The essential read on disability, spirituality, and social justice that won the 2025 Grawemeyer Award in Religion, the 2024 National Jewish Book Award, and more

A transformative spiritual companion and deep dive into disability politics that reimagines disability in the Bible and contemporary culture

What's wrong with you?

Scholar, activist, and rabbi Julia Watts Belser is all too familiar with this question. What's wrong isn't her wheelchair, though--it's exclusion, objectification, pity, and disdain.

Our attitudes about disability have such deep cultural roots that we almost forget their sources. But open the Bible and disability is everywhere. Moses believes his stutter renders him unable to answer God's call. Jacob's encounter with an angel leaves him changed not just spiritually but physically: he gains a limp. For centuries, these stories have been told and retold in ways that treat disability as a metaphor for spiritual incapacity or as a challenge to be overcome.

Through fresh and unexpected readings of the Bible, Loving Our Own Bones instead paints a luminous portrait of what it means to be disabled and one of God's beloved. Belser delves deep into sacred literature, braiding the insights of disabled, feminist, Black, and queer thinkers with her own experiences as a queer disabled Jewish feminist. She talks back to biblical commentators who traffic in disability stigma and shame. What unfolds is a profound gift of disability wisdom, a radical act of spiritual imagination that can guide us all toward a powerful reckoning with each other and with our bodies.

Loving Our Own Bones invites readers to claim the power and promise of spiritual dissent, and to nourish their own souls through the revolutionary art of radical self-love.

This book addresses important moral questions people commonly face when they or their loved ones experience life-threatening injuries, end-stage illnesses, or advanced old age. Due to modern medical technology, patients and their family members often confront such questions as: What medical procedures are morally required, and what procedures are optional? Is providing food and water to a patient an optional medical treatment, or is it basic care necessary for all human beings? What roles do conscience, quality of life, pain, and financial burden play in end-of-life decision-making? With a clear, concise question-and-answer format, this book provides moral answers to these questions, and many more, in the light of Catholic teaching based on Scripture and Sacred Tradition.

Without knowledge of medical science or familiarity with common medical terminology, people can be misled or confused by authoritative-sounding medical assertions, even immoral ones--thus the need for this easy-to-use guide. In these pages, readers can quickly find the most pressing end-of-life questions along with answers consistent with the moral teachings of the Church. The book uses practical reasoning to reach proper moral conclusions based on correct moral principles. Timely and highly practical, this book addresses issues everyone will eventually face, showing that making good moral decisions leads to happiness now and at the hour of our death.

In a world where neighbor has become as meaningless as a friend or follower online, this book shows how true neighbor love is the long-term work of forming and maintaining more just communities.

In To Love Our Neighbors activist and ethicist Joe Blosser weaves together resources in theology, community development, economics, anti-racism, and environmental sustainability to help community leaders, organizations, students, churches, and neighborhoods embrace solidarity for change. Even with the best intentions many current practices of loving our neighbors often do more harm than good.

Offering new practices of neighbor love, Blosser guides us to live in solidarity with others across our differences, exercise sufficiency in our economic lives, and care for the sustainability of our planet and communities. When we engage in these practices, we foster the shared sense of common good, mutual responsibility, and interconnectedness that Jesus intended.

For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church is, according to Archbishop Elpidophoros of America, a mature and reasoned discourse about our engagement with the world and with each other for Orthodox Christians and all people of good will. This text offers to the reader, who is willing to listen, insight and guidance on how to participate in life in the world, while enjoying the life in the Spirit. It is a helpful roadmap--steeped in Orthodox wisdom--essential for navigating the many modern-day challenges we face.

Examines why so many are leaving religion, and what that means for American society

One of the largest changes in American culture over the last fifty years has been the increase in people exiting religion. Goodbye Religion explores why there has been such an upswing among those who identify as nonreligious, and what the societal implications are of this move towards less religiosity.

