Crisis Of Faith

"People don't abandon faith because they have doubts. People abandon faith because they think they're not allowed to have doubts." Too often, our honest questions about faith are met with cold confidence and easy answers. But false certitude doesn't result in strong faith—it results in disillusionment, or worse, in a dogmatic, overweening faith unable to see itself or its object clearly. Even as a pastor, Austin Fischer has experienced the shadows of doubt and disillusionment. In Faith in the Shadows, he leans into perennial questions about Christianity with raw and fearless integrity. He addresses contemporary science, the problem of evil, hell, God's silence, and other issues, offering not only fresh treatments of these questions but also a fresh paradigm for thinking about doubt itself. Doubt, Fischer contends, is no reason to leave the faith. Instead, it's an invitation to a more honest faith—a faith that's not in control, but that trusts more fully in its Lord.

Working from the experiences of the later mystics Keating offers the spiritual sense of scripture elaborated by the Fathers and Mothers of the Church, which has been used repeatedly to illustrate insights useful to the various stages of spiritual development. This rich storytelling tradition traces a spiritual journey, outlining a way of listening to God by sharpening the habit of contemporary prayer.

Late pastor Ron Dunn's acclaimed book clarifies the differences between true and counterfeit faith, showing faith's rewards to be more about experiencing God's presence than in earthly blessings.

Fresh from his victory on Arkunasha, the young Commander Farsight leads a crusade to reclaim tau colonies lost to mankind's Imperium. The tau are a mysterious alien race, diametrically opposed to the Imperium of Man in every possible way, from their mastery of technology to their methods of warfare and social structure. Yet in galactic terms they are a young race, and naïve when it comes to the manipulations of Chaos. When promising young commander Farsight is promoted to lead a crusade across the Damocles Gulf to reclaim the tau’s lost colonies from mankind, the mood is one of optimism. With their mighty fleet, and superior weapons and machines, how can their endeavour possibly fail? However, despite a parade of early successes, Commander Farsight soon faces enemies he wasn’t anticipating, and finds not only his courage but also his soul tested to the very limit.

The Victorian crisis of faith has dominated discussions of religion and the Victorians. Stories are frequently told of prominent Victorians such as George Eliot losing their faith. This crisis is presented as demonstrating the intellectual weakness of Christianity as it was assaulted by new lines of thought such as Darwinism and biblical criticism. This study serves as a corrective to that narrative. It focuses on freethinking and Secularist leaders who came to faith. As sceptics, they had imbibed all the latest ideas that seemed to undermine faith; nevertheless, they went on to experience a crisis of doubt, and then to defend in their writings and lectures the intellectual cogency of Christianity. The Victorian crisis of doubt was surprisingly large. Telling this story serves to restore its true proportion and to reveal the intellectual strength of faith in the nineteenth century.

Trusting Jesus is hard. It requires following the unseen into an unknown, and believing Jesus's words over and against the threats we see or the fears we feel. Through the imaginative retelling of 35 Bible stories, Not by Sight gives us glimpses of what it means to walk by faith and counsel for how to trust God's promises more than our perceptions and to find rest in the faithfulness of God.

"One typical parish, one pivotal year. A religious educator weighs her feminist views against her duties as a teacher of Catholic doctrine. An orthodox layman launches an attack on what he sees as a wave of moral anarchy. A young priest chooses between his vow of celibacy and his burning need for intimacy. These are some of the people we come to know in What God Allows, journalist Ivor Shapiro's chronicle of a year in the life of St. Paul's Church in Kenmore, New York. Among others we encounter: a seventy-year-old divorcee, as devoted to the Mother of God as she is skeptical about the celibate elite that rules her church; a seven-year-old boy, conquering new Nintendo worlds while preparing for his first sacramental confession; a young professional couple, living in the shadow of grief and finding in the church reasons to hope - and to fight." "One parish, one year. Squabbles over authority, quests for inner peace, small victories of faith. In Rome, Pope John Paul II launches a renewed assault on liberal thought and instruction in the church he leads. In Kenmore the much-loved pastor of St. Paul's prepares to end his twelve-year tenure. By year's end, two disillusioned ministry staffers quit the St. Paul's payroll. But beyond the clash of personalities in one parish, the events of this year display the ambiguous power balance that marks today's Catholic Church." "In these pages, the church is neither target nor stereotype. What God Allows weaves real-life human dramas into a highly readable narrative, vividly portraying a seasoned church's cheerful tenacity in a time of trial. The story touches on (without obsessing over) the issues that divide parishioners from one another and, sometimes, from their sacraments: birth control, divorce, and abortion; celibacy and scandal; orthodoxy and freedom of thought. The author paints a gentle but sardonic portrait of ordinary people with foibles both amusing and annoying - people who seek meaning in a puzzling world, and find it through their decision to believe and to belong." "Through their stories, a picture emerges of what it means to be Catholic in North America at the end of the twentieth century, and of what the church of tomorrow - a church largely without priests - might look like. The author seems in no doubt that the church will survive its current trials in some way. He paints a picture of a faith and sensibility that keep generations of Catholics coming back - or at least keep them (long after they quit showing up at Sunday Mass) Catholics for life. What God Allows helps us understand why, as Jimmy Breslin once said, "there's no such thing as a lapsed Catholic.""--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved