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| beginning the world karen armstrong: The Spiral Staircase Karen Armstrong, 2016-06-09 A raw, intensely personal memoir of spiritual exploration from one of the world’s great commentators on religion. |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: The Case for God Karen Armstrong, 2009-09-22 From the bestselling author of A History of God and The Great Transformation comes a balanced, nuanced understanding of the role religion plays in human life and the trajectory of faith in modern times. Why has God become incredible? Why is it that atheists and theists alike now think and speak about God in a way that veers so profoundly from the thinking of our ancestors? Moving from the Paleolithic Age to the present, Karen Armstrong details the lengths to which humankind has gone to experience a sacred reality that it called God, Brahman, Nirvana, Allah, or Dao. She examines the diminished impulse toward religion in our own time when a significant number of people either want nothing to do with God or question the efficacy of faith. With her trademark depth of knowledge and profound insight, Armstrong elucidates how the changing world has necessarily altered the importance of religion at both societal and individual levels. And she makes a powerful, convincing argument for structuring a faith that speaks to the needs of our dangerously polarized age. |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life Karen Armstrong, 2010-12-28 One of the most original thinkers on the role of religion in the modern world—and the bestselling author of such acclaimed books as A History of God, Islam, and Buddha—now gives us a thoughtful, and thought-provoking book that can help us make the world a more compassionate place. Karen Armstrong believes that while compassion is intrinsic in all human beings, each of us needs to work diligently to cultivate and expand our capacity for compassion. Here, she sets out a program that can lead us toward a more compassionate life. The twelve steps Armstrong suggests begin with “Learn About Compassion” and close with “Love Your Enemies.” In between, she takes up “compassion for yourself,” mindfulness, suffering, sympathetic joy, the limits of our knowledge of others, and “concern for everybody.” She suggests concrete ways of enhancing our compassion and putting it into action in our everyday lives, and provides, as well, a reading list to encourage us to “hear one another’s narratives.” Throughout, Armstrong makes clear that a compassionate life is not a matter of only heart or mind but a deliberate and often life-altering commingling of the two. |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: In the Beginning Karen Armstrong, 2011-08-10 “Karen Armstrong is a genius.”—A. N. Wilson As the foundation stone of the Jewish and Christian scriptures, The Book of Genesis unfolds some of the most arresting stories of world literature—the Creation; Adam and Eve; Cain and Abel; the sacrifice of Isaac. Yet the meaning of Genesis remains enigmatic. In this fascinating volume, Karen Armstrong, author of the highly acclaimed bestseller A History of God, brilliantly illuminates the mysteries and profundities of this mystifying work. BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Karen Armstrong's Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life. “A lyrical chronicle of one woman's wrestling with Genesis that can serve as a guide to others . . . As notable for its scholarship as it is for its honesty and vulnerability.”—Publishers Weekly “Armstrong can simplify complex ideas, but she is never simplistic.”—The New York Times Book Review |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: A History of God Karen Armstrong, 2004 A study of the deity of the world's three dominant monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In a dynamic interplay between religion and society's ever-changing beliefs, values, and traditions, human beings' ideas about God have been transformed. Ideas about God have been molded to apply to the spiritual needs of the people who worship him in a particular place and time. The author explores and analyzes the development and progression of the various perceptions of God from the days of Abraham to present times--Adapted from book jacket. |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: Fields of Blood Karen Armstrong, 2014-10-28 From the renowned and bestselling author of A History of God, a sweeping exploration of religion's connection to violence. For the first time in American history, religious self-identification is on the decline. Some have cited a perception that began to grow after September 11: that faith in general is a source of aggression, intolerance and divisiveness--something bad for society. But how accurate is that view? And does it apply equally to all faiths? In these troubled times, we risk basing decisions of real and dangerous consequence on mistaken understandings of the faiths subscribed around us, in our immediate community as well as globally. And so, with her deep learning and sympathetic understanding, Karen Armstrong examines the impulse toward violence in each of the world's great religions. The comparative approach is new: while there have been plenty of books on jihad or the Crusades, this book lays the Christian and the Islamic way of war side by side, along with those of Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Daoism and Judaism. Each of these faiths arose in agrarian societies with plenty of motivation for violence: landowners had to lord it over peasants and warfare was essential to increase