After spending two years in bed with Lyme disease, Steven Kotler had lost everything: his health, his job, his girl, and, he was beginning to suspect, his mind. Kotler, not a religious man, suddenly found himself drawn to the sport of surfing as if it were the cornerstone of a new faith. Why, he wondered, when there was nothing left to believe in, could he begin to believe in something as unlikely as surfing? What was belief anyway? How did it work in the body, the brain, our culture, and human history? With the help of everyone from rebel surfers to rocket scientists, Kotler undertakes a three-year globetrotting quest. The results are a startling mix of big waves and bigger ideas: a surfer's journey into the biological underpinnings of belief itself.

A new approach to introducing theology As God's self-communication to humans, Jesus is the key to the human search for meaning, argues Thomas West. He therefore introduces the practice of theology through Christology. From the question of personal meaning and self-constitution and their relationship to transcendent meaning and value, he proceeds to discuss the figure and import of Jesus and then the ethical imperative engendered through encounter with him. Fresh and clear, West's book is an invitation to grapple with one's religious commitments, especially in light of recent insights in biblical studies and Continental, feminist, and liberation theologies. This new text will prove an engaging and effective introduction to theological thinking for both undergraduates and Christian adults.

We live in that final time which offers humans the clearest choice in history: the kingdom or the holocaust, Jim Douglass writes. Either end is a lightning east to west: the nuclear holocaust a lightning fire, the kingdom of Reality a lightning spirit. We will choose lightning east to west today as either nuclear fire or the kingdom of God, as either despair and annihilation or transformation through nonviolence. If we look to Jesus and Gandhi, and what they point to, we can hope to choose the lightning fire of nonviolence.

"...Minutes of various kinds of Church-related meetings (general conferences, high council and priesthood quorum meetings, and special councils) for the period 1830-1844 ... held in New York, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, and Nauvoo, Illinois...Nevertheless, a full 80 percent of the total entries are from the Missouri period"--Introd., p. xi-xii.

We live in the age of religious pluralism where all religions are considered the same and different paths lead to the same spiritual destination. It is important for Christians to learn how to affirm Jesus Christ as the only way to God—while also paying due respect to people of other faiths and worldviews. In The Unknown God: A Journey with Jesus from East to West, Mathew P. John explores the redemptive revelations lurking in the darkness outside the boundaries of Christian tradition. In this spiritual journey through six major world religions, readers encounter a variety of symbols that point to the Jesus of the Bible. From Hindu avatars and Buddhist bodhisattvas, to Sikh gurus and Muslim prophets, and the Jewish messiah, consider how different religions attempt to answer the deep longing for a savior ingrained in the collective conscience of humanity.

Jesus' teachings have reached across two millenia, inspiring, informing, and uplifting people from all walks of life. In this elegant little volume, a noted religious publisher and biblical student has collected Jesus' key messenges, culled from the Gospels. Organized thematically, Jesus' words speak directly to contemporary lives and convey a man unlike any other man whose life contains a message for all. Engaging and nondoctrinal commentary throughout places the sayings in their historical context and drawn to this simple and beautiful rendering of Jesus' unique--an, even today, unconventional--message for the heart.