A National Book Award Finalist
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, NPR, The Minnesota Star Tribune, and Publishers Weekly
One of 100 Notable Books of 2024 at The New York Times
A Best Book of the Year: The New Yorker, Publishers Weekly, NPR and The Minnesota Star Tribune

Glows on every page . . . nearly miraculous. --The Boston Globe

Marvelous. --The New York Times

From the Pulitzer Prize winner Eliza Griswold, Circle of Hope is an intimate portrait of a church, its radical mission, and its riveting crisis.

The revolution I wanted to be part of was in the church.

Americans have been leaving their churches. Some drift away. Some stay home. And some have been searching for--and finding--more authentic ways to find and follow Jesus.

This is the story of one such radical outpost of Jesus followers dedicated to service, the Sermon on the Mount, and working toward justice for all in this life, not just salvation for some in the next. Part of a little-known yet influential movement at the edge of American evangelicalism, Philadelphia's Circle of Hope grew for forty years, planted four congregations, and then found itself in crisis.

The story that follows is an American allegory full of questions with urgent relevance for so many of us, not just the faithful: How do we commit to one another and our better selves in a fracturing world? Where does power live? Can it be shared? How do we make the least of these welcome?

Building on years of deep reporting, the Pulitzer Prize winner Eliza Griswold has crafted an intimate, immersive, tenderhearted portrait of a community, as well as a riveting chronicle of its transformation, bearing witness to the ways a deeply committed membership and their team of devoted pastors are striving toward change that might help their church survive. Through generational rifts, an increasingly politicized religious landscape, a pandemic that prevented gathering to worship, and a rise in foundation-shaking activism, Circle of Hope tells a propulsive, layered story of what we do to stay true to our beliefs. It is a soaring, searing examination of what it means for us to love, to grow, and to disagree.

More than half of American adults and more than seventy-five percent of young Americans believe in intelligent extraterrestrial life. This level of belief rivals that of belief in God. American Cosmic examines the mechanisms at work behind the thriving belief system in extraterrestrial life, a system that is changing and even supplanting traditional religions.

Over the course of a six-year ethnographic study, D.W. Pasulka interviewed successful and influential scientists, professionals, and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who believe in extraterrestrial intelligence, thereby disproving the common misconception that only fringe members of society believe in UFOs. She argues that widespread belief in aliens is due to a number of factors including their ubiquity in modern media like The X-Files, which can influence memory, and the believability lent to that media by the search for planets that might support life. American Cosmic explores the intriguing question of how people interpret unexplainable experiences, and argues that the media is replacing religion as a cultural authority that offers believers answers about non-human intelligent life.

Longlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award

A novel economic interpretation of how religions have become so powerful in the modern world

Religion in the twenty-first century is alive and well across the world, despite its apparent decline in North America and parts of Europe. Vigorous competition between and within religious movements has led to their accumulating great power and wealth. Religions in many traditions have honed their competitive strategies over thousands of years. Today, they are big business; like businesses, they must recruit, raise funds, disburse budgets, manage facilities, organize transportation, motivate employees, and get their message out. In The Divine Economy, economist Paul Seabright argues that religious movements are a special kind of business: they are platforms, bringing together communities of members who seek many different things from one another--spiritual fulfilment, friendship and marriage networks, even business opportunities. Their function as platforms, he contends, is what has allowed religions to consolidate and wield power.

This power can be used for good, especially when religious movements provide their members with insurance against the shocks of modern life, and a sense of worth in their communities. It can also be used for harm: political leaders often instrumentalize religious movements for authoritarian ends, and religious leaders can exploit the trust of members to inflict sexual, emotional, financial or physical abuse, or to provoke violence against outsiders. Writing in a nonpartisan spirit, Seabright uses insights from economics to show how religion and secular society can work together in a world where some people feel no need for religion, but many continue to respond with enthusiasm to its call.

A #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!

Human beings have never had it better than we have it now in the West. So why are we on the verge of throwing it all away?

In 2016, New York Times bestselling author Ben Shapiro spoke at the University of California-Berkeley. Hundreds of police officers were required to protect his speech. What was so frightening about Shapiro? He came to argue that Western civilization is in the midst of a crisis of purpose and ideas; that we have let grievances replace our sense of community and political expediency limit our individual rights; that we are teaching our kids that their emotions matter more than rational debate; and that the only meaning in life is arbitrary and subjective.

