Happiness comes from within. Can these 'truths' hold the key to a happier, more fulfilled life?In The Happiness Hypothesis, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt examines ten Great Ideas which have been championed across centuries and civilisations and asks: how can we apply these ideas to our twenty-first century lives?

How can we reconcile the ideal church described by theology with the broken church that we see in the world? In this book Joseph Small argues that the church's true identity is known somewhere in the tension between the two.

Small revisits familiar ecclesiological concepts--people of God, the body of Christ, the communion of the Holy Spirit--but rather than focusing on theological abstractions or worldly cynicism, he carefully evaluates the church in its scriptural, historical, theological, ...

This new edition of a bestselling evangelical survey of the Old Testament has been updated throughout. It is lavishly illustrated with four-color images, maps, and charts and retains the pedagogical features that have made the book so popular:· chapter outlines, objectives, and summaries· study questions· sidebars featuring primary source material and ethical and theological issues· lists of key terms, people, and places· further reading recommendationsAdditional resources for students a...

The King James Bible of 1611 has been one of the richest sources for English language and literature for nearly four centuries and is itself a work of the greatest poetic beauty. George Steiner's introduction illuminates the Bible's profound effect on the history of English literature and includes a moving personal reading of the greatest of texts.

Sociology of Religion is an increasingly popular component of courses in religious studies at undergraduate level. While most textbooks on the Sociology of Religion are written from a sociological background, this new student-friendly textbook aims to introduce the field and the subjects studied by sociologists of religion to students with a background in theology and religious studies.

For some of us, the apostle Paul is intimidating, like a distant and difficult uncle. Maybe not someone you'd like to hang out with at a coffee shop on a rainy day. He'd make a scene, evangelize the barista, and arouse looks across the room.

For a mid-morning latte, we'd prefer Jesus over Paul. But Paul is actually the guy who-from Ephesus to Athens-was the talk of the marketplace, the raconteur of the Parthenon. He knew everyone, founded emerging churches, loved the difficult people, and hel...

With this influential book of essays, Jonathan Z. Smith has pointed the academic study of religion in a new theoretical direction, one neither theological nor willfully ideological. Making use of examples as apparently diverse and exotic as the Maori cults in nineteenth-century New Zealand and the events of Jonestown, Smith shows that religion must be construed as conventional, anthropological, historical, and as an exercise of imagination. In his analyses, religion emerges as the product of ...

David Hume is the greatest and also one of the most provocative philosophers to have written in the English language. No philosopher is more important for his careful, critical, and deeply perceptive examination of the grounds for belief in divine powers and for his sceptical accounts of the causes and consequences of religious belief, expressed most powerfully in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and The Natural History of Religion. The Dialogues ask if belief in God can be inferred ...

Why do human beings believe in divinities? Why do some seek eternal life, while others seek escape from recurring lives? Why do the beliefs and behaviors we typically call "religious" so deeply affect the human personality and so subtly weave their way through human society?Ideal as a supplementary text in introductory religion courses or as the main text in theory and method in religious studies or in sociology of religion courses, Ten Theories of Religion, Fourth Edition, offers an illumina...

This book is aimed at those training for ministry, those in ministry and lay people wishing to reflect upon their work. It seeks to enable those in pastoral ministry to reflect upon their institutional encounters and to enable lay people who work in institutions as professionals or managers to reflect upon their pastoral encounters. By generating shared encounters of theological reflection between these two groups the authors identify points of solidarity and tension between them.The book see...