"Authentic hope is the gift Rebecca Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci offer readers of EcoJustice Education.... We learn what it means to recover the ancient arts and skills of cultivating commons, common sense, and community collaborations in our hard times." Madhu Suri Prakash, Pennsylvania State University "EcoJustice Education should become a core part of teacher education programs across the country as it provides both the theory and examples of classroom practices essential for making the transition to a sustainable future." C. A. Bowers, author, international speaker, and retired professor Designed for introductory social foundations or multicultural education courses, this text offers a powerful model for cultural ecological analysis and pedagogy of responsibility, providing teachers and teacher educators with the information and classroom practices they need to help develop citizens who are prepared to support and achieve diverse, democratic, and sustainable societies in an increasingly globalized world. The Companion Website for this book (www.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415872515) offers a wealth of resources linked to each chapter.

Designed primarily for the layperson, The Catholic Imagination is a journey through the liturgical year by way of weekly reflections on the life of the church. Through reading, thinking, and discussion, the religious imagination is stimulated and structured so the reader can reflect and act upon the richness of our faith to enter into a relationship with God. Reflections on the lives of the saints, their writings, their meaning for our times, the importance and value of creation and the natural world, the significance of the sacraments, sacramental devotions, and the timelessness of the gospel message encourage the reader to coordinate their actions with the weekly topic. Ideas on the church's artistic environment and related Scripture enhance the written materials. Special supplements are provided for Advent and Christmas, Lent and Easter, due to their importance in the life of the church. Just as we repeat the themes of the liturgical year over and over again, simple little lessons and readings like this go a long way in the continuing education of the lay Catholic with their straightforward message and inspirational writing style that capture the faith.

A comprehensive study of the Catholic worldview, as distinguished from the Protestant perspective, discusses the central motifs of Catholicism including Sacrament, Salvation, and Community, linking these themes to Catholic art and culture and arguing that they encourage a perception of divine imminence.

Much has been written about Graham Greene's relationship to his Catholic faith and its privileged place within his texts. His early books are usually described as "Catholic Novels" - understood as a genre that not only uses Catholic belief to frame the issues of modernity, but also offers Catholicism's vision and doctrine as a remedy to the present crisis in Western civilization. Greene's later work, by contrast, is generally regarded as falling into political and detective genres. In this book, Mark Bosco argues that this is a false dichotomy created by a narrowly prescriptive understanding of the Catholic genre and obscures the impact of Greene's developing religious imagination on his literary art.

Apologetics, the defense of the Faith, shows why our Christian faith is true—but it’s much more than that. Apologetics isn’t just the province of scholars and saints, but of ordinary men and women: parents, teachers, lay ministry leaders, pastors, and everyone who wants to develop a stronger faith, to understand why we believe what we believe, to know Our Lord better, and love him more fully. In Apologetics and the Christian Imagination: An Integrated Approach to Defending the Faith, Holly Ordway shows how an imaginative approach—in cooperation with rational arguments—is extremely valuable in helping people come to faith in Christ. Making a case for the role of imagination in apologetics, this book proposes ways to create meaning for Christian language in a culture that no longer understands words like ‘sin’ or ‘salvation,' suggests how to discern and address the manipulation of language, and shows how metaphor and narrative work in powerful ways to communicate the truth. It applies these concepts to specific, key apologetics issues, including suffering, doubt, and longing for meaning and beauty. Apologetics and the Christian Imagination shows how Christians can harness the power of the imagination to share the Faith in meaningful, effective ways.

On the back cover of one of his most groundbreaking solo albums, . . . Nothing like the Sun of 1987, Sting (Gordon Matthew Sumner, b. 1951 in Wallsend, UK) somberly stands close to a statue of Mary, the mother of Jesus. The album was released a few months after his own mother, Audrey, died. The picture was taken on the island of Montserrat, where he was recording the album, apparently on the day of her death. "I said goodbye to my mother, as I had a recording date in Montserrat, and she died a week later." When asked by the author if his mother was particularly connected to Mary, and if this was why he chose this image, he replied "No, but I did." This evocative photograph and Sting's quick answer encapsulate the two pillars of this book: a microhistory of a specific British Catholic parish in the 1950s-60s, and the impact that growing up there had on Sting's artistic output. And beyond that, this book opens a window onto the influence of Catholic education and imagination on millions of less famous people who had similar upbringings.

Jon Sweeney, a self-described “evolved Protestant” and noted religious writer, has long been fascinated by the Catholic Church. However, it wasn’t until he was a young missionary in the Philippines that he truly began to understand the Church’s traditions, mysteries, and religious beliefs and its hold on those who follow the tradition. As he explains, Catholic spirituality is all about responding to the fundamental mystery of Jesus, the incarnation, and what it all meant in the beginning as well as what it means today. In Almost Catholic, Sweeney offers an appreciation of Catholicism, weaving in the story of his own explorations with those of others who have also been attracted to this tradition. He finds himself drawn to the Church’s ancient and medieval traditions out of a desire to connect with the deepest and widest paths on the way. Two millennia of saints and practices and teachings and mystery form a connection for him to the very beginnings of Christianity.