As a society, we are forgetting that almost everything great that has ever happened in history happened because of people who believed in both Judeo-Christian values and in the Greek-born power of reason. In The Right Side of History, Shapiro sprints through more than 3,500 years, dozens of philosophers, and the thicket of modern politics to show how our freedoms are built upon the twin notions that every human being is made in God's image and that human beings were created with reason capable of exploring God's world.

We can thank these values for the birth of science, the dream of progress, human rights, prosperity, peace, and artistic beauty. Jerusalem and Athens built America, ended slavery, defeated the Nazis and the Communists, lifted billions from poverty, and gave billions more spiritual purpose.

Yet we are in the process of abandoning Judeo-Christian values and Greek natural law, watching our civilization collapse into age-old tribalism, individualistic hedonism, and moral subjectivism. We believe we can satisfy ourselves with intersectionality, scientific materialism, progressive politics, authoritarian governance, or nationalistic solidarity.

We can't.

The West is special, and in The Right Side of History, Ben Shapiro bravely explains how we have lost sight of the moral purpose that drives each of us to be better, the sacred duty to work together for the greater good, .

In The Protestant Ethic, Max Weber opposes the Marxist concept of dialectical materialism and relates the rise of the capitalist economy to the Calvinist belief in the moral value of hard work and the fulfillment of one's worldly duties.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
NATIONAL BESTSELLER

An intimate window into the world of American evangelicalism. Fellow exvangelicals will find McCammon's story both startlingly familiar and immensely clarifying, while those looking in from the outside can find no better introduction to the subculture that has shaped the hopes and fears of millions of Americans. --Kristin Kobes Du Mez, New York Times bestselling author of Jesus and John Wayne

The first definitive book that names the growing social movement of people leaving the church: the exvangelicals.

Growing up in a deeply evangelical family in the Midwest in the '80s and '90s, Sarah McCammon was strictly taught to fear God, obey him, and not question the faith. Persistently worried that her gay grandfather would go to hell unless she could reach him, or that her Muslim friend would need to be converted, and that she, too, would go to hell if she did not believe fervently enough, McCammon was a rule-follower and--most of the time--a true believer. But through it all, she was increasingly plagued by fears and deep questions as the belief system she'd been carefully taught clashed with her expanding understanding of the outside world.

After spending her early adult life striving to make sense of an unraveling worldview, by her 30s, she found herself face-to-face with it once again as she covered the Trump campaign for NPR, where she witnessed first-hand the power and influence that evangelical Christian beliefs held on the political right.

Sarah also came to discover that she was not alone: she is among a rising generation of the children of evangelicalism who are growing up and fleeing the fold, who are thinking for themselves and deconstructing what feel like the alternative facts of their childhood.

Rigorously reported and deeply personal, The Exvangelicals is the story of the people who make up this generational tipping point, including Sarah herself. Part memoir, part investigative journalism, this is the first definitive book that names and describes the post-evangelical movement: identifying its origins, telling the stories of its members, and examining its vast cultural, social, and political impact.

Why does religion exist? Why do people believe? Do all religions start with the same basic idea?

These are some of the most fundamental and enduring questions we have about the mysteries of religion, and they may well hold the key to humankind's future on this earth.

In this adaptation of Pascal Boyer's classic work exploring these concepts, Religion Explained, artist Joseph Béhé harnesses the power of comics to provide clear answers to the basic questions about why religion exists and why people believe.

A distinguished scholar, Boyer drew from research in cognitive science, anthropology, psychology, and evolutionary biology to explore why religion exists and why the strength of human beliefs can drive us to be selfless sometimes and, at other times, to be fanatical and intolerant. His erudite book is rich with insight into the endless jumble of ideas that inform religious beliefs and practices across cultures. With detailed, illustrative drawings and carefully adapted prose, Béhé's graphic novel brings a new perspective to Boyer's work.

An eminently accessible approach to the notoriously thorny topics of belief, cognition, humanity, and religion, And Mankind Created the Gods is a thoughtful, inspiring graphic novel that will further and broaden the conversation with which Boyer's book engages.

A sparklingly strange odyssey through the kaleidoscope of America's new spirituality: the cults, practices, high priests and prophets of our supposedly post-religion age.
Fifty-five years have passed since the cover of Time magazine proclaimed the death of God and while participation in mainstream religion has indeed plummeted, Americans have never been more spiritually busy.
While rejecting traditional worship in unprecedented numbers, today's Americans are embracing a kaleidoscopic panoply of spiritual traditions, rituals, and subcultures -- from astrology and witchcraft to SoulCycle and the alt-right.As the Internet makes it ever-easier to find new tribes, and consumer capitalism forever threatens to turn spirituality into a lifestyle brand, remarkably modern American religious culture is undergoing a revival comparable with the Great Awakenings of centuries past. Faith is experiencing not a decline but a Renaissance. Disillusioned with organized religion and political establishments alike, more and more Americans are seeking out spiritual paths driven by intuition, not institutions.
In Strange Rites, religious scholar and commentator Tara Isabella Burton visits with the techno-utopians of Silicon Valley; Satanists and polyamorous communities, witches from Bushwick, wellness junkies and social justice activists and devotees of Jordan Peterson, proving Americans are not abandoning religion but remixing it. In search of the deep and the real, they are finding meaning, purpose, ritual, and communities in ever-newer, ever-stranger ways.

This analysis of current events examines the wrong beliefs America has held supreme--idols that are to blame for our nation's decay--and suggests how our culture can be healed.

How did so many white, conservative Christians come to embrace Donald Trump? Why do many argue so vigorously for preserving Confederate monuments and against the teaching of Critical Race Theory? Why do many Americans seem so unwilling to acknowledge the injustices that ethnic and racial minorities experience in the United States? Why do a sizeable proportion of Americans continue to oppose women's equality in the workplace and in the home?

To answer these questions, Taking America Back for God points to the phenomenon of Christian nationalism, the belief that the United States is-and should be-a Christian nation. Christian ideals and symbols have long played an important role in American public life, but Christian nationalism is about far more than whether the phrase under God belongs in the pledge of allegiance. At its heart, Christian nationalism demands that we must preserve a particular kind of social order, an order in which everyone--Christians and non-Christians, natural-born and immigrants, whites and minorities, men and women recognizes their proper place in society. In this award-winning book, the first comprehensive empirical analysis of Christian nationalism in the United States, Taking America Back for God illustrates the influence of Christian nationalism on today's most contentious social and political issues.

Drawing on multiple sources of national survey data as well as in-depth interviews, Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry document how Christian nationalism shapes what Americans think about who they are as a people, what their future should look like, and how they should get there. Americans' stance toward Christian nationalism provides powerful insight into what they think about immigration, Islam, gun control, police shootings, atheists, gender roles, and many other political issues-very much including who they want in the White House. Taking America Back for God is a guide to one of the most important-and least understood-forces shaping American politics.

A brief and balanced introduction and response to the culture of woke for busy people.

I know of no other book that explains so clearly, with so lively a pen, and with such economy the various intellectual currents that are now disturbing our cultural peace. What is even rarer is that the author grinds no axes, treating both sides of the culture wars with thoughtful charity and a deeply Christian intelligence. 'Woke' has important things to say and it does so in a highly readable manner.

- Nigel Biggar, Ph.D., Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology, University of Oxford

WOKE: AN EVANGELICAL GUIDE-

• introduces and explains a range of key ideas, from postmodernity to political correctness, which define aspects of woke culture;
• offers Christian reflection and practical advice to parents, students, pastors, educators, policymakers, and any other concerned citizens; and
• helps faithful Christians respond to those issues with clarity, charity, vigour, and effectiveness.

John G. Stackhouse, Jr. (Ph.D., The University of Chicago)

Is an award-winning scholar, educator, speaker, and consultant. He has lectured at leading universities (from Harvard to Hong Kong), authored more than a dozen books, and addressed executives in Seoul, religious leaders in Jerusalem, pastors in Bangalore, teachers in Calgary, lawyers in Aspen, and physicians in Vancouver.

Have you ever felt like your work has no meaning? Or like faith and daily life fall into separate days of the week? The Intersection: Faith, Work, and Life is thought-provoking, yet accessible, The Intersection delves into the profound topic of work and its significance in the lives of Christians. Through a collection of insightful essays, it not only aims to bridge the gap between faith and work, challenging readers to reconsider their understanding of a balanced life and embrace a more integrated approach; it invites readers to ask themselves the question, What role did God place me here to play in his story?

Endorsements:

This is a joyful gem of a book that invites every person to contemplate how they show up with God for their family, work, and earth-keeping, and then to live it out

Samuel E. Chiang Deputy Secretary General of the World Evangelical Alliance

For decades now, I have witnessed the near non-existence of the practical intersection between faith and work. The sacred-secular divide is pervasive, rendering work forever inferior. The result is confusion and ineffectiveness as we try to straddle these two disconnected worlds. The call to return to God's design is desperately needed, a message that can transform communities, cities, and nations. The book you hold in your hands is compact, memorable, and rich in wisdom. Properly applied, it can unlock a wonderful new freedom to be all God intended for you personally and for your work.

