Reader's Corner: Religion & Spirituality
Looking for a good book to read but don't know where to start? This guide covers popular, award-winning, and just plain great nonfiction and fiction genres and books.
Staff Picks
A Most Peculiar Book: The Inherent Strangeness of the Bible by
The Bible, we are constantly reminded, is the best-selling book of all time. It is read with intense devotion by hundreds of millions of people, stands as authoritative for Judaism and Christianity, and informs and affects the politics and lives of the religious and non-religious around the world. But how well do we really know it? The Bible is so familiar, so ubiquitous that we have begun to take our knowledge of it for granted. The Bible many of us think we know is a pale imitation of the real thing. In A Most Peculiar Book, Kristin Swenson addresses the dirty little secret of biblical studies -- that the Bible is a weird book. It is full of surprises and contradictions, unexplained impossibilities, intriguing supernatural creatures, and heroes doing horrible deeds. It does not provide a simple worldview: what "the Bible says" on a given topic is multi-faceted, sometimes even contradictory. Yet, Swenson argues, we have a tendency to reduce the complexities of the Bible to aphorisms, bumper stickers, and slogans. Swenson helps readers look at the text with fresh eyes. A collection of ancient stories and poetry written by multiple authors, held together by the tenuous string of tradition, the Bible often undermines our modern assumptions. And is all the more marvelous and powerful for it. Rather than dismiss the Bible as an outlandish or irrelevant relic of antiquity, Swenson leans into the messiness full-throttle. Making ample room for discomfort, wonder, and weirdness, A Most Peculiar Book guides readers through a Bible that will feel, to many, brand new.
Call Number: BS538 .S94 2021Publication Date: 2021-02-01
The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song by
The instant New York Times bestseller and companion book to the PBS series. "Absolutely brilliant . . . A necessary and moving work.--Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of Begin Again "Engaging. . . . In Gates's telling, the Black church shines bright even as the nation itself moves uncertainly through the gloaming, seeking justice on earth--as it is in heaven." --Jon Meacham, New York Times Book Review From the New York Times bestselling author of Stony the Road and one of our most important voices on the African American experience comes a powerful new history of the Black church as a foundation of Black life and a driving force in the larger freedom struggle in America. For the young Henry Louis Gates, Jr., growing up in a small, residentially segregated West Virginia town, the church was a center of gravity--an intimate place where voices rose up in song and neighbors gathered to celebrate life's blessings and offer comfort amid its trials and tribulations. In this tender and expansive reckoning with the meaning of the Black Church in America, Gates takes us on a journey spanning more than five centuries, from the intersection of Christianity and the transatlantic slave trade to today's political landscape. At road's end, and after Gates's distinctive meditation on the churches of his childhood, we emerge with a new understanding of the importance of African American religion to the larger national narrative--as a center of resistance to slavery and white supremacy, as a magnet for political mobilization, as an incubator of musical and oratorical talent that would transform the culture, and as a crucible for working through the Black community's most critical personal and social issues. In a country that has historically afforded its citizens from the African diaspora tragically few safe spaces, the Black Church has always been more than a sanctuary. This fact was never lost on white supremacists: from the earliest days of slavery, when enslaved people were allowed to worship at all, their meetinghouses were subject to surveillance and destruction. Long after slavery's formal eradication, church burnings and bombings by anti-Black racists continued, a hallmark of the violent effort to suppress the African American struggle for equality. The past often isn't even past--Dylann Roof committed his slaughter in the Mother Emanuel AME Church 193 years after it was first burned down by white citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, following a thwarted slave rebellion. But as Gates brilliantly shows, the Black church has never been only one thing. Its story lies at the heart of the Black political struggle, and it has produced many of the Black community's most notable leaders. At the same time, some churches and denominations have eschewed political engagement and exemplified practices of exclusion and intolerance that have caused polarization and pain. Those tensions remain today, as a rising generation demands freedom and dignity for all within and beyond their communities, regardless of race, sex, or gender. Still, as a source of faith and refuge, spiritual sustenance and struggle against society's darkest forces, the Black Church has been central, as this enthralling history makes vividly clear.