one's landholdings, the only real source of wealth before the great age of trade and commerce. In each context, it fell to the priestly class to legitimize the actions of the state. And so the martial ethos became bound up with the sacred. At the same time, however, their ideologies developed that ran counter to the warrior code: around sages, prophets and mystics. Within each tradition there grew up communities that represented a protest against the injustice and violence endemic to agrarian society. This book explores the symbiosis of these 2 impulses and its development as these confessional faiths came of age. The aggression of secularism has often damaged religion and pushed it into a violent mode. But modernity has also been spectacularly violent, and so Armstrong goes on to show how and in what measure religions, in their relative maturity, came to absorb modern belligerence--and what hope there might be for peace among believers in our time. |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: Sacred Nature Karen Armstrong, 2023-09-05 From one of the most original thinkers on the role of religion in the modern world, a profound exploration of the spiritual power of nature—and an urgent call to reclaim that power in everyday life. Much has been written on the scientific and technological aspects of climate change.... But Armstrong’s book is both more personal and more profound. Its urgent message is that hearts and minds need to change if we are to once more learn to revere our beautiful and fragile planet. —The Guardian Since the beginning of time, humankind has looked upon nature and seen the divine. In the writings of the great thinkers across religions, the natural world inspires everything from fear, to awe, to tranquil contemplation; God, or however one defined the sublime, was present in everything. Yet today, even as we admire a tree or take in a striking landscape, we rarely see nature as sacred. In this short but deeply powerful book, the best-selling historian of religion Karen Armstrong re-sacralizes nature for modern times. Drawing on her vast knowledge of the world’s religious traditions, she vividly describes nature’s central place in spirituality across the centuries. In bringing this age-old wisdom to life, Armstrong shows modern readers how to rediscover nature’s potency and form a connection to something greater than ourselves. |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: A Short History of Myth (Myths series) Karen Armstrong, 2010-10-29 What are myths? How have they evolved? And why do we still so desperately need them? A history of myth is a history of humanity, Karen Armstrong argues in this insightful and eloquent book: our stories and beliefs, our curiosity and attempts to understand the world, link us to our ancestors and each other. This is a brilliant and thought-provoking introduction to myth in the broadest sense–from Palaeolithic times to the “Great Western Transformation” of the last 500 years–and why we dismiss it only at our peril. |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: The Battle for God Karen Armstrong, 2001 Britain's greatest religious historian chronicles the rise and rise of fundamentalism. One of the most potent forces bedevilling the modern world is religious extremism, and the need to understand it has never been greater. Focusing in detail on Protestant fundamentalism in the United States, Jewish fundamentalism from sixteenth century Spain onwards and Muslim fundamentalism over the last four hundred years, Armstrong examines the patterns that underlie fundamentalism. These evolve from the clash between the conservative pre-modern mind that is governed by a love of myth, and the progressive rational society that relishes change. Fundamentalists view the contemporary world with horror, rejecting its claims to truth, and a state of war now exists over the future of our culture. They are not terrorists, rather, they are innovative, existing in a symbiotic relationship with an aggressive modernity, each urging the other on to greater excess. The Battle for God is original in its thesis and in its understanding; as a history of religious ideas it is fascinating, and as an explanation of one of the most destabilizing forces at large in the world today it is extraordinary. |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: Through the Narrow Gate, Revised Karen Armstrong, 2005-02-19 Read and cherished by thousands all over the world since it was first published in 1981, Through the Narrow Gate takes the reader on a spiritual journey that began one September day in 1962 when Karen Armstrong said good-bye to her family at London's King's Cross station and journeyed on to the convent in Tripton to become a nun. Through the Narrow Gate is by turns a book of spiritual revelation and an intimate look at life inside the cloistered walls of the convent.