The digital revolution has ushered in a series of sexual revolutions, all contributing to a perfect storm for modern relationships. Online dating, social media, internet pornography, and the phenomenon of the smartphone generation have created an avalanche of change with far-reaching consequences for sexuality today. The church has struggled to address this new moral ecology because it has focused on clarity of belief rather than quality of formation. The real challenge for spiritual formation lies in addressing the underlying moral intuitions we carry subconsciously, which are shaped by the convictions of our age. In this book, a fresh new voice offers a persuasive Christian vision of sex and relationships, calling young adults to faithful discipleship in a hypersexualized world. Drawing from his pastoral experience with young people and from cutting-edge research across multiple disciplines, Jonathan Grant helps Christian leaders understand the cultural forces that make the church's teaching on sex and relationships ineffective in the lives of today's young adults. He also sets forth pastoral strategies for addressing the underlying fault lines in modern sexuality.

This modern re-examination of the Bible's references to sex strips away illegitimate religious tradition, to reveal that God views sexual pleasure as a blessing to humanity.

USA TODAY BESTSELLER Truth of the Divine is the latest alternate-history first-contact novel in the Noumena series from the instant New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times bestselling author Lindsay Ellis. The human race is at a crossroads; we know that we are not alone, but details about the alien presence on Earth are still being withheld from the public. As the political climate grows more unstable, the world is forced to consider the ramifications of granting human rights to nonhuman persons. How do you define “person” in the first place? Cora Sabino not only serves as the full-time communication intermediary between the alien entity Ampersand and his government chaperones but also shares a mysterious bond with him that is both painful and intimate in ways neither of them could have anticipated. Despite this, Ampersand is still keen on keeping secrets, even from Cora, which backfires on them both when investigative journalist Kaveh Mazandarani, a close colleague of Cora’s unscrupulous estranged father, witnesses far more of Ampersand’s machinations than anyone was meant to see. Since Cora has no choice but to trust Kaveh, the two must work together to prove to a fearful world that intelligent, conscious beings should be considered persons, no matter how horrifying, powerful, or malicious they may seem. Making this case is hard enough when the public doesn’t know what it’s dealing with—and it will only become harder when a mysterious flash illuminates the sky, marking the arrival of an agent of chaos that will light an already-unstable world on fire. With a voice completely her own, Lindsay Ellis deepens her realistic exploration of the reality of a planet faced with the presence of extraterrestrial intelligence, probing the essential questions of humanity and decency, and the boundaries of the human mind. While asking the question of what constitutes a “person,” Ellis also examines what makes a monster.

Divine Sex shows the reader how to heighten sexual awareness, increase intensity, and bring a new dimension to sex and sexuality. In words and images, it reveals the lovemaking rituals, positions, and closely held Tantric secrets that will enhance sexual awareness and performance. Beautifully illustrated with color photographs, diagrams, and erotic artwork, Divine Sex shows how sexuality, once awoken and nurtured, can bring unlimited physical and emotional pleasure.

In this highly original study of Italian baroque master Guido Reni (1575-1642), Richard Spear paints a compelling portrait of the artist - his complexities, his formative experiences, his cultural surroundings, and his unique sensibilities. Spear views Reni's career from a wide variety of perspectives and sets his life and works in social, economic, historical, artistic, religious, and psychological contexts. The author focuses first on Reni's peculiar character: a man at once deeply religious, rabidly misogynist, reportedly virginal, neurotically fearful of witches, and addicted to gambling. The author considers the enduring charisma of Reni's Crucifixions, weeping Marys, and repentant saints in the light of the Catholic doctrinal meaning of grace in Reni's time, the Church's attitude toward Mary and women, and the gendered implications of visual grace. Chapters on Reni's pricing policies, selling strategies, use of assistants, and attitude toward what constituted an "original", expose the motivating importance of money for Reni, and the concerns, even among seventeenth-century collectors, about how to distinguish original paintings from studio replicas or copies. The book investigates the ways renaissance and baroque attitudes toward art-making affected Reni and closes with a fresh view of Reni's unfinished canvases and last style, including the Divine Love, the beautiful and unusual painting that remained in Reni's studio at the time of his death.

Is your love-life heaven or hell? Where is God in the act of love? Divine love is not an elusive dream. With this program of tantric teaching, you can practice freedom from sexual unhappiness and obtain mutual joy in sexual union. Barry Long's western tantra is a step-by-step revelation to woman of what she knows love to be -- but so rarely and fleetingly embodies. It is a reeducation of male sexuality to make man more worthy of woman's love. Dealing frankly with common sexual problems, the author offers a practical, down-to-earth guide to the transcendent mystery of sexual union.

In this provocative book, Marla Segol explores the development of the kabbalistic cosmology underlying Western sex magic. Drawing extensively on Jewish myth and ritual, Segol tells the powerful story of the relationship between the divine and the human body in late antique Jewish esotericism, in medieval kabbalah, and in New Age ritual practice. Kabbalah and Sex Magic traces the evolution of a Hebrew microcosm that models the powerful interaction of human and divine bodies at the heart of both kabbalah and some forms of Western sex magic. Focusing on Jewish esoteric and medical sources from the fifth to the twelfth century from Byzantium, Persia, Iberia, and southern France, Segol argues that in its fully developed medieval form, kabbalah operated by ritualizing a mythos of divine creation by means of sexual reproduction. She situates in cultural and historical context the emergence of Jewish cosmological models for conceptualizing both human and divine bodies and the interactions between them, arguing that all these sources position the body and its senses as the locus of culture and the means of reproducing it. Segol explores the rituals acting on these models, attending especially to their inherent erotic power, and ties these to contemporary Western sex magic, showing that such rituals have a continuing life. Asking questions about its cosmology, myths, and rituals, Segol poses even larger questions about the history of kabbalah, the changing conceptions of the human relation to the divine, and even the nature of religious innovation itself. This groundbreaking book will appeal to students and scholars of Jewish studies, religion, sexuality, and magic.