Utilizing nationally representative data and more than a hundred in-depth interviews with people who leave their religion behind, Ryan T. Cragun and Jesse M. Smith examine the variety of social, psychological, and environmental conditions behind the exiting process, as well as what people do with the time they used to devote to religious observance. They show that for most people who leave, abandoning religion is not a crisis, and does not generally disrupt their health, charitable giving, or volunteering. Drawing on the data, Cragun and Smith argue that the fears among some that massive religious exit will result in a decline in family values or less civic engagement are unfounded, and that those who become nonreligious remain engaged in society and continue to strive to make the world a better place. At a time where more and more individuals are questioning the implications of our increasingly secular society, Goodbye Religion offers an engaging and fascinating analysis into what religious exiting--and secularization broadly--means for American society.

Explores the religious activism of the Stop Shopping Church performance group

Since the dawn of the new millennium, the grassroots performance activist group the Stop Shopping Church has advanced a sophisticated anti-capitalist critique in what they call Earth Justice. Led by co-founders, Reverend Billy and Savitri D, the Church of Stop Shopping have sung with Joan Baez and toured with Pussy Riot and Neil Young. They performed at festivals around the world, and been the subject of the nationally released documentary, What Would Jesus Buy? They opposed the forces of consumerism on the global stage, and taken on the corporate practices of Disney, Starbucks, J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, Walmart, Amazon, and many others.

While the Church maintains an anti-consumerism stance at its core-through performances, street actions, and social activism-the community also prioritizes work for racial justice, queer liberation, justice and sanctuary for immigrants, First Amendment issues, the reclaiming of public space, and in an increasingly central way, environmental justice. In The Church of Stop Shopping and Religious Activism, George González draws on interviews, participant observation, and digital ethnography to offer insight into the Church, its make up, its activities, and in particular, how it has shifted over time from parody to a deep and serious engagement with religion. Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping maintain that corporations and their celebrity spokespeople operate in much the same way churches do. González uses the group's performance activism to showcase the links between religion, the culture of capitalist consumerism, and climate catastrophe and to analyze the ways in which consumers are ritualized into accepting capitalism and its consequences. He argues that the members and organizers of the Church of Stop Shopping are serious theorizers and users of religion in their own right, and that they offer keen insights into our understanding of ritualistic consumerism and its indelible link to the rising sea levels that threaten to engulf us all.

We live in an age of accelerating moral decline which bodes ill for the future of our culture, society, and nation. A stable, peaceful, and productive society requires a secure and righteous moral foundation. Man cannot exist without a moral code to restrain his sinful passions and to guide him to righteous conduct.
Our collapsing mores should especially be a deep concern for Christians because moral decadence, left unchecked, inevitably leads to social collapse. And this will not only destroy Christian families, but the opportunity of the Christian witness to the world.
Though in the historical long-run the Christian faith will eventually grow to righteous dominance in the world, Christians must labor now to be a part of the solution to the contemporary moral problem. And this means that we must renew our commitment to Scripture.
Contained within the absolute truth of God's Word we find his solution to man's moral confusion: God's absolute standard for righteousness contained in his holy Law. Unfortunately, contemporary theological discussions too quickly write-off any consideration of both the legitimacy of God's Law in the new covenant era and the applicability of it in the modern world setting.
Because of the nature of the modern debate and our special need for socio-political as well as personal norms, this book will focus specifically on the question of the relevance of the Old Testament Law today. Christians need to return to a whole-Bible ethic rather than a piece-meal it-seems-to-me morality. God's Law Made Easy is a good place to start.

Just Ministry is a book on professional ethics for those involved in pastoral ministry, whether ordained or lay. It aims to stimulate a new attitude among ministers to view themselves as professionals and to take seriously the responsibilities that come with this identity. At a time when concerns for misconduct, scandals of abuse, and liability have brought pastoral ministers under greater scrutiny than ever before and have threatened to undermine their morale, this book offers a positive perspective on the vocation of pastoral ministry and wise ethical guidance to foster integrity in ministry. In this way it is a resource of preventative education for pastoral ministry. By examining the professional aspects of a ministerial vocation, it provides a guide for ministers to be accountable in offering their pastoral service with expert knowledge and skill and with good moral character. It builds upon a theology of vocation, a covenantal model of ministry, and a vision of professional identity. +

The papal encyclical Humanae Vitae (On Human Life) made headlines worldwide. Many talked about the encyclical when it was issued in 1968, but few actually read it. Why is it perhaps the most controversial document in modern Church history?