--BOOK JACKET. |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: Jerusalem Karen Armstrong, 2011-08-10 Venerated for millennia by three faiths, torn by irreconcilable conflict, conquered, rebuilt, and mourned for again and again, Jerusalem is a sacred city whose very sacredness has engendered terrible tragedy. In this fascinating volume, Karen Armstrong, author of the highly praised A History of God, traces the history of how Jews, Christians, and Muslims have all laid claim to Jerusalem as their holy place, and how three radically different concepts of holiness have shaped and scarred the city for thousands of years. Armstrong unfolds a complex story of spiritual upheaval and political transformation--from King David's capital to an administrative outpost of the Roman Empire, from the cosmopolitan city sanctified by Christ to the spiritual center conquered and glorified by Muslims, from the gleaming prize of European Crusaders to the bullet-ridden symbol of the present-day Arab-Israeli conflict. Written with grace and clarity, the product of years of meticulous research, Jerusalem combines the pageant of history with the profundity of searching spiritual analysis. Like Karen Armstrong's A History of God, Jerusalem is a book for the ages. BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Karen Armstrong's Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life. |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: Beginning the World Karen Armstrong, 1983-01-01 |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: Muhammad Prophet for our time Karen Armstrong, 2013-06-01 Karen Armstrong adalah penulis yang telah menghasilkan karya-karya gemilang tentang berbagai tradisi agama. Dalam setiap tulisannya, dia menampakkan kepiawaiannya menampilkan kajian yang rumit menjadi bahasan yang memikat dan mudah dimengerti. Penulis yang bermukim di Inggris itu kini menampilkan biografi Nabi Muhammad, yang tentunya membawakan tafsiran yang baru dan mengejutkan yang selalu menjadi kekhasannya. Biografi Nabi Muhammad ini ditulis Karen pertama kali sebagai respons terhadap fatwa Ayatullah Khomeini terhadap Salman Rushdie. Hingga saat itu, kebanyakan literatur Barat menggambarkan Muhammad entah sebagai orang suci yang sempurna atau sebagai penipu ulung. Armstrong berdiri di tengahnya: Muhammad ditampilkannya sebagai seorang luar biasa berbakat, pemberani, dan kompleks. Diperlihatkannya pula betapa karakter dan ide-ide Nabi demikian kuat untuk mengubah sejarah secara drastis dan menarik jutaan pengikut. Dengan mahir Karen menjalinkan di dalam narasinya jejak-jejak awal sejarah panjang permusuhan Barat terhadap Islam. Ditulis dengan riset yang kuat dan berdasarkan sumber-sumber yang berimbang, penggambaran Karen tentang Nabi dengan latar kehadirannya tentu dapat pula mencerahkan pembaca dengan pemahaman baru tentang kejadian-kejadian modern di kancah politik internasional. [Mizan, Agama, nabi, Islam, Karen Amstrong, Indonesia] |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: Muhammad Karen Armstrong, 2023-06-15 A life of the prophet Muhammad by bestselling author Karen Armstrong. 'Armstrong has a dazzling ability: she can take a long and complex subject and reduce it to its fundamentals, without over-simplifying' SUNDAY TIMES 'One of our best living writers on religion' FINANCIAL TIMES 'Not just a sympathetic book that would dispel the misconceptions and misgivings of its western readers, but also a book that is of considerable importance to Muslims' MUSLIM NEWS Most people in the West know very little about the prophet Muhammad. The acclaimed religious writer Karen Armstrong has written a biography which will give us a more accurate and profound understanding of Islam and the people who adhere to it so strongly. Muhammad also offers challenging comparisons with the two religions most closely related to it - Judaism and Christianity. |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: A History of God Karen Armstrong, 2011-06-30 The idea of a single devine being - God, Yahweh, Allah - has existed for over 4,000 years. But the history of God is also the history of human struggle. While Judaism, Islam and Christianity proclaim the goodness of God, organised religion has too often been the catalyst for violence and ineradicable prejudice. In this fascinating, extensive and original account of the evolution of belief, Karen Armstrong examines Western society's unerring fidelity to this idea of One God and the many conflicting convictions it engenders. A controversial, extraordinary story of worship and war, A History of God confronts the most fundamental fact - or fiction - of our lives. |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: Holy War Karen Armstrong, 1988 A penetrating narrative history of the Crusades that reveals the ominous links and parallels between those medieval clashes and the violent rivalries of the Middle East today. |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: Speaking of Faith Krista Tippett, 2008-01-29 A thought-provoking, original appraisal of the meaning of religion by the host of public radio's On Being Krista Tippett, widely becoming known as the Bill Moyers of radio, is one of the country's most intelligent and insightful commentators on religion, ethics, and the human spirit. With this book, she draws on her own life story and her intimate conversations with both ordinary and famous figures, including Elie Wiesel, Karen Armstrong, and Thich Nhat Hanh, to explore complex subjects like science, love, virtue, and violence within the context of spirituality and everyday life. Her way of speaking about the mysteries of life-and of listening with care to those who endeavor to understand those mysteries--is nothing short of revolutionary. |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: Buddha Karen Armstrong, 2008-11-03 The author of The Battle for God and other works on religion focuses her attention on the Buddha, retracing his life from prince to savior of humankind, in a philosophical portrait that offers an illuminating look at how his life and path to spiritual enlightenment spawned one of the great religions of the world. Reprint. |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: Sacred Nature Karen Armstrong, 2022-09-06 A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A profound exploration of the spiritual power of nature—and an