For those of you considering the purchase of this book allow me at the very first to acknowledge that I am not a theologian, a pastor or a teacher ordained to the ministry of the Gospel by any organized religious group. The pages within the covers are not written to extol or acclaim the need for or value of religion. You will find many reasons presented that cause me to see and know the opposite is true. In my Introduction I call this manuscript "A Book of Warning." There is a tremendous movement in the world to unite all faiths into a common religion that can be accepted by everyone. Hidden behind the words and actions of more than a few politicians and many religious leaders is the ominous promotion of what the media has called a "One World Religion." Political and financial leaders around the world, many who prefer to remain in deep cover, are proclaiming that for the world to become more stable we must have a "New One World Government." They realize that for this system of government to work there must be some form of common agreement, therefore they are preparing the way for the false prophet. The world we live in which I have called "The Devil's Playground," is changing at a pace previously unimaginable. In this documented commentary I hope to alert the readers to not only why and how, but introduce them to the only hope of escape from the coming storm. In the extremely imminent future, all the things that those captive in the playground have put their trust and confidence in will suddenly evaporate like a mirage. I pray that readers of this book may find the directions for their escape.

Wisdom and Folly in Religion "is addressed to all who have been unable to escape the tragic sense of life, to all who contemplate with fear and pity the lot of suffering, sinful man on the torn earth, and to all wrestlers with God. It speaks to and confirms our doubt in the efficacy of religion to save us from disaster; it is almost exuberantly iconoclastic in its attack on modern superstitions. "But Haroutunian's iconoclasm is deeply religious. His anti-religion is like that of the prophets and his protest against contemporary religion is like that of the early Protestants. . . . The note of assurance, the confession of faith in divine sovereignty and in the forgiveness of sins are more moving and fundamental elements. "The writer has gone far toward the accomplishment of two tasks which are but one for him. The first of these is the effort to make explicit and to interpret in Christian terms the implicit religious content of the modern mind. . . . The second task is that of stating afresh the faith of the Reformers which modern Protestantism sets forth in pale images when it does not pervert it." H. Richard Niebuhr from the preface

For those of you considering the purchase of this book allow me at the very first to acknowledge that I am not a theologian, a pastor or a teacher ordained to the ministry of the Gospel by any organized religious group. The pages within the covers are not written to extol or acclaim the need for or value of religion. You will find many reasons presented that cause me to see and know the opposite is true. In my Introduction I call this manuscript "A Book of Warning." There is a tremendous movement in the world to unite all faiths into a common religion that can be accepted by everyone. Hidden behind the words and actions of more than a few politicians and many religious leaders is the ominous promotion of what the media has called a "One World Religion." Political and financial leaders around the world, many who prefer to remain in deep cover, are proclaiming that for the world to become more stable we must have a "New One World Government." They realize that for this system of government to work there must be some form of common agreement, therefore they are preparing the way for the false prophet. The world we live in which I have called "The Devil's Playground," is changing at a pace previously unimaginable. In this documented commentary I hope to alert the readers to not only why and how, but introduce them to the only hope of escape from the coming storm. In the extremely imminent future, all the things that those captive in the playground have put their trust and confidence in will suddenly evaporate like a mirage. I pray that readers of this book may find the directions for their escape.

Reissuing works originally published between 1973 and 1997, Routledge Library Editions: 19th Century Religion (18 volumes) offers a selection of scholarship covering historical developments in religious thinking. Topics include the origin of Catholicism in America, sexual liberation and religion in Europe, and the emergence of Atheism in Victorian England. This set also includes collections of sermons and essays from some of the most influential preachers of the nineteenth century.

These essays by leading historians and literary scholars investigate the role of religion in shaping political, social and literary forms, and their reciprocal role in shaping early modern religion, from the Reformation to the Civil Wars. Reflecting and rethinking the insights of new historicism and cultural studies, individual essays take up various aspects of the productive, if tense, relation between Tudor-Stuart Christianity and culture, and explore how religion informs some of the central texts of English Renaissance literature: the vernacular Bible, Foxe's Acts and Monuments, Hooker's Laws, Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, the poems of John Donne, Amelia Lanyer and John Milton. The collection demonstrates the centrality of religion to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, and its influence on early modern constructions of gender, subjectivity and nationhood.

A broad critique of the negative role that religion has played in influencing human culture historically along with an updated look at its conflict with the atheist ethos. This goes hand in hand with a personal reflection on why the author became a non-believer.