John D. Beckett Chairman, The Beckett Companies

Sometimes advancing the kingdom of God is relegated to religious activities on Sundays. Not so in this book. Bob Varney and Hugh Brandt show us in very practical and inspirational ways how people in every walk of life can advance God's good purposes every day of the week. This is because God cares for what you do on Monday through Saturday as well. If Jesus is not Lord of all, he is not Lord at all. I encourage you to read this brief masterpiece with the intent of becoming a tsaddiq who will daily live a lifestyle of integrated kingdom service in his/her community.

David Joel Hamilton Vice President for Strategic Innovation at Youth with a Mission's University of the Nations

Drawing upon rich theological concepts, the book explores the deep-rooted connection between faith and work, unraveling biblical teachings and shedding light on the original Hebrew words that shape our understanding of vocation, community, and each person's unique place in it all

Brian Mueller, LLD - President, Grand Canyon University

In 2007, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett filmed a landmark discussion about modern atheism. The video went viral. Now in print for the first time, the transcript of their conversation is illuminated by new essays from three of the original participants and an introduction by Stephen Fry.

At the dawn of the new atheist movement, the thinkers who became known as the four horsemen, the heralds of religion's unraveling--Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett--sat down together over cocktails. What followed was a rigorous, pathbreaking, and enthralling exchange, which has been viewed millions of times since it was first posted on YouTube. This is intellectual inquiry at its best: exhilarating, funny, and unpredictable, sincere and probing, reminding us just how varied and colorful the threads of modern atheism are.

Here is the transcript of that conversation, in print for the first time, augmented by material from the living participants: Dawkins, Harris, and Dennett. These new essays, introduced by Stephen Fry, mark the evolution of their thinking and highlight particularly resonant aspects of this epic exchange. Each man contends with the most fundamental questions of human existence while challenging the others to articulate their own stance on God and religion, cultural criticism, spirituality, debate with people of faith, and the components of a truly ethical life.

Praise for The Four Horsemen

This bracing exchange of ideas crackles with energy. It's fascinating to watch four first-class minds explore a rugged intellectual terrain. . . . The text affords a different, more reflective way of processing the truly vital exchange of ideas. . . . I commend the book to those seeking an honest reckoning with their religion--and those curious about how the world looks from a rigorously naturalistic and atheistic point of view.--Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The full, electrifying transcript of the one and only conversation between the quartet of luminaries dubbed the 'four horsemen' of the New Atheism, which took place in Washington, D.C., in 2007. Among the vast range of ideas and questions they discuss: Is it ever possible to win a war of ideas? Is spirituality the preserve of the religious? And, are there any truths you would rather not know?--The Bookseller (UK) (starred review)

American Grace is perhaps the most sweeping look yet at contemporary American religion. It lays out the broad trends of the past fifty years, assesses their sociological causes, and then does a bit of fortune-telling (The Washington Post).

Unique among nations, America is deeply religious, religiously diverse, and remarkably tolerant. In recent decades, however, the nation's religious landscape has undergone several seismic shocks. American Grace is an authoritative, fascinating examination of what precipitated these changes and the role that religion plays in contemporary American society.

Although there is growing polarization between religious conservatives and secular liberals today, at the same time personal interfaith ties are strengthening. Interfaith marriage has increased, and religious identities have become more fluid. More people than ever are friendly with someone of a different faith or no faith at all. Putnam and Campbell show how this denser web of personal ties brings greater interfaith tolerance, despite the so-called culture wars.

Based on two of the most comprehensive surveys ever conducted on religion and public life in America (and with a new epilogue based on a third survey), American Grace is an indispensable book about American religious life, essential for understanding our nation today.

For more than 100 years, Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism has set the parameters for the debate over the origins of modern capitalism. Now more timely and thought provoking than ever, this esteemed classic of twentieth-century social science examines the deep cultural frame of mind that existed at the birth of modern capitalism and to this day influences attitudes toward work in northern America and Western Europe.

In this volume, Stephen Kalberg revises his internationally acclaimed translation--using shorter sentences and more lucid language--to make the work even more accessible to students and other readers. Capturing the essence of Weber's style as well as the subtlety of his descriptions and causal arguments, this is the only translation of the revised 1920 edition of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism published since 1930.

To draw readers into the material, this engaging volume includes extensive introductions by the editor, a chronology of Weber's life, a glossary, and numerous clarifying endnotes. Detailed commentaries discuss the controversies Weber addressed, explain his complex causal argument by reference to the general contours of his sociology, summarize the history of the Protestant Ethic debate, and examine the significance of the Protestant Sects essays.

