Category Archives: religion

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Something More: Nurturing Your Child’s Spiritual Growth

From Gina Scaglione 
Title:  Something More: Nurturing Your Child’s Spiritual Growth
Author:  Jean Grasso Fitzpatrick 
This book is meant to be a guide to raising your children with spirituality, not necessarily religion of any one kind. I thought that it would be the perfect book for our family. However, I found that it was definitely written with a Judeo-Christian twist which was very disappointing to me. I do not recommend this book for people not practicing either the Jewish or Christian faiths.

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God is not great : how religion poisons everything

From Ellen Druda
Author:  Christopher  Hitchens
God is not great : how religion poisons everything 
The late Christopher Hitchens ended his writing career as one of the world’s best known atheists.  If you want to understand his reasons, this is the book to read.  Filled with essays that take on the popular organized religious tenants, he takes them apart brilliantly at every turn with a rigorous intellectualism.  Hitchens writes like he lived his life: with courage, humor, and a clarity of thought that cuts through dogma like a saber.

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Left to Tell

From Caryn Eve Murray
author: Ilibagiza, Immaculee
“Left to Tell”
This is a book about the unthinkable, a Rwandan massacre that destroyed one woman’s country, along with her home and family but not her faith or hope for the future. Immaculee Illibagiza’s words are not easy to absorb, nor are the photos of her loving family easy to gaze upon after the details of their brutal killings at the hands of Hutu death squads are revealed in these pages. There is much to contemplate – about faith, about human nature and even inhuman nature – in this memoir. That she and a handful of other Tutsis survived after being hidden in the home of a Hutu pastor is remarkable and yet gut-wrenching. This is a book worth reading slowly. It is worth reading carefully. It is worth, well worth, reading.

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The Case for Easter: A Journalist Investigates the Evidence for the Resurrection

From Gina Scaglione
author: Strobel, Lee
The Case for Easter: A Journalist Investigates the Evidence for the Resurrection
The weekend before Easter, I took my daughter to an event at a local Christian church.  We do not attend the church, but they had sent an invitation home in the kindergartener’s folders at school.  When I arrived they handed out the book “The Case for Easter”.  Not being a Christian, I tossed the book aside when I got home.  However, although I am not a Christian, I am a theist and absolutely love reading books on all different religions.  Well, when I was looking for something to read I grabbed this book.  I’m glad that I did!  Although I do not believe everything in it, the book did reopen my eyes to the way spiritual people can be treated.  If you simply need a reminder about how thankful we all should be, read this book.

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The Poisonwood Bible

From Caryn Eve Murray
author: Kingsolver, Barbara
The Poisonwood Bible
This tragic epic of a minister’s family, following the family patriarch somewhat reluctantly as he does God’s work in the Congo, is a gripping study of faith and folly. Perhaps the greatest strength of this book, beyond its rich, dramatic narrative, is the strength of its female characters: the minister’s wife, and each of his four daughters, all give voice to the pages, speaking in turn, telling their stories as the chapters (and concomitant tragedies) unfold. Set against the backdrop of real history unfolding in that part of the world (Congo’s independence and political strife), this book is as much a history lesson for the uninitiated as it is a study in personal strength, traditions and superstition and perhaps best of all, both the pitfalls and payoffs of sticking to one’s convictions against all odds.

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Girl Meets God

From Rebecca Segers
author: Winner, Lauren F.
Girl Meets God
 ”Girl Meets God” is the memoir of a young woman who is the product of a Jewish/Christian marriage, but raised a Reformed Jew.  As she grows into her teens, she is drawn ever more deeply into her faith and as a college student at Columbia, she converts to Orthodox Judaism (this is necessary as her Judaism has been passed down patrilineally and is thus not accepted according to Orthodox Jewish standards).  Notwithstanding her deep commitment to the faith of her father(s), she finds herself drawn even more fully to Jesus and ultimately commits to Christianity, converting yet again while studying at Oxford University in England.  An incredibly bright and articulate woman, Lauren is still sorting out her connections to her past and her deepening Christian identity.  At times witty, clever, midrashic and thoughtful or all at once, this moving memoir is sure to make the reader ponder his or her own faith journey and perhaps strengthen it as well.

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The supernatural power of a transformed mind : access to a life of miracles

From Ginny Pisciotta
author: Johnson, Bill
The supernatural power of a transformed mind : access to a life of miracles

If you are tired of reading and talking about a gospel of power, but not seeing it in action, this book is a must read. Miracles should be a normal part of Christianity. To return to the orginal mission, to do what Jesus did, we must radically change our thinking. We must renew our minds. Bill Johnson does a great job of showing us what happens when we allow God’s supernatural power to work through us, and also how we can bring this kingdom reality into our lives.