his former life—and even his own identity—begin...

Marian Apparitions in the Catholic Church have been appearing throughout the centuries to a variety of people to give them messages of hope, prayer, penance, and conversion. In this audiobook, we cover 32 of these Marian Apparitions to give you an overview of the events and messages of each one. This audiobook gives you an overview and insight into a subject otherwise only understood through lengthy study.

Understanding the 33 Doctors of the Catholic Church can require a lot of study. And even so, it is hard to get into the spirit of the teachings from the Doctors. Their lives are as varied as their accomplishments. To learn even a little bit about these unique souls who were chosen to experience and describe for the faithful the depth and interior meaning of the teachings of the Church has profound value. But it also shows the individual grandeur of these great figures in Church history.