On Human Life combines Humanae Vitae with commentary by popular and respected Catholic authors Mary Eberstadt, James Hitchcock, and Jennifer Fulwiler in order to address this question and to shed light on the document's enduring wisdom.

Humanae Vitae is Pope Paul VI's explanation of why the Catholic Church rejects contraception. The pope referred to two aspects, or meanings, of human sexuality-the unitive and the procreative. He also warned of the consequences if contraception became widely practiced-consequences that have since come to pass: greater infidelity in marriage, confusion regarding the nature of human sexuality and its role in society, the objectification of women for sexual pleasure, compulsory government birth control policies, and the reduction of the human body to an instrument of human manipulation. The separation of sexuality from its dual purpose has also resulted in artificial reproduction technologies, including cloning, that threaten the dignity of the human person.

Although greeted by controversy and opposition, Humanae Vitae has continued to influence Catholic moral teaching. St. John Paul II's popular theology of the body drew deeply on the insights of Paul VI. Pope Benedict and now Pope Francis have upheld the long-standing teaching, and a new generation of Catholics, as well as non-Catholics, is embracing the truths of the encyclical.

The essential read on disability, spirituality, and social justice that won the 2025 Grawemeyer Award in Religion, the 2024 National Jewish Book Award, and more

A transformative spiritual companion and deep dive into disability politics that reimagines disability in the Bible and contemporary culture

What's wrong with you?

Scholar, activist, and rabbi Julia Watts Belser is all too familiar with this question. What's wrong isn't her wheelchair, though--it's exclusion, objectification, pity, and disdain.

Our attitudes about disability have such deep cultural roots that we almost forget their sources. But open the Bible and disability is everywhere. Moses believes his stutter renders him unable to answer God's call. Jacob's encounter with an angel leaves him changed not just spiritually but physically: he gains a limp. For centuries, these stories have been told and retold in ways that treat disability as a metaphor for spiritual incapacity or as a challenge to be overcome.

Through fresh and unexpected readings of the Bible, Loving Our Own Bones instead paints a luminous portrait of what it means to be disabled and one of God's beloved. Belser delves deep into sacred literature, braiding the insights of disabled, feminist, Black, and queer thinkers with her own experiences as a queer disabled Jewish feminist. She talks back to biblical commentators who traffic in disability stigma and shame. What unfolds is a profound gift of disability wisdom, a radical act of spiritual imagination that can guide us all toward a powerful reckoning with each other and with our bodies.

Loving Our Own Bones invites readers to claim the power and promise of spiritual dissent, and to nourish their own souls through the revolutionary art of radical self-love.

In the process of translating Herman Bavinck's Reformed Ethics, John Bolt and his editorial colleagues discovered that the social ethics portion was unfinished. The first section will now be published as Reformed Ethics, vol. 3. The other five sections were outlined by Bavinck, but not completed. Following Bavinck's outline, John Bolt has reconstructed those last five sections on the basis of his extensive knowledge of Bavinck's work, culling Bavinck's other writings, in both Dutch and English, to summarize his teachings.

This companion to Reformed Ethics offers readers Bavinck's main convictions and perspectives on critical topics of social ethics: society, art, scholarship, education, the state, the church, humanity, and the kingdom of God.

Reformed Social Ethics completes the Reformed Ethics project and provides readers with a fuller picture of Bavinck's ethics. It will also be packaged with Bavinck's Reformed Ethics in a specially priced four-volume set.

Herman Bavinck's four-volume Reformed Dogmatics is one of the most important theological works of the twentieth century. The English translation was edited by world-class Bavinck scholar John Bolt, who now brings forth a manuscript from Bavinck that is being published for the first time.

