A Fresh Cup of Tolerance pioneers a coherent, practical theology of the burgeoning universalism movement. It builds on broad spiritual foundations from Native American, Asian, Neopagan, Judeo-Christian, and Islamic traditions. Pragmatic and straightforward, it addresses the most pressing global dilemmas of our time: environment, globalization, feminism and gender issues, religious strife, oppression, poverty, war, and prejudice. Theologically, it systematically explores our many views of God; good, evil, sin, and suffering; revelation; spirituality in the digital age; the spirit of love and community; and so on. However, it is not a pleasant treatise on love. It is a living, faith-in-action, theology free of rigid words (Scriptures), beliefs (dogma), or practices (rituals). With seven billion people on the planet, many more to come, cooperating and living (loving) together is a survival essential. In a crisis, our best nature surfaces—but we seem unable to sustain a sense of true community and compassion for more than a few CNN weeks at a time. It is a spiritual priority to seek a means to sustain a loving community for longer periods—whether within the family, the community, the larger society, or the world. A theology of universalism offers a pathway of hope.

Today’s counseling clients want more than traditional therapy. They want something new, bold, and effective, and A Fresh Cup of Counseling serves just that. While the power of clinical applications in spiritual counseling has long been discussed by field experts, little has been written about the subject—until now. Packed with theoretical and practical knowledge about this power, the book offers a breakthrough guide to spiritual counseling with ideas, training, and real-life case studies for students and professionals alike. Written by Rev. Dr. Tom Norris—a spiritual counselor and Universalist minister with fifty years of experience in social work, psychotherapy, group therapy, marriage and family therapy, and hypnotherapy—this book is a treasure trove of contemporary clinical and scientific knowledge, starting from a purely psychosocial and psychological perspective and diving into the evolution of the spiritual therapeutic discipline. In the process, it pulls from Buddhist, Judeo-Christian, Native American, Islamic, Yin Yang, Neopagan, Shamanic, Hindu, and other religions, using their practices and ideals (from past lives and chakra balancing to meditation and Ultraterrestrials) to demonstrate the power of spirituality in the holistic healing process. The result? A dynamic psycho-spiritual expedition that helps counselors and their clients unleash positive, lasting transformation.

How can people of diverse religious, historical, ethnic, and linguistic allegiances and identities live together without committing violence, inflicting suffering, or oppressing each other? Western civilization has long understood this dilemma as a question of toleration, yet the logic of toleration and the logic of multicultural rights entrenchment are two very different things. In this volume, contributors suggest we also think beyond toleration to mutual respect, practiced before the creation of modern multiculturalism in the West. Salman Rushdie reflects on the once mutually tolerant Sufi-Hindu culture of Kashmir. Ira Katznelson follows with an intellectual history of toleration as a layered institution in the West and councils against assuming we have transcended the need for such tolerance. Charles Taylor advances a new approach to secularism in our multicultural world, and Akeel Bilgrami responds by urging caution against making it difficult to condemn or make illegal dangerous forms of intolerance. The political theorist Nadia Urbanati explores why the West did not pursue Cicero’s humanist ideal of concord as a response to religious discord. The volume concludes with a refutation of the claim that toleration was invented in the West and is alien to non-Western cultures.

Polarization between political religionists and militant secularists on both sides of the Atlantic is on the rise. Critically engaging with traditional secularism and religious accommodationism, this collection introduces a constitutional secularism that robustly meets contemporary challenges. It identifies which connections between religion and the state are compatible with the liberal, republican, and democratic principles of constitutional democracy and assesses the success of their implementation in the birthplace of political secularism: the United States and Western Europe. Approaching this issue from philosophical, legal, historical, political, and sociological perspectives, the contributors wage a thorough defense of their project's theoretical and institutional legitimacy. Their work brings fresh insight to debates over the balance of human rights and religious freedom, the proper definition of a nonestablishment norm, and the relationship between sovereignty and legal pluralism. They discuss the genealogy of and tensions involving international legal rights to religious freedom, religious symbols in public spaces, religious arguments in public debates, the jurisdiction of religious authorities in personal law, and the dilemmas of religious accommodation in national constitutions and public policy when it violates international human rights agreements or liberal-democratic principles. If we profoundly rethink the concepts of religion and secularism, these thinkers argue, a principled adjudication of competing claims becomes possible.

A fallen noblewoman’s first case as a private investigator sends her on a wild adventure on the streets of Regency London in this mystery series debut. In a Regency London that isn’t quite the one we know, young women of family whose reputations have been ruined are known as the Fallen. Young Sarah Tolerance is one such: a daughter of the nobility who ran away with her brother’s fencing-master. Now that the fencing-master has died, everyone expects her to earn her living as a whore. But Sarah is unwilling. Instead, she invents a new role for herself, and a new vocation: “investigative agent.” For Sarah, with her equivocal position in society, is able to float between social layers, unearth secrets, find things that were lost, and lose things too dangerous to be kept. Her stock in trade is her wits, her discretion, and her expertise with the smallsword—for her fencing-master taught her that as well. She will need all her skills soon, when she is approached by an agent of the Count Verseillon, for a task that seems routine: reclaim an antique fan he once gave to “a lady with brown eyes.” The fan, he tells her, is an heirloom; the lady, his first love. But as Sarah Tolerance unravels the mystery that surrounds the fan, she discovers that she—and the Count—are not the only ones seeking it, and that nothing about this task is what it seems. Praise for Point of Honour “Sarah is a fascinating heroine, and Robins surrounds her with equally intriguing secondary characters. Politics, deception, danger, and a bit of romance all come together beautifully in this superb debut.” —Booklist “An action-packed, suspense-filled read, complete with a 19th-century heroine reminiscent of the present day Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” —Romantic Times

Why it's wrong to single out religious liberty for special legal protections This provocative book addresses one of the most enduring puzzles in political philosophy and constitutional theory—why is religion singled out for preferential treatment in both law and public discourse? Why are religious obligations that conflict with the law accorded special toleration while other obligations of conscience are not? In Why Tolerate Religion?, Brian Leiter shows why our reasons for tolerating religion are not specific to religion but apply to all claims of conscience, and why a government committed to liberty of conscience is not required by the principle of toleration to grant exemptions to laws that promote the general welfare.

Rev. Canon Dr. Barclay Steadmore can’t help but put pen to paper in retirement. His new job with the Tangleville Mirror allows him to stir up controversy by posing thought-provoking theological questions to secular and religious audiences in his new series, “The Tangleville Chronicles.” With the encouragement of his wife, Faith, and the camaraderie of his friends—two retired priests and Tangleville’s newest town council member, Harry Sting—Dr. Steadmore works to push traditional Christian values into direct opposition with the twenty-first century’s fluctuating values. But where God leads us is not what anyone can ultimately predict. This dynamite conclusion to the Tangleville series will leave you challenged, spiritually renewed, and longing for more.

This book touches on certain dynamics regarding the theoretical and cultural basis of the model Fethullah Gulen has developed based on dialogue, tolerance, concurrence among different groups that come from different religions, cultures, and civilizations. Gulen's model focuses on human beings, those who surround all their world with thought and action, and who are directed toward love for God and for creation.