unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity... and Why It Matters

The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity

Philip Jenkins · 295 pages

The explosive southward expansion of Christianity in Africa, Asia, and Latin American has barely registered on Western consciousness. Nor has the globalization of Christianity--and the enormous religious, political, and social consequences it portends--been properly understood. Philip Jenkins' The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity is the first book to take the full measure

The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism

Karen Armstrong · 442 pages

"In The Battle for God, Karen Armstrong shows us how and why fundamentalist groups came into existence and what they yearn to accomplish.". "We see the West in the sixteenth century beginning to create an entirely new kind of civilization, which brought in its wake change in every aspect of life - often painful and violent, even if liberating. Armstrong argues that one of the things that changed

Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made

Kristin Kobes Du Mez · 352 pages

Under Our Skin: Getting Real about Race–And Getting Free from the Fears and Frustrations That Divide Us

Benjamin Watson · 240 pages

Infidel

Ayaan Hirsi Ali · 353 pages

"Ultimately a celebration of triumph over adversity, Hirsi Ali's story tells how a bright little girl evolved out of dutiful obedience to become an outspoken, pioneering freedom fighter. As Western governments struggle to balance democratic ideals with religious pressures, no story could be timelier or more significant.--From publisher description."--From source other than the Library of Congress

In the Land of Believers: An Outsider's Extraordinary Journey into the Heart of the Evangelical Church

Gina Welch · 333 pages

Ever since evangelical Christians rose to national prominence, mainstream America has watched them with a nervous eye, but our understanding hasn't gone beyond the caricatures. Who are evangelicals, really? To find out, Gina Welch, a young secular Jew ("born atheist") from Berkeley, joined Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church. Over the course of nearly two years, Welch immersed herself in th

Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America

Michael Eric Dyson · 228 pages

Fifty years ago, when a white woman asked Malcolm X what she could do for the cause, he told her "Nothing." Now, Michael Eric Dyson believes he was wrong and responds that if society is to make real racial progress, people must face difficult truths-- including being honest about how black grievance has been ignored, dismissed, or discounted.

god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Christopher Hitchens · 307 pages

In the tradition of Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian and Sam Harris's recent bestseller, The End of Faith, Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate case against religion. With a close and erudite reading of the major religious texts, he documents the ways in which religion is a man-made wish, a cause of dangerous sexual repression, and a distortion of our origins in the cosmos. With eloq

To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World

James Davison Hunter · 358 pages

Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement

Kathryn Joyce · 258 pages

Provides an intimate view of the patriarchy movement. They believe the "biblical" woman wears modest, feminine dress and avoids not only sex but also dating before marriage. She doesn't speak in church, or try to have authority over men. She is a submissive wife who bolsters her husband in his role as spiritual and earthly leader of the family.

Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject

Saba Mahmood · 260 pages

"Politics of Piety is a groundbreaking analysis of Islamist cultural politics through the ethnography of a thriving, grassroots women's piety movement in the mosques of Cairo, Egypt. Unlike those organized Islamist activities that seek to seize or transform the state, this is a moral reform movement whose orthodox practices are commonly viewed as inconsequential to Egypt's political landscape. Sab

Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics

Ross Douthat · 352 pages

As the youngest-ever op-ed columnist for the New York Times, Ross Douthat has emerged as one of the most provocative and influential voices of his generation. In Bad Religion he offers a masterful and hard-hitting account of how American Christianity has gone off the rails—and why it threatens to take American society with it. Writing for an era dominated by recession, gridlock, and fears of Ameri

Holy Ignorance: When Religion and Culture Part Ways

Olivier Roy · 259 pages

Olivier Roy, one of the world's most distinguished analysts of political Islam, finds in the modern disconnection between faith communities and sociocultural identities a fertile space for fundamentalism to grow. Instead of freeing the world from religion, secularization has encouraged a kind of holy ignorance to take root, an anti-intellectualism that promises immediate access to the sacred and p

The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation

Rod Dreher · 275 pages

In a radical vision for the future of Christianity, New York Times bestselling author and American Conservative columnist Rod Dreher calls on American Christians to prepare for the coming Dark Age by embracing an ancient Christian way of life. From the inside, American churches are hollowed out by the departure of young people and by an insipid pseudo-Christianity. From the outside, they are beset

Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening

Diana Butler Bass · 294 pages

"In her latest book, religion expert Diana Butler Bass offers a fresh interpretation of this transformation and identifies a new spiritual awakening taking place inside and outside the church. Based on new research and a careful reading of history, CHRISTIANITY AFTER RELIGION argues that traditional Christianity has focused on three prescriptions, in this order: - This is what to believe (theology

Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces That Keep Us Apart

Christena Cleveland · 220 pages

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion

Jonathan Haidt · 473 pages

A groundbreaking investigation into the origins of morality, which turns out to be the basis for religion and politics. The book explains the American culture wars and refutes the "New Atheists."

Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women

Geraldine Brooks

Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy

Donald B. Kraybill, Steven M. Nolt, David L. Weaver-Zercher

Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions

Phil Zuckerman · 276 pages

Over the last twenty-five years, "no religion" has become the fastest-growing religion in the United States. Around the world, hundreds of millions of people have turned away from the traditional faiths of the past and embraced a moral yet nonreligious--or secular--life, generating societies vastly less religious than at any other time in human history. Revealing the inspiring beliefs that empower

The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries

Rodney Stark · 246 pages

The idea that Christianity started as a clandestine movement among the poor is a widely accepted notion. Yet it is one of many myths that must be discarded if we are to understand just how a tiny messianic movement on the edge of the Roman Empire became the dominant faith of Western civilization. In a fast-paced, highly readable book that addresses beliefs as well as historical facts, Rodney Stark

The Age of Kali: Indian Travels & Encounters

William Dalrymple · 385 pages

In Sri Lanka, Pakistan and India itself, William Dalrymple searches for evidence of Kali Yug, the Hindu "age of darkness." Venturing to places rarely visited by foreigners, he travels deep into guerilla territory with the Tamil Tigers. Visits Benazir Bhutto and meets the drug lords of the North West Frontier. He inveils a region where the strengths and problems of both modernity and tradition rema

Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture

Daniel Radosh · 320 pages

From the Publisher: What does it mean when a band is judged by how hard they pray rather than how hard they rock? Would Jesus buy "Jesus junk" or wear "witness wear"? What do Christian skate parks, raves, and romance novels say about evangelicalism-and America? Daniel Radosh went searching for the answers and reached some surprising conclusions. Written with the perfect blend of amusement and resp

Secrets and Wives: The Hidden World of Mormon Polygamy

Sanjiv Bhattacharya · 367 pages

What do we really know about modern polygamists? We've seen the news storiesin recent years about the underage brides in prairie dresses, but that's just the FLDS, one of many groups who practice polygamy in the Mormon tradition. There's also the Order, the TLC, the AUB and thousands of independents. It's estimated that over 40,000 Mormon fundamentalists live underground in the American West. In S