What do we fail to see when we force other, earlier cultures into the Procrustean bed of concepts that organize our contemporary world? In Imagine No Religion, Carlin A. Barton and Daniel Boyarin map the myriad meanings of the Latin and Greek words religio and thrēskeia, frequently and reductively mistranslated as “religion,” in order to explore the manifold nuances of their uses within ancient Roman and Greek societies. In doing so, they reveal how we can conceptualize anew and speak of these cultures without invoking the anachronistic concept of religion. From Plautus to Tertullian, Herodotus to Josephus, Imagine No Religion illuminates cultural complexities otherwise obscured by our modern-day categories.

The historical achievements of religious belief have been large and well chronicled. But what about the accomplishments of those who have challenged religion? Traveling from classical Greece to twenty-first century America, Imagine There's No Heaven explores the role of disbelief in shaping Western civilization. At each juncture common themes emerge: by questioning the role of gods in the heavens or the role of a God in creating man on earth, nonbelievers help move science forward. By challenging the divine right of monarchs and the strictures of holy books, nonbelievers, including Jean- Jacques Rousseau and Denis Diderot, help expand human liberties, and influence the early founding of the United States. Revolutions in science, in politics, in philosophy, in art, and in psychology have been led, on multiple occasions, by those who are free of the constraints of religious life. Mitchell Stephens tells the often-courageous tales of history's most important atheists— like Denis Diderot and Salman Rushdie. Stephens makes a strong and original case for their importance not only to today's New Atheist movement but to the way many of us—believers and nonbelievers—now think and live.

From Cleveland to all over the world, the life story of a former priest who spoke out against U.S. involvement in Guatemala and fought for peace. In the wake of the Second Vatican Council 1962-1965 many religious people, especially those serving in Latin America, began to understand a spirituality that transcended sectarianism. Having come from an upwardly mobile Italian American family marked by southern Italian anti-clericalism, Blase was accustomed to hearing his parents express real differences with their institutional church. He went into the seminary despite the avid protests of his parents. Blase’s odyssey takes us from his high school and college years, through his service in Guatemala during a violent revolution, to his expulsion from that country for “subversion.” After receiving a gag order from the Church—which he could not in good conscience accept—Blase met with the editorial board of the Washington Post and released all the material he had regarding the U.S. military presence in Guatemala. This action led to his separation from the Maryknoll Fathers. Blase went on to teach at UCLA where he met the former Maryknoll Sister Theresa Killeen, who had served in Southern Chile. They married in 1970. Together they worked directly with Cesar Chavez at his headquarters in La Paz, California, built solidarity with the Central American Revolution, formed the Office of the Americas in Los Angeles, worked on the forefront of the international movement for justice and peace, and raised two children. But his work did not end there . . . “Read Blase Bonpane’s autobiography. If you can aspire to a fraction of what he has achieved, you will look back on a life well lived.” —Noam Chomsky

This book compares the conflicting and consequential interpretations of jihad offered by mainstream Muslim scholars, violent Muslim radicals, and New Atheists.

In this bold and provocative new book, the author of In the Beginning and The Reenchantment of Nature challenges the widely held assumption that the world is becoming more secular and demonstrates why atheism cannot provide the moral and intellectual guidance essential for coping with the complexities of modern life. Atheism is one of the most important movements in modern Western culture. For the last two hundred years, it seemed to be on the verge of eliminating religion as an outmoded and dangerous superstition. Recent years, however, have witnessed the decline of disbelief and a rise in religious devotion throughout the world. In THE TWILIGHT OF ATHEISM, the distinguished historian and theologian Alister McGrath examines what went wrong with the atheist dream and explains why religion and faith are destined to play a central role in the twenty-first century. A former atheist who is now one of Christianity’s foremost scholars, McGrath traces the history of atheism from its emergence in eighteenth-century Europe as a revolutionary worldview that offered liberation from the rigidity of traditional religion and the oppression of tyrannical monarchs, to its golden age in the first half of the twentieth century. Blending thoughtful, authoritative historical analysis with incisive portraits of such leading and influential atheists as Sigmund Freud and Richard Dawkins, McGrath exposes the flaws at the heart of atheism, and argues that the renewal of faith is a natural, inevitable, and necessary response to its failures. THE TWILIGHT OF ATHEISM will unsettle believers and nonbelievers alike. A powerful rebuttal of the philosophy that, for better and for worse, has exerted tremendous influence on Western history, it carries major implications for the future of both religion and unbelief in our society.

Faith No More seeks to understand how and why people lose their faith, sever their ties with religious organizations, and experience a secularizing transformation in their own personal lives. Based on in-depth interviews with 75 individuals from a variety of backgrounds and religious traditions, this book offers a rich and colorful exploration of the human journey from religiosity to secularity.

"With a new introduction by the author"--Jkt.

Examining a wide array of ancient writings, Brent Nongbri dispels the commonly held idea that there is such a thing as ancient religion. Nongbri shows how misleading it is to speak as though religion was a concept native to pre-modern cultures.

In John Lennon and the Jews, Ze¿ev Maghen takes his readers on an audacious, uproariously funny Magical Mystery Tour of the mind and heart. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance meets Hitchhiker¿s Guide to the Galaxy in this provocative, creative and stunningly original work that the Jerusalem Post likens to a ¿dazzling intellectual amusement park.¿ A chance encounter at LAX introduces Maghen to a trio of Hare Krishna missionaries who turn out to be Israeli émigrés. They insist that Judaism is archaic, irrational, immoral and just downright stupid; that affiliating with the Jewish people in our modern, globalizing day and age is pointless and passé. Their adamant universalism and ¿everything is everything¿ rejection of their Jewish identity put the author in mind of his favorite Beatle¿s famous lyric, ¿Imagine there¿s no countries¿and no religion too.¿ John Lennon and the Jews is Maghen¿s confrontation with Lennon¿s vision of one-worldism and other in vogue beliefs that threaten Jewish continuity today. This work is a journey through centuries, countries, sitcoms, and ideas that will leave no thinking, feeling person unaffected. ¿You have never had so much fun cogitating,¿ writes one reader. ¿It¿s like sitting in a yeshiva in front of a highly erudite rabbi ¿ on mushrooms.¿

From the New York Times bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed comes a brave, frank, and exquisitely written memoir that will change the way you see the world. Barbara Ehrenreich is one of the most important thinkers of our time. Educated as a scientist, she is an author, journalist, activist, and advocate for social justice. In Living With a Wild God, she recounts her quest-beginning in childhood-to find ""the Truth"" about the universe and everything else: What's really going on? Why are we here? In middle age, she rediscovered the journal she had kept during her tumultuous adolescence, which records an event so strange, so cataclysmic, that she had never, in all the intervening years, written or spoken about it to anyone. It was the kind of event that people call a ""mystical experience""-and, to a steadfast atheist and rationalist, nothing less than shattering. In Living With a Wild God, Ehrenreich reconstructs her childhood mission, bringing an older woman's wry and erudite perspective to a young girl's impassioned obsession with the questions that, at one point or another, torment us all. The result is both deeply personal and cosmically sweeping-a searing memoir and a profound reflection on science, religion, and the human condition. With her signature combination of intellectual rigor and uninhibited imagination, Ehrenreich offers a true literary achievement-a work that has the power not only to entertain but amaze.