urgent call to reclaim that power in everyday life. Since the beginning of time, humankind has looked upon nature and seen the divine. In the writings of the great thinkers across religions, the natural world inspires everything from fear to awe to tranquil contemplation; God, or however one defined the sublime, was present in everything. Yet today, even as we admire a tree or take in a striking landscape, we rarely see nature as sacred. In this deeply powerful book, the bestselling historian of religion Karen Armstrong re-sacralizes nature for modern times. Drawing on her vast knowledge of the world's religious traditions, she vividly describes nature's central place in spirituality across the centuries: from the Book of Job to St. Thomas Aquinas, from Lao Tzu to Wordsworth, and from the Stoics to Jainism and beyond. Throughout, she reveals how we have lost our sense of the divine, and how we can get it back. Armstrong explores the power of silence and solitude, the nature of personal sacrifice and the need to reconnect with sorrow and compassion—and how greater contact with and appreciation for nature can help us in unexpected ways. In bringing this age-old wisdom to life, Armstrong shows modern readers how to rediscover nature's potency and form a connection to something greater than ourselves. |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: Muhammad Karen Armstrong, 2013-08-13 New York Times–Bestselling Author: This biography of the man who inspired the world’s fastest-growing religion “paints a portrait of a very human prophet” (The Wall Street Journal). Muhammad presents a fascinating portrait of the founder of a religion that continues to change the course of world history. Muhammad’s story is more relevant than ever, because it offers crucial insight into the true origins of an increasingly radicalized Islam. Countering those who dismiss Islam as fanatical and violent, Karen Armstrong, author of Islam and A History of God, offers a clear, accessible, and balanced portrait of the central figure of one of the world’s great religions. “A good glimpse of how the vast majority of the world’s Muslims understand their prophet.” —The New York Times “Respectful, knowledgeable, and, above all, readable. It succeeds because [Armstrong] brings Muhammad to life as a fully rounded human being.” —The Economist |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: Tongues of Fire Karen Armstrong, 1985 |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: The Gospel According to Woman Karen Armstrong, 1996 |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: The First Christian Karen Armstrong, 1983 |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: Guide to Thomas Aquinas Josef Pieper, 2011-06-10 One of the great philosophers of the 20th Century, Josef Pieper, gives a penetrating introduction and guide to the life and works of perhaps the greatest philosopher ever, St. Thomas Aquinas. Pieper provides a biography of Aquinas, an overview of the 13th century he lived in, and a wonderful synthesis of his vast writings. Pieper shows how Aquinas reconciled the pragmatic thought of Aristotle with the Church, proving that realistic knowledge need not preclude belief in the spiritual realities of religion. According to Pieper, the marriage of faith and reason proposed by Aquinas in his great synthesis of a theologically founded worldliness was not merely one solution among many, but the great principle expressing the essence of the Christian West. Pieper reveals his extraordinary command of original sources and excellent secondary materials as he illuminates the thought of the great intellectual Doctor of the Church. The purpose of these lectures is to sketch, against the background of his times and his life, a portrait of Thomas Aquinas as he truly concerns philosophical-minded persons today, not merely as a historical personage but as a thinker who has something to say to our own era. I earnestly hope that the speculative attitude which was Thomas' most salient trait as Christianity's universal teacher will emerge clearly and sharply from my exposition. - Josef Pieper |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: The Bible , 1607 |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: Beginning the World Karen Armstrong, 1983 |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: Religion and State Leon Carl Brown, 2000 The image of Islam as an aggressive and xenophobic religion has long prevailed and can at times appear to be substantiated by current affairs. This work challenges this conventional view, with a historical overview ranging from Islam's early centuries to the present day. |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: Why Evolution is True Jerry A. Coyne, 2009 Weaves together the many threads of modern work in genetics, palaeontology, geology, molecular biology, anatomy and development that demonstrate the processes first proposed by Darwin and to present them in a crisp, lucid, account accessible to a wide audience. |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: St. Paul Karen Armstrong, 2015 A stirring account of the life of Paul, who brought Christianity to the Jews, by the most popular writer on religion in the English-speaking world, Karen Armstrong, author of The History of God, which has been translated into thirty languages |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: Rethinking Religion and World Affairs Timothy Samuel Shah, Alfred C. Stepan, Monica Duffy Toft, 2012-02-29 In recent years, the role of religion in the study and conduct of international affairs has become increasingly important. The