How do you find the courage to go on when everything you knew is gone? That is a question faced by Philipp Weingartner several times in his life. Born into a family of insignificant farm labourers in a town, region, and country erased from our maps, Philipp set out on a journey—both geographical and spiritual—across the front lines of two World Wars, and eventually across an ocean to a new life in Canada. This biographic collaboration between Erich Weingartner and his late father Philipp's writings gives witness to the tenacity of the human spirit. It provides abundant affirmation that commitment to a life of faith can empower ordinary people to become extraordinary in times of great need. Based on diaries, letters, articles and sermons, A Journey of Faith details one man's lived experience of tragedy, survival, and a passion to serve the less fortunate.

From "the world's greatest tour guide," a deeply-researched, captivating journey through the rich history of Christianity and the winding paths of the French and Italian countryside that will feed mind, body, and soul (New York Times). "What a wondrous work! This beautifully written and totally clear-eyed account of his pilgrimage will have you wondering whether we should all embark on such a journey, either of the body, the soul or, as in Egan's case, both." --Cokie Roberts "Egan draws us in, making us feel frozen in the snow-covered Alps, joyful in valleys of trees with low-hanging fruit, skeptical of the relics of embalmed saints and hopeful for the healing of his encrusted toes, so worn and weathered from their walk."--The Washington Post Moved by his mother's death and his Irish Catholic family's complicated history with the church, Timothy Egan decided to follow in the footsteps of centuries of seekers to force a reckoning with his own beliefs. He embarked on a thousand-mile pilgrimage through the theological cradle of Christianity to explore the religion in the world that it created. Egan sets out along the Via Francigena, once the major medieval trail leading the devout to Rome, and travels overland via the alpine peaks and small mountain towns of France, Switzerland and Italy, accompanied by a quirky cast of fellow pilgrims and by some of the towering figures of the faith--Joan of Arc, Henry VIII, Martin Luther. The goal: walking to St. Peter's Square, in hopes of meeting the galvanizing pope who is struggling to hold together the church through the worst crisis in half a millennium. A thrilling journey, a family story, and a revealing history, A Pilgrimage to Eternity looks for our future in its search for God.

A clarion call for interfaith dialogue in the U.S., this “splendid exposition of non-Christian approaches to God . . . encourages an increased religious literacy that . . . will contribute richness and diversity to our national identity” (Publishers Weekly) In this tenth-anniversary edition of Encountering God, religious scholar Diana Eck shows why dialogue with people of other faiths remains crucial in today’s interdependent world—globally, nationally, and even locally. As the director of the Pluralism Project—which seeks to map the new religious diversity of the United States, from Hinduism and Buddhism to Islam—she reveals how her own encounters with other religions have shaped and enlarged her Christian faith toward a bold new Christian pluralism.

From the book: " What is a conversion? The question is like asking, 'What is falling in love?' There is no standard procedure, no fixed time. No Damascus Road experience has been vouchsafed me; I have just stumbled on, like Bunyan's Pilgrim, falling into the Slough of Despond, locked up in Doubting Castle, terrified at passing through the Valley of the Shadow of Death; from time to time, by God's mercy, relieved of my burden of sin, but only, alas, soon to acquire it again." "From my earliest years, there was something going on inside me other than vague aspirations to make a name for myself and a stir in the world: something that led me to feel myself a stranger among strangers in a strange land, whose true habitat was elsewhere, another destiny whose realization would swallow up time into Eternity, transform flesh into spirit, knowledge into faith, and reveal in transcendental terms what our earthly life truly signifies." In November 1982, Malcolm Muggeridge was received into the Roman Catholic Church, an event which attracted much attention and curiosity. To Malcolm Muggeridge, it signified "a sense of homecoming, of picking up the threads of a lost life." Malcolm Muggeridge, well known around the world in the latter part of the twentieth century as a journalist, writer, and media figure, is still remembered as a vociferous unbeliever for a great part of his career. But always he had had an awareness that another dimension existed, that there was a destiny beyond the devices and desires of the ego, and that earthly life could not be the end. This book, first published in 1988 and the last of his writing to be published in his lifetime, is a personal statement of the history and development of his religious beliefs. An important section relates to Mother Teresa of Calcutta, latterly beatified, and with expectations to becoming a Saint. Her influence was perhaps the most powerful force leading this deeply thinking man to God and to the Roman Catholic Church. He describes also the effect upon him of meetings with Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a man whom he considers to be one of the greatest prophets of our time, with a profound spiritual message for our turbulent world. This moving testimony is not about the mechanics of becoming a Roman Catholic. Rather, it is about a series of happenings, occasions of enlightenment, that led one spiritually troubled man to find God. It is a statement of belief which will fascinate all who are interested in the workings of the human mind, and will inspire all who seek the Truth.

