In a time when half of all marriages fail, sound advice for marital success is needed more than ever. Let's Talk Marriage is an exceptional premarital guidebook for couples wanting marriages that will last a lifetime. Speaking to readers as a friendly, experienced guide who has prepared more than a thousand couples for marriage, Pastor F. Dean Lueking extends a steadying hand, offering affirmation where couples are already confident and practical advice to help them recognize more difficult things that need attention. Central to Lueking's counsel is the crucial role of talk in healthy,...

From the sex-free paradise of the Shakers to the worker's paradise of Marx, utopian ideas seem to have two things in common--they all are wonderfully plausible at the start and they all end up as disasters. In Visions of Utopia, three leading cultural critics--Edward Rothstein, Martin Marty, and Herbert Muschamp--look at the history of utopian thinking, exploring why they fail and why they are still worth pursuing.
Edward Rothstein, New York Times cultural critic, contends that every utopia is really a dystopia--a disaster in the making--one that overlooks the nature of...

The future of America, in many ways, depends upon an understanding of the proper role of religion in our shared life as a republic. Discussions and debates on the topic have too often generated noise, platitudes, stereotypes, name-calling, and the distortion of vitally important issues, instead of constructive conversation among citizens--until now.

Of all the voices commenting about American religion today, none is more credible or better known than that of historian Martin E. Marty. A respected scholar, author, editor, and media commentator, he has-perhaps better than anyone else in the...

Description: This is the first book to discern and spell out the fascinating coalescence of churches in America today. Drawing on mainline Protestantism, the newer evangelicalism, and Roman Catholicism, this new community, or ""community of communities,"" may be called a ""public church"" because it is particularly sensitive to the public order and to the interplay of its members as citizens and church people. In a world of increasing interreligious tensions and in an America growing weary of pluralism and freedom, the public church both fills a void and counters trends at home and abroad....

Description: The reality of the secular has come to obsess modern religious thinkers, notes Martin E. Marty. This volume analyzes from the first time the complex story of THE MODERN SCHISM, an episode in the cultural and spiritual history of the West which has had fateful consequences for contemporary society. Dr. Marty argues that during the previous century, there occurred a cluster of events more devastating to--and potentially more hopeful for--Christianity than anything that happened during such similar periods as the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. He traces three different types of...

About the Contributor(s): Jill Pelaez Baumgaertner is Professor of English and Dean of Humanities and Theological Studies at Wheaton College. She is the author of four previous collections of poems, a poetry textbook, and Flannery O'Connor: A Proper Scaring. She edited the collection Imago Dei: Poems from Christianity and Literature and serves as poetry editor of The Christian Century."

Hizmet Means Service examines Hizmet, a Turkey-based but global movement dedicated to human service. Inspired by Fethullah Gulen, a Sufi Muslim mystic, scholar, and preacher, it is an international endeavor focused on education, business, interfaith dialogue, science, and efforts to promote tolerance and understanding. One of Hizmet s main tenets is that religious believers can hold profound beliefs and commit spiritually inspired acts of service without discriminating against or alienating people of other faiths. Even as a ruling party in Turkey has set out to undercut the movement,...

Hizmet Means Service examines Hizmet, a Turkey-based but global movement dedicated to human service. Inspired by Fethullah Gulen, a Sufi Muslim mystic, scholar, and preacher, it is an international endeavor focused on education, business, interfaith dialogue, science, and efforts to promote tolerance and understanding. One of Hizmet s main tenets is that religious believers can hold profound beliefs and commit spiritually inspired acts of service without discriminating against or alienating people of other faiths. Even as a ruling party in Turkey has set out to undercut the movement,...

How can faith speak directly to people's real lives? How can conversation around Scripture make ""all the difference"" in the arenas of one's daily world? People who have heard the Bible many times--or for the first time--want to know in the terms and images of their life situation. ""When my world seems to be shaking all around me, why doesn't it help to hear 'You are forgiven'?"" And further, ""What can I say to someone who feels totally alienated from God?"" Seventy Images of Grace in the Epistles will help people make connections and empower them for their ministries in daily life. The...

Known locally as the birthplace of American religious freedom, Flushing, Queens, in New York City is now so diverse and densely populated that it has become a microcosm of world religions. City of Gods explores the history of Flushing from the colonial period to the aftermath of September 11, 2001, spanning the origins of Vlissingen and early struggles between Quakers, Dutch authorities, Anglicans, African Americans, Catholics, and Jews to the consolidation of New York City in 1898, two World's...