Serving as a companion to Reformed Dogmatics, Reformed Ethics offers readers Bavinck's mature reflections on ethical issues. Volumes 1 and 2 have already been published. Volume 1 mines the moral teachings of the early church and medieval and Puritan spirituality while addressing a variety of topics. Volume 2 covers the duties of the Christian life and includes Bavinck's exposition of the Ten Commandments. This third volume addresses family, marriage, and divorce.

This fourth edition of An Introduction to Bioethics provides an introductory survey of various bioethical issues facing society from beginning of life issues to end of life issues, and several of them in between. This presentation begins with introducing the idea of bioethics and connecting it to how technology challenges our moral senses. This follows with readers being introduced to the major theories and vocabulary of bioethics. Following these general issues, Shannon and Kockler take the reader through various issues while presenting multiple perspectives. The authors include hotly debated topics such as abortion, euthanasia, and stem cell technology. The topics cover major areas of focus in the field of bioethics from the beginning of life to the end of life, including biotechnology, organ transplantation, human subject research, and a whole earth ethic. Once readers finish the book, they should be oriented to significant debates in bioethics, have the vocabulary to enter into a thoughtful discussion on the topics, and begin to formulate their own judgments on some of the most controversial aspects of contemporary society. The book can serve as an excellent text for undergraduate studies by providing a firm foundation to launch into class discussions and assignments. The bibliographies and references provide readers with information on some of the seminal texts in bioethics, which gives An Introduction to Bioethics a value for the reader who is just beginning the journey into the tumultuous field of bioethics. +

Atheism is often considered to be a negative or pessimistic belief which is characterized by a rejection of values and purpose and a fierce opposition to religion. This Very Short Introduction sets out to dispel the myths that surround atheism, arguing that most western atheism is so-named only because it exists in a tradition in which theism is the norm. Julian Baggini instead asserts that atheists are typically naturalists, who believe that meaning and morality are possible in a finite, natural world.

This second edition includes a new chapter covering the impact and legacy of 'New Atheism', a powerful new movement in atheism in the early twenty first century, driven by books from authors such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, and which is having a profound impact across the Western world. Baggini also considers whether East Asia has been historically atheist, and atheism in recent European history, before exploring the position of atheists around the world today. Throughout, the book presents an intellectual case for atheism that rests as much upon positive arguments for its truth as on negative arguments against religion.

bVery Short Introductionsb: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring /b

ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

An unabridged, unaltered edition to include an introduction by the author, with the complete appendices (I through IV) at book's end.

This book addresses the universal theological dimension of reconciliation in the context of the Israeli Messianic Jewish and Palestinian Christian divide.

Palestinian Christians and Israeli Messianic Jews share a belief in Jesus as the son of God and Messiah. Often, though, that is all they have in common. This remarkable book, written in collaboration by a local Palestinian Christian and an Israeli Messianic Jew, seeks to bridge this gap by addressing head on, divisive theological issues (as well as their political implications) such as land, covenant, prophecy and eschatology which separate their two communities.

The struggle for reconciliation is painful and often extremely difficult for all of us. This unique work seeks to show a way forward.

Now revised to reflect the many changes in our society, around the world, and in the church, this volume provides basic introductory information about the edition of Catholic social teaching, giving a concise overview of what the major documents of the tradition say about political, economic, and social life. Laced throughout with references to the actual documents, the volume puts into accessible language the key ideas that the church has proclaimed in the are of social teaching. Grouped by topics, the questions represent the most common inquiries the the typical Catholic asks about the church's teaching. The answers are brief, accurate responses based on the important official documents of the church. While the book can be read easily in a sitting or two, the format also permits the reader to check on a single topic or idea for quick reference. Ideal for personal education, the book is also suitable for adult formation, discussion, and reflection. +

Dr. Wendel Dandridge has pronounced the Church and Christianity as dead after a horrible diagnosis of irrelevancy. His remedy to ensure this does not continue to happen in the eyes of generations to come is Returning to the Message of Christ