essays in this volume seek to question and remedy the problematic neglect of religion in extant scholarship, grappling with puzzles, issues, and questions concerning religion and world affairs in six major areas. Contributors critically revisit the secularization thesis, which proclaimed the steady erosion of religion's public presence as an effect of modernization; explore the relationship between religion, democracy, and the juridico-political discourse of human rights; assess the role of religion in fomenting, ameliorating, and redressing violent conflict; and consider the value of religious beliefs, actors, and institutions to the delivery of humanitarian aid and the fostering of socio-economic development. Finally, the volume addresses the representation of religion in the expanding global media landscape, the unique place of religion in American foreign policy, and the dilemmas it presents. Drawing on the work of leading scholars as well as policy makers and analysts, Rethinking Religion and World Affairs is the first comprehensive and authoritative guide to the interconnections of religion and global politics. |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: The Norton Anthology of World Religions Biale, David, Miles, Jack, 2015-02-19 This magisterial Norton Anthology, edited by world-renowned scholars, offers a portable library of more than 1,000 primary texts from the world 's major religions. To help readers encounter strikingly unfamiliar texts with pleasure; accessible introductions, headnotes, annotations, pronouncing glossaries, maps, illustrations and chronologies are provided. For readers of any religion or none, The Norton Anthology of World Religions opens new worlds that, as Miles writes, invite us to see others with a measure of openness, empathy, and good will... Unprecedented in scope and approach, The Norton Anthology of World Religions: Judaism brings together over 300 texts from pre-Israelite Mesopotamia to post-Holocaust Israel and America. The volume features Jack Miles 's illuminating General Introduction - “How the West Learned to Compare Religions” - as well as David Biale 's “Israel among the Nations,” a lively primer on Jewish history and the core teachings of Judaism. |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: Desire of the Everlasting Hills Thomas Cahill, 2010-04-28 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author of How the Irish Saved Civilization comes a compelling historical narrative about Jesus—an obscure rabbi from a backwater of the Roman Empire who became the central figure in Western Civilization. Divertingly instructive...gratifying...[Cahill] makes Jesus a still-living literary presence. —The New York Times In his subtle and engaging investigation into the life and times of Jesus, Thomas Cahill shows us Jesus from his birth to his execution through the eyes of those who knew him and in the context of his time—a time when the Jews were struggling to maintain their beliefs under overlords who imposed their worldview on their subjects. Here is Jesus the loving friend, itinerate preacher, and quiet revolutionary, whose words and actions inspired his followers to journey throughout the Roman world and speak the truth he instilled—in the face of the greatest defeat: Jesus' crucifixion as a common criminal. Daring, provocative, and stunningly original, Cahill's interpretation will both delight and surprise. |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: Pantheologies Mary-Jane Rubenstein, 2018-11-06 Pantheism is the idea that God and the world are identical—that the creator, sustainer, destroyer, and transformer of all things is the universe itself. From a monotheistic perspective, this notion is irremediably heretical since it suggests divinity might be material, mutable, and multiple. Since the excommunication of Baruch Spinoza, Western thought has therefore demonized what it calls pantheism, accusing it of incoherence, absurdity, and—with striking regularity—monstrosity. In this book, Mary-Jane Rubenstein investigates this perennial repugnance through a conceptual genealogy of pantheisms. What makes pantheism “monstrous”—at once repellent and seductive—is that it scrambles the raced and gendered distinctions that Western philosophy and theology insist on drawing between activity and passivity, spirit and matter, animacy and inanimacy, and creator and created. By rejecting the fundamental difference between God and world, pantheism threatens all the other oppositions that stem from it: light versus darkness, male versus female, and humans versus every other organism. If the panic over pantheism has to do with a fear of crossed boundaries and demolished hierarchies, then the question becomes what a present-day pantheism might disrupt and what it might reconfigure. Cobbling together heterogeneous sources—medieval heresies, their pre- and anti-Socratic forebears, general relativity, quantum mechanics, nonlinear biologies, multiverse and indigenous cosmologies, ecofeminism, animal and vegetal studies, and new and old materialisms—Rubenstein assembles possible pluralist pantheisms. By mobilizing this monstrous mixture of unintentional God-worlds, Pantheologies gives an old heresy the chance to renew our thinking. |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: Islam, the Misunderstood Religion Muḥammad Quṭb, 1967 |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: Jesus A. N. Wilson, 1992 In a book that is as daring and unconventional as it is scholarly, the celebrated biographer of Tolstoy and C.S. Lewis searches for the elusive historical reality