Is there a way to walk faithfully through doubt and come out the other side with a deeper love for Jesus, the church, and its tradition? Can we question our faith without losing it? Award-winning author, pastor, and professor A. J. Swoboda has witnessed many young people wrestle with their core Christian beliefs. Too often, what begins as a set of critical and important questions turns to resentment and faith abandonment. Unfortunately, the church has largely ignored its task of serving people along their journey of questioning. The local church must walk alongside those who are deconstructing their faith and show them how to reconstruct it. Drawing on his own experience of deconstruction, Swoboda offers tools to help emerging adults navigate their faith in a hostile landscape. Doubt is a part of our natural spiritual journey, says Swoboda, and deconstruction is a legitimate space to encounter the living God. After Doubt offers a hopeful, practical vision of spiritual formation for those in the process of faith deconstruction and those who serve them. Foreword by pastor and author John Mark Comer.

A provocative piece of literary work! Provides a vivid exposition of the evil within our midst, the truly dark side of our Saint Lucian culture. Disturbing in its tortuosity, it is not for the faint of heart or those with deep dark secrets. It may be found offensive, inflammatory, and challenging to many of previous eras and also to those in this current era who sing and dance to the words I wanna be a billionaire so freaking bad! . . . Wanna be on the cover of Forbes magazine . . . buy the things I never had! A must read, however, for those seekers of wealth, power, and status! The book does a great job of characterizing the escalating problem of depravity of the human soul stemming from social, cultural, and spiritual deficiencies. It begs the question, Has our holy mother, the Catholic church, been able to attain that nexus between Saint Lucias Afrocentric culture and Christianity? Has our local church been able to challenge and confront what has been deemed acceptable to the bourgeoisie as inherent social/cultural/spiritual values reflected in duplicity in religious outlook? The book however provides a ray of hope as it culminates in an expression of the beauty of the sacramental life provided by mother church, which is available to all in order to put on Gods armor so as to be able to resist the devils tactics. It is hoped that there are still many God-fearing persons in our society who continue to strive for the virtues of honesty and integrity, not willing to compromise the well-being of their fellowman for the sake of an insatiable ambition for power, wealth, and fame! This brilliant exposition then ought to move those who possess a genuine soul, a social and moral conscience, those who still bear light in their hearts, to bring light and life into successive generations of our beloved country, Saint Lucia, seeking to reject evil under all conditions.

A sweeping yet intimate narrative about the last hundred years of turbulent European history, as seen through one of Mitteleuropa’s greatest houses—and the lives of its occupants When Norman Eisen moved into the US ambassador’s residence in Prague, returning to the land his mother had fled after the Holocaust, he was startled to discover swastikas hidden beneath the furniture in his new home. These symbols of Nazi Germany were remnants of the residence’s forgotten history, and evidence that we never live far from the past. From that discovery unspooled the twisting, captivating tale of four of the remarkable people who had called this palace home. Their story is Europe’s, and The Last Palace chronicles the upheavals that transformed the continent over the past century. There was the optimistic Jewish financial baron, Otto Petschek, who built the palace after World War I as a statement of his faith in democracy, only to have that faith shattered; Rudolf Toussaint, the cultured, compromised German general who occupied the palace during World War II, ultimately putting his life at risk to save the house and Prague itself from destruction; Laurence Steinhardt, the first postwar US ambassador whose quixotic struggle to keep the palace out of Communist hands was paired with his pitched efforts to rescue the country from Soviet domination; and Shirley Temple Black, an eyewitness to the crushing of the 1968 Prague Spring by Soviet tanks, who determined to return to Prague and help end totalitarianism—and did just that as US ambassador in 1989. Weaving in the life of Eisen’s own mother to demonstrate how those without power and privilege moved through history, The Last Palace tells the dramatic and surprisingly cyclical tale of the triumph of liberal democracy.