Download Free Defiant Hope Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Defiant Hope and write the review.

Based on fifteen years of experience treating survivors of family violence, James Leehan provides this excellent resource to aid all individuals trying to overcome the effects of abusive behavior--behavior that is often supported by religion and generates spiritual conflicts for survivors. He helps survivors identify their feelings and behaviors and examines Jewish and Christian religious resources that can promote healing and spiritual growth. Leehan also reviews the spiritual dimension of the pain that survivors of family violence confront daily and the special skills they developed to survive in a hostile environment.
The best writings from George W. Bush’s speechwriter Michael Gerson, a pioneer of the compassionate conservative movement, a champion of Christian engagement, and an eloquent defender of the poor and the marginalized. It is not an exaggeration to say that Michael Gerson possessed one of the most important consciences of his generation. As the chief speech writer for George W. Bush, he wrote the words that rallied and ennobled the nation after September 11th. He helped design and champion Bush’s PEPFAR program, which saved upwards of 20 million lives as HIV ravaged Africa. His famous line defending public education was to say that failure would amount to “a soft bigotry of low expectations.” He became one of the nation’s most eloquent columnists, who was never content to do political horse race punditry but devoted himself to the most essential causes of the time, pushing back on the authoritarianism of Donald Trump and pushing for the kind of compassionate conservatism that he dedicated his life to designing. Defiant Hope is his writings about the things he loved—humanity, God, his dog, and his boys. Essays feature the immensely complicated sadness when you drop your children off at college for the first time. Another is about his public battle of depression. He also includes chapters about men and women who formed this great procession of Christian Reformers—John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, William Wilberforce, and Olaudah Equiano—and the great causes to which they were devoted, from abolitionism to civil rights. What lingers is his gracious voice across all the roles that he played, as David Brooks writes in the introduction. What you hear is “a prophet lamenting iniquity, a father and a friend capable of great bursts of gratitude and appreciation, a Christian who is sometimes buried under sadness and close to despair, but who never loses sight of that distant illuminating beacon of hope.”
Cutting-edge social science research into what young adults want out of a faith community Purpose and meaning, healing and growth, community and fellowship—these values have traditionally been found in church. Though young adults are leaving the pews in droves, they are still seeking these spiritual benefits. How can churches entice them to return? Jeffrey F. Keuss thinks that’s the wrong question to ask. Instead, his multigenerational team of scholars investigated how faith communities can make themselves more hospitable to the next generation of Christians. Backed by five years of qualitative and quantitative research, the Pivot NW research team offers practical recommendations for involving young adults in the community, including: • loosening demands for church membership • involving young adults in leadership earlier • addressing the economic difficulties of millennials • understanding religious trauma Defiant Hope, Active Love encourages church leaders to let go of nostalgia for old ecclesiological norms and embrace something new, inclusive, and authentic. With thorough research and incisive analysis, this groundbreaking book contains a wealth of resources to promote the health of faith communities.
We all spend a lot of energy reaching for happiness, but we're never quite able to hang on to it. Real life happens, and our circumstances take us on an emotional rollercoaster. Oftentimes, the Bible's call to "be joyful always" seems out of reach--but it doesn't have to be. We are called to live. And, miraculously, to live with joy. Join bestselling author Stasi Eldredge as she shows us how to choose a joy that stands against the tides of life's real and often overwhelming pain. Defiant Joy reminds us that a joy that is defiant in the face of this broken world was meant to be ours. This joy isn't simply happiness on steroids, it's the unyielding belief that sorrow and loss do not have the final say. It's the stubborn determination to be present in whatever may come and interpret both goodness and grief by the light of heaven. Defiant Joy will give you the encouragement you need to: Finally experience daily joy Learn how to have a posture of holy defiance when circumstances threaten to weigh down your soul Find new perspectives on the painful circumstances you've faced In Defiant Joy, Stasi invites us with courage, candor, and tender vulnerability to a place beyond sadness or happiness, leading the way as we learn how to maintain a posture of holy defiance that neither denies nor diminishes our pain but dares to live with expectant, unwavering hope.
