At any given time there are around one billion pigs in the world; that’s one for every seven of us. And where would we be without them? Prolific, ubiquitous, smart, adaptable, able to turn garbage into good-quality protein just by eating it, pigs have been our companions since neolithic days when they obligingly domesticated themselves, coming in out if the wild to truffle around our waste pits. It’s not all about the bacon: the resourceful pig, now reformatted in micro packages, has developed a whole new career as a portable pet. And thanks to the recent genome mapping we now know that pig physiology is remarkably similar to our own. The Pig: A Natural History covers evolution from prehistoric “hell pig” to placid porker; anatomy, biology, and behavior; the pig’s contribution to our lives; and the high profile of this remarkable beast in popular culture.

Pigs In The Pulpit - Identifying and exposing systematic abuse, cult-like tendencies and deception in the Christian church.

Includes an excerpt from Overcoming rejection.

Have you ever caused an explosion in chemistry class? Wired the hall lockers? Was your glove compartment stuffed with ignored tickets? Did you live in shacks, garages, and tents? Did you have 74 addresses by the time you were 12? This book traces the life of Lee Truman, who against all odds became a pastor. As a child, constantly moving meant beating down the bullies on each new school playground. High school was a mix of racing cars, getting into trouble, and finally, learning about being a Christian. A friend urged him to leave engineering studies for Bible School, where he excelled in pranks and skiing. With a Bible school certificate, he enrolled in Taylor University and met his wife, Ruth. Seminary education followed at Emory and Drew Universities. Back in California he was ordained and appointed to a basement church. Eight churches were spread out over forty years, resulting in 1,470 new members, 670 marriages, and 592 baptisms, plus new buildings, church buses, and nursery schools. The story also includes the adventures of leading youth work teams to Africa, Israel, Australia, Italy, and India. Retired, he and Ruth live in Camarillo, California.

In 1517 an Augustinian monk by the name of Martin Luther nailed ninety-five statements to the door at Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. This was not a means of open debate but a desire to discuss scholarly objections to church practices of the time. Five centuries later, many of the same errors and heresies have crept back into the evangelical church. A modern ninety-five theses, couched in new terms for a new generation, require scholarly debate once again. Through modern-day apostles and prophets, and through the elitists within the evangelical church, the doctrine of buying God's grace and favor has been propagated through appeals for seed offerings and "atonement-day" donations in order to garner God's blessings. Pragmatic approaches to preaching the gospel through such movements as the seeker-driven models have moved the focus of the message of Christ and the worship of God from being God-centered to human-centered. Sound historical doctrines, such as the Trinity, have been relegated to the sidelines in favor of unity and ecumenicalism with Oneness preachers. In the words of Martin Luther, "Out of love for the truth and the desire to bring it to light," the following propositions need to be discussed in their entirety by church leaders, pastors, and laypeople alike.

The English Pig is an account of pigs and pig-keeping from the sixteenth century to modern times, concentrating on the domestic, cottage pig, rather than commercial farming. In Victorian England the pig was an integral part of village life: both visible and essential. Living in close proximity to its owners, fed on scraps and the subject of perennial interest, the pig when dead provided the means to repay social and monetary debts as well as excellent meat. While the words associated with the pig, such as 'hoggish', 'swine' and 'pigsty', and phrases like 'greedy as a pig', associate the pig with greed and dirt, this book shows the pig's virtues, intelligence and distinctive character. It is a portrait of one of the most recognisable but least known of farm animals, seen here also in many photographs and other representations. The pig has a modest place in literature from Fielding's pig-keeping Parson Trulliber to Hardy's Jude the Obscure and to Flora Thompson's Lark Rise to Candleford. In modern times, while vanishing from the sight of most people, it has been sentimentalised in children's stories and commercialised in advertisements.

Catherine and Justo Gonzalez provide a valuable resource for preaching and biblical interpretation. An account of liberation theology's impact on the task of preaching is offered by two historians of doctrine who are intimately aware of the need to be open to marginalized perspectives in the church. Early Christian preachers had much to say on issues such as the origins and proper use of wealth, the rights and duties of the poor and rich, and the nature of ownership. The Gonzalezes recapture this early Christian spirit offering concrete ways that the interpretation of specific biblical texts may be enriched or corrected in order to speak directly to the whole life of the whole church. Often used as a text in preaching courses, The Liberating Pulpit helps to clarify and to bridge the gap between those whose preaching and hermeneutics tend to be more traditional and the various minorities who tend to read Scripture in a different way.