in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Wilson enables readers of every shade of faith or skepticism to discover the man who became the central figure in Western civilization and whose teachings have survived nearly 2,000 years. |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: Courting the Wild Twin Martin Shaw, 2020 Master mythologist Martin Shaw uses timeless story-wisdom to examine our broken relationship with the world There is an old legend that says we each have a wild, curious twin that was thrown out the window the night we were born, taking much of our vitality with them. If there was something we were meant to do with our few, brief years on Earth, we can be sure that the wild twin is holding the key. In Courting the Wild Twin, Dr. Martin Shaw invites us to seek out our wild twin--a metaphor for the part of ourselves that we generally shun or ignore to conform to societal norms--to invite them back into our consciousness, for they have something important to tell us. He challenges us to examine our broken relationship with the world, to think boldly, wildly, and in new ways about ourselves--as individuals and as a collective. Through the use of scholarship, storytelling, and personal reflection, Shaw unpacks two ancient European fairy tales that concern the mysterious wild twin. By reading these tales and becoming storytellers ourselves, he suggests we can restore our agency and confront modern challenges with purpose, courage, and creativity. Courting the Wild Twin is a declaration of literary activism and an antidote to the shallow thinking that typifies our age. Shaw asks us to recognize mythology as a secret weapon--a radical, beautiful, heart-shuddering agent of deep, lasting change. |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: American Gospel Jon Meacham, 2007-03-20 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham reveals how the Founding Fathers viewed faith—and how they ultimately created a nation in which belief in God is a matter of choice. At a time when our country seems divided by extremism, American Gospel draws on the past to offer a new perspective. Meacham re-creates the fascinating history of a nation grappling with religion and politics–from John Winthrop’s “city on a hill” sermon to Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence; from the Revolution to the Civil War; from a proposed nineteenth-century Christian Amendment to the Constitution to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s call for civil rights; from George Washington to Ronald Reagan. Debates about religion and politics are often more divisive than illuminating. Secularists point to a “wall of separation between church and state,” while many conservatives act as though the Founding Fathers were apostles in knee britches. As Meacham shows in this brisk narrative, neither extreme has it right. At the heart of the American experiment lies the God of what Benjamin Franklin called “public religion,” a God who invests all human beings with inalienable rights while protecting private religion from government interference. It is a great American balancing act, and it has served us well. Meacham has written and spoken extensively about religion and politics, and he brings historical authority and a sense of hope to the issue. American Gospel makes it compellingly clear that the nation’s best chance of summoning what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature” lies in recovering the spirit and sense of the Founding. In looking back, we may find the light to lead us forward. Praise for American Gospel “In his American Gospel, Jon Meacham provides a refreshingly clear, balanced, and wise historical portrait of religion and American politics at exactly the moment when such fairness and understanding are much needed. Anyone who doubts the relevance of history to our own time has only to read this exceptional book.”—David McCullough, author of 1776 “Jon Meacham has given us an insightful and eloquent account of the spiritual foundation of the early days of the American republic. It is especially instructive reading at a time when the nation is at once engaged in and deeply divided on the question of religion and its place in public life.”—Tom Brokaw, author of The Greatest Generation |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: Dante Richard Warrington Baldwin Lewis, 2001 Traces the life and development--emotional, artistic, philosophical--of this poet-historian, from his wanderings through the Tuscan hills and churches to his days as a young soldier fighting for democracy to his civic leadership and years of exile. |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: All You Need Is Kill Hiroshi Sakurazaka, 2009-07-21 When the alien Mimics invade, Keiji Kiriya is just one of many recruits shoved into a suit of battle armor called a Jacket and sent out to kill. Keiji dies on the battlefield, only to be reborn each morning to fight and die again and again. On his 158th iteration, he gets a message from a mysterious ally--the female soldier known as the Full Metal Bitch. Is she the key to Keiji's escape or his final death? Now a major motion picture starring Tom Cruise! -- VIZ Media |
| beginning the world karen armstrong: Medieval Lives Norman F. Cantor, 2015-10-13 A fascinating look at life in the Middle Ages that focuses on eight extraordinary medieval men and women through realistically invented conversations between them and their counterparts. |
BEGINNING Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
The meaning of BEGINNING is the point at which something begins : start. How to use beginning in a sentence.