Kelly M. Kapic meditates on how our suffering—particularly our physical suffering—relates to the Christian faith. This is not a theodicy or a book of easy answers. It is an invitation to reshape our understanding of suffering into the image of Jesus. What we discover is that in Christ and through his church, God displays his deep love and provision for his people.
Losing means grieving. Grieving means choices. Choices mean hurt or healing. You’ve lost someone you love. Or you’re on the brink of losing your marriage. Your dreams. Your health. Or perhaps the trauma of your past pursues you into the present. Your life’s going to change. Which way it goes won’t be decided by your loss, but by the choices you make. At the crossroads of grief, one road will lead to hope and healing. The other, to more hurt. Hope When Your Heart Is Breaking is an honest look at both roads, and how your greatest loss can lead to your greatest gain. Author Ron Hutchcraft writes from the deep well of his own devastating loss and grief, and points you to the practical steps that lead to peace and wholeness. This book is a pathway to hope—a roadmap through the pain of grief and loss. Discover new strength through a new closeness to others and to God. And make the decisions that lead to comfort, growth, and life.
Religion Around Emily Dickinson begins with a seeming paradox posed by Dickinson’s posthumously published works: while her poems and letters contain many explicitly religious themes and concepts, throughout her life she resisted joining her local church and rarely attended services. Prompted by this paradox, W. Clark Gilpin proposes, first, that understanding the religious aspect of the surrounding culture enhances our appreciation of Emily Dickinson’s poetry and, second, that her poetry casts light on features of religion in nineteenth-century America that might otherwise escape our attention. Religion, especially Protestant Christianity, was “around” Emily Dickinson not only in explicitly religious practices, literature, architecture, and ideas but also as an embedded influence on normative patterns of social organization in the era, including gender roles, education, and ideals of personal intimacy and fulfillment. Through her poetry, Dickinson imaginatively reshaped this richly textured religious inheritance to create her own personal perspective on what it might mean to be religious in the nineteenth century. The artistry of her poetry and the profundity of her thought have meant that this personal perspective proved to be far more than “merely” personal. Instead, Dickinson’s creative engagement with the religion around her has stimulated and challenged successive generations of readers in the United States and around the world.
Now in its third edition, Grounding Religion explores relationships between the environment and religious beliefs and practices. Established scholars introduce students to the ways religion shapes and is shaped by human–earth relations, surveying a series of key issues and questions, with particular attention to issues of environmental degradation, social justice, ritual practices, and religious worldviews. Case studies, discussion questions, and further readings enrich students’ experience. This third edition features updated content, including revisions of every chapter and new material on religion and the environmental humanities, sexuality and queer studies, class, ability, privilege and power, environmental justice, extinction, biodiversity, and politics. An excellent text for undergraduates and graduates alike, it offers an expansive overview of the academic field of religion and ecology as it has emerged in the past fifty years and continues to develop today.
First major study of two important contemporary female dancers.
African American legal theorist Derrick Bell argued that American anti-Black racism is permanent but that we are nevertheless morally obligated to resist it. Bell—an extraordinary legal scholar, activist, and public intellectual whose academic and political work included his employment as a young attorney with the NAACP and his pivotal role in the founding of Critical Race Theory in the 1970s, work he pursued until he died in 2011—termed this thesis “racial realism.” Racism and Resistance is a collection of essays that present a multidisciplinary study of Bell's thesis. Scholars in philosophy, law, theology, and rhetoric employ various methods to present original interpretations of Bell's racial realism, including critical reflections on racial realism’s relationship to theories of adjudication in jurisprudence; its use of fiction in relation to law, literature, and politics; its under-examined relationship to theology; its application in interpersonal relationships; and its place in the overall evolution of Bell’s thought. Racism and Resistance thus presents novel interpretations of Bell’s racial realism and enhances the literature on Critical Race Theory accordingly.