Call Number: BR563.N4 G295 2021Publication Date: 2021-02-16
The Trans- cendentalists and Their World by
In the year of the nation's bicentennial, Robert A. Gross published The Minutemen and Their World, a paradigm-shaping study of Concord, Massachusetts, during the American Revolution. It won the prestigious Bancroft Prize and became a perennial bestseller. Forty years later, in this highly anticipated work, Gross returns to Concord and explores the meaning of an equally crucial moment in the American story: the rise of Transcendentalism. The Transcendentalists and Their World offers a fresh view of the thinkers whose outsize impact on philosophy and literature would spread from tiny Concord to all corners of the earth. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the Alcotts called this New England town home, and Thoreau drew on its life extensively in his classic Walden. But Concord from the 1820s through the 1840s was no pastoral place fit for poets and philosophers. The Transcendentalists and their neighbors lived through a transformative epoch of American life. A place of two thousand-plus souls in the antebellum era, Concord was a community in ferment, whose small, ordered society founded by Puritans and defended by Minutemen was dramatically unsettled through the expansive forces of capitalism and democracy and tightly integrated into the wider world. These changes challenged a world of inherited institutions and involuntary associations with a new premium on autonomy and choice. They exposed people to cosmopolitan currents of thought and endowed them with unparalleled opportunities. They fostered uncertainties, raised new hopes, stirred dreams of perfection, and created an audience for new ideas of individual freedom and democratic equality deeply resonant today. The Transcendentalists and Their World is both an intimate journey into the life of a community and a searching cultural study of major American writers as they plumbed the depths of the universe for spiritual truths and surveyed the rapidly changing contours of their own neighborhoods. It shows us familiar figures in American literature alongside their neighbors at every level of the social order, and it reveals how this common life in Concord entered powerfully into their works. No American community of the nineteenth century has been recovered so richly and with so acute an awareness of its place in the larger American story.
Call Number: B905 .G762 2021ISBN: 9780374279325Publication Date: 2021-11-09
The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired LIfe by
A groundbreaking exploration of the neuroscience of spirituality and a bold new paradigm for health, healing, and resilience--from a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning researcher "A new revolution of health and well-being and a testament to, and celebration of, the power within."--Deepak Chopra, MD Whether it's meditation or a walk in nature, reading a sacred text or saying a prayer, there are many ways to tap into a heightened awareness of the world around you and your place in it. In The Awakened Brain, psychologist Dr. Lisa Miller shows you how. Weaving her own deeply personal journey of awakening with her groundbreaking research, Dr. Miller's book reveals that humans are universally equipped with a capacity for spirituality, and that our brains become more resilient and robust as a result of it. For leaders in business and government, truth-seekers, parents, healers, educators, and any person confronting life's biggest questions, The Awakened Brain combines cutting-edge science (from MRI studies to genetic research, epidemiology, and more) with on-the-ground application for people of all ages and from all walks of life, illuminating the surprising science of spirituality and how to engage it in our lives: * The awakened decision is the better decision. With an awakened perception, we are more creative, collaborative, ethical, and innovative. * The awakened brain is the healthier brain. An engaged spiritual life enhances grit, optimism, and resilience while providing insulation against addiction, trauma, and depression. * The awakened life is the inspired life. Loss, uncertainty, and even trauma are the gateways by which we are invited to move beyond merely coping with hardship to transcend into a life of renewal, healing, joy, and fulfillment. Absorbing, uplifting, and ultimately enlightening, The Awakened Brain is a conversation-starting saga of scientific discovery packed with counterintuitive findings and practical advice on concrete ways to access your innate spirituality and build a life of meaning and contribution.
Call Number: BF311 .M5165 2021Publication Date: 2021-08-17
Religion & Spirituality Booklists in the BPL Online Catalog
- Mindfulness & Self-Care Basics: 10 Books to Help You Become Your Best SelfFrom learning how to breathe better to finding the right friends, these books are here to help you get through life a little bit easier. Check one out today and make your life a little bit happier and healthier!
- Popular Non-Fiction Titles Concerning ReligionA list of popular titles about various world religions.
- Becoming a Yogi: Books on YogaInterested in the practice of yoga and want to learn more? Check out this booklist!
- The Art of Divination: 16 Books to Get You StartedHave you ever wondered whether you're on the right career path? Maybe you're wondering how to get in tune with your intuition, or you'd like to know how your upcoming day will go. The art of divination can help! Divination comes in many forms from all over the world and has been practiced for centuries. Here, you'll find a selection of methods to dip your toe into and get you started. Check one out today!
- Spiritual HealingThis list includes various titles under the topic of spirituality.
- Finding Happiness: 15 Self Help Titles to Brighten Your LifeFor most people the key to happiness seems to be an elusive dream. However, these books can help you find balance in your life, which in turn, will bring peace and happiness within yourself. Borrow one of these books today and find the happiness you crave.
- World Mythology and LegendsEvery part of the world has it's own myths, legends, folk tales and stories. Here is a list to get you started on exploring world mythology and legends.
- Celebrating RamadanRamadan is a holy month of fasting, introspection, and prayer for Muslims, the followers of Islam. It commemorates the first revelation of the Quran to Muhammad according to Islamic beliefs. This list highlights books, both fiction and nonfiction, for all ages. Learn more about Islam and its holiest time of the year.