The books listed on this guide represent only a sample of the titles available in the library's collection. To find more titles of interest to you, search the library catalog.
Local Church, Global Church by 
The Civil War in Southern Appalachian Methodism by 
The Church-State Debate by 
The Book of Common Prayer 1979 by 
Sing Them over Again to Me by 
The Lively Experiment : religious toleration in America from Roger Williams to the present by
Three hundred and fifty years ago, Roger Williams launched one of the world’s first great experiments in religious toleration. Insisting that religion be separated from civil power, he founded Rhode Island, a colony that welcomed people of many faiths. Though stark forms of intolerance persisted, Williams’ commitments to faith and liberty of conscience came to define the nation and its conception of itself. Through crisp essays that show how Americans demolished old prejudices while inventing new ones, The Lively Experiment offers a comprehensive account of America’s boisterous history of interreligious relations.
Pagans and Philosophers : the problem of paganism from Augustine to Leibniz by
From the turn of the fifth century to the beginning of the eighteenth, Christian writers were fascinated and troubled by the "Problem of Paganism," which this book identifies and examines for the first time. How could the wisdom and virtue of the great thinkers of antiquity be reconciled with the fact that they were pagans and, many thought, damned? Related questions were raised by encounters with contemporary pagans in northern Europe, Mongolia, and, later, America and China. Pagans and Philosophers explores how writers--philosophers and theologians, but also poets such as Dante, Chaucer, and Langland, and travelers such as Las Casas and Ricci--tackled the Problem of Paganism. Augustine and Boethius set its terms, while Peter Abelard and John of Salisbury were important early advocates of pagan wisdom and virtue. University theologians such as Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, and Bradwardine, and later thinkers such as Ficino, Valla, More, Bayle, and Leibniz, explored the difficulty in depth. Meanwhile, Albert the Great inspired Boethius of Dacia and others to create a relativist conception of scientific knowledge that allowed Christian teachers to remain faithful Aristotelians. At the same time, early anthropologists such as John of Piano Carpini, John Mandeville, and Montaigne developed other sorts of relativism in response to the issue. A sweeping and original account of an important but neglected chapter in Western intellectual history, Pagans and Philosophers provides a new perspective on nothing less than the entire period between the classical and the modern world.
That Religion in Which All Men Agree by 
New Worlds : a religious history of Latin America by
This extraordinary book encompasses the time period from the first Christian evangelists' arrival in Latin America to the dictators of the late twentieth century. With unsurpassed knowledge of Latin American history, John Lynch sets out to explore the reception of Christianity by native peoples and how it influenced their social and religious lives as the centuries passed. As attentive to modern times as to the colonial period, Lynch also explores the extent to which Indian religion and ancestral ways survived within the new Christian culture. The book follows the development of religious culture over time by focusing on peak periods of change: the response of religion to the Enlightenment, the emergence of the Church from the wars of independence, the Romanization of Latin American religion as the papacy overtook the Spanish crown in effective control of the Church, the growing challenge of liberalism and the secular state, and in the twentieth century, military dictators' assaults on human rights. Throughout the narrative, Lynch develops a number of special themes and topics. Among these are the Spanish struggle for justice for Indians, the Church's position on slavery, the concept of popular religion as distinct from official religion, and the development of liberation theology.
The Art of Philosophy : wisdom as a practice by
In his best-selling book You Must Change Your Life!, Peter Sloterdijk argued exercise and practice were crucial to the human condition. In The Art of Philosophy, he extends this critique to academic science and scholarship, casting the training processes of academic study as key to the production of sophisticated thought. Infused with humor and provocative insight, The Art of Philosophy further integrates philosophy and human existence, richly detailing the foundations of this relationship and its transformative role in making the postmodern self. Sloterdijk begins with Platos description of Socrates, whose internal monologues were so absorbing they often rooted the philosopher in place. The original academy, Sloterdijk argues, taught scholars to lose themselves in thought, and todays universities continue this tradition by offering scope for Platos “accommodations for absences.” By training scholars to practice thinking as an occupation transcending daily time and space, universities create the mental capacity for thought that makes wisdom possible. Traversing the history of asceticism, the concept of suspended animation, and the theory of the neutral observer, Sloterdijk traces the evolution of philosophical practice from ancient times to today, showing how scholars can remain true to the tradition of “the examined life” even when the temporal dimension no longer corresponds to the eternal. Building on the work of Husserl, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Arendt, and other practitioners of the life of theory, Sloterdijk launches a posthumanist defense of philosophical inquiry and its everyday, therapeutic value.
The Impassioned Life : Reason and Emotion in the Christian Tradition by
The Impassioned Life argues that theology’s task today is to rethink the nature of the emotions and their relation to human reason. Such rethinking is necessary because the Christian tradition feels ambivalently about the emotions. Armed with a commitment to body-soul dualism, many writers have equated the image of God with rationality and wondered whether emotion is an essential feature of human nature; however, the tradition has also affirmed the value of emotions such as love and compassion and has sometimes asserted the value of so-called negative emotions such as anger. The question, then, is whether the tradition’s pastoral insight into the importance of moderation and control of the emotions requires us to think dualistically about soul (identified with reason) and body (the seat of emotions). To answer this question, The Impassioned Life explores the vital resources of the Christian theological tradition and also of contemporary scientific and psychological research in order to achieve a more adequate theological understanding of the emotions and reason. At heart, it offers a holistic, integrated vision of the Christian life lived passionately in its full range of human feeling as life in the Spirit.