Ideal for courses in sociology, anthropology, political science, history, international relations, economics, and cultural studies, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is an essential resource for anyone seeking to understand the origins and endurance of the modern West.

In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), Emile Durkheim sets himself the task of discovering the enduring source of human social identity. He investigates what he considered to be the simplest form of documented religion - totemism among the Aborigines of Australia. For Durkheim, studying Aboriginal religion was a way to yield an understanding of the religious nature of man, by showing us an essential and permanent aspect of humanity. The need and capacity of men and women to relate to one another socially lies at the heart of Durkheim's exploration, in which religion embodies the beliefs that shape our moral universe.

The Elementary Forms has been applauded and debated by sociologists, anthropologists, ethnographers, philosophers, and theologians, and continues to speak to new generations about the intriguing origin and nature of religion and society. This new, lightly abridged edition provides an excellent introduction to Durkheim's ideas.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

More than half a century ago, sociologist J. Milton Yinger remarked about religion, There are few major subjects about which men know so little, yet feel so certain. Samuel L. Perry says that Yinger had it right. Americans--and Westerners more generally--neglect the scientific study of religion, and we do so at our peril.

In Religion for Realists, Perry argues that we need the scientific study of religion--the rational, data-driven analysis of religious life--now more than ever. Contrary to the fears of many religious Americans, the scientific study of religion only threatens empirical falsehoods, promulgated often to the benefit of charlatans and demagogues. And contrary to the silent hopes of many secular academics, religion doesn't go away when you ignore it. Instead, interest groups fill the void to shape the public's understanding of religious reality: sometimes well, usually poorly.

Perry makes the case that, as people in the West self-sort into partisan tribes, all of us--religious and irreligious alike--need the scientific study of religion. This book presents a practical roadmap for ensuring that its insights are widely available, accessible, and impactful.

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is Max Weber's groundbreaking study of the psychological and spiritual conditions that allowed for the development of capitalist culture. Weber's thesis takes off from startling twin reversals. First, in a reversal of the Marxian thesis that material conditions form the basis for states of mind, Weber asserts that it is these very mental conditions and associated cultural values that shaped the capitalist world and the human quest for prosperity. More specifically, Weber's insight is that the belief in the moral value of work, encouraged by Calvinist strains of Protestantism, fostered a this-worldly asceticism -- reversing and supplanting the medieval monastic ideal of an other-worldly asceticism. Thus grew, in early modern England and Northern Europe, a new attitude toward the fulfillment of worldly duties -- baptizing, as it were, what would become the unapologetic pursuit of wealth.

As a trenchant and still controversial analysis of how the historical phases of Christianity have conditioned the ethical, political, economic, and social lives of the peoples of the West -- and, later, the world -- Weber's work continues to be a touchstone for the ongoing debate on the origins of capitalism and the future course of economic history.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, violent episodes involving cults are rare historically. But their potential to affect and disrupt civic life looms large and efforts to manage these incidents involve controversial issues of religious freedom, politics, state intervention, and public security. The interpretive challenge of this book is to provide a social scientific explanation for these rare events. The authors conclude that they usually involve some combination of internal and external dynamics through which a new religious movement and society become polarized.

The call to make the world a better place is inherent in the Christian belief and practice. But why have efforts to change the world by Christians so often failed or gone tragically awry? And how might Christians in the 21st century live in ways that have integrity with their traditions and are more truly transformative? In To Change the World, James Davison Hunter offers persuasive--and provocative--answers to these questions.

Hunter begins with a penetrating appraisal of the most popular models of world-changing among Christians today, highlighting the ways they are inherently flawed and therefore incapable of generating the change to which they aspire. Because change implies power, all Christian eventually embrace strategies of political engagement. Hunter offers a trenchant critique of the political theologies of the Christian Right and Left and the Neo-Anabaptists, taking on many respected leaders, from Charles Colson to Jim Wallis and Stanley Hauerwas. Hunter argues that all too often these political theologies worsen the very problems they are designed to solve. What is really needed is a different paradigm of Christian engagement with the world, one that Hunter calls faithful presence--an ideal of Christian practice that is not only individual but institutional; a model that plays out not only in all relationships but in our work and all spheres of social life. He offers real-life examples, large and small, of what can be accomplished through the practice of faithful presence. Such practices will be more fruitful, Hunter argues, more exemplary, and more deeply transfiguring than any more overtly ambitious attempts can ever be.

Written with keen insight, deep faith, and profound historical grasp, To Change the World will forever change the way Christians view and talk about their role in the modern world.