BEGINNING Synonyms: 256 Similar and Opposite Words - Merriam-Webster
Synonyms for BEGINNING: start, inception, commencement, onset, launch, alpha, outset, dawn; Antonyms of BEGINNING: end, conclusion, ending, close, period, completion, closing, finish
BEGINNING | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary
BEGINNING definition: 1. the first part of something or the start of something: 2. the origin of something, or the…. Learn more.
Beginning - Definition, Meaning & Synonyms - Vocabulary.com
The beginning is the first part or section of something, or the place where it starts. You watch the opening credits at the beginning of a movie. "In the beginning," says the beginning of the Bible, …
BEGINNING definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary
The beginning of an event or process is the first part of it. This was also the beginning of her recording career. Think of this as a new beginning. The beginnings of something are the signs or …
beginning noun - Definition, pictures, pronunciation and usage …
Definition of beginning noun in Oxford Advanced American Dictionary. Meaning, pronunciation, picture, example sentences, grammar, usage notes, synonyms and more.
Beginning - definition of beginning by The Free Dictionary
1. an act of starting. 2. the point of time or space at which anything starts. 3. the first part: the beginning of the book. 4. Often, beginnings. an initial or rudimentary stage. 5. origin: That was …
BEGINNING - Definition & Translations | Collins English Dictionary
Discover everything about the word "BEGINNING" in English: meanings, translations, synonyms, pronunciations, examples, and grammar insights - all in one comprehensive guide.
beginning - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Jun 9, 2025 · beginning (countable and uncountable, plural beginnings) (uncountable) The act of doing that which begins anything; commencement of an action, state, or space of time; entrance …
Beginning or Begining – Which is Correct? - Two Minute English
Dec 27, 2024 · The correct spelling is beginning. The word has two ‘n’s in the middle. A common mistake is to misspell it as “begining” with only one ‘n’. This error occurs because sometimes in …
BEGINNING Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
The meaning of BEGINNING is the point at which something begins : start. How to use beginning in a sentence.
BEGINNING Synonyms: 256 Similar and Opposite Words - Merriam-Webster
Synonyms for BEGINNING: start, inception, commencement, onset, launch, alpha, outset, dawn; Antonyms of BEGINNING: end, conclusion, ending, close, period, completion, closing, finish
BEGINNING | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary
BEGINNING definition: 1. the first part of something or the start of something: 2. the origin of something, or the…. Learn more.
Beginning - Definition, Meaning & Synonyms - Vocabulary.com
The beginning is the first part or section of something, or the place where it starts. You watch the opening credits at the beginning of a movie. "In the beginning," says the beginning of the …
BEGINNING definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary
The beginning of an event or process is the first part of it. This was also the beginning of her recording career. Think of this as a new beginning. The beginnings of something are the signs …
beginning noun - Definition, pictures, pronunciation and usage …
Definition of beginning noun in Oxford Advanced American Dictionary. Meaning, pronunciation, picture, example sentences, grammar, usage notes, synonyms and more.
Beginning - definition of beginning by The Free Dictionary
1. an act of starting. 2. the point of time or space at which anything starts. 3. the first part: the beginning of the book. 4. Often, beginnings. an initial or rudimentary stage. 5. origin: That was …
BEGINNING - Definition & Translations | Collins English Dictionary
Discover everything about the word "BEGINNING" in English: meanings, translations, synonyms, pronunciations, examples, and grammar insights - all in one comprehensive guide.
beginning - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Jun 9, 2025 · beginning (countable and uncountable, plural beginnings) (uncountable) The act of doing that which begins anything; commencement of an action, state, or space of time; …
Beginning or Begining – Which is Correct? - Two Minute English
Dec 27, 2024 · The correct spelling is beginning. The word has two ‘n’s in the middle. A common mistake is to misspell it as “begining” with only one ‘n’. This error occurs because sometimes …
