Religion and Women’s Bondage in the Dr. Joseph Murphy Live! series is the only authorized edition in print. Dr. Joseph Murphy has been acclaimed as a major figure in the human potential movement, the spiritual heir to writers like James Allen, Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, and Norman Vincent Peale, and a precursor and inspirer of contemporary motivational writers and speakers like Tony Robbins, Zig Ziglar, and Earl Nightingale. He changed the lives of people all over the world and was one of the best-selling authors of the mid-20th century. Dr. Murphy wrote, taught, counseled, and lectured to thousands every Sunday as Minister-Director of the Church of Divine Science in Los Angeles. Over the years, Dr. Murphy has given lectures and radio talks to audiences all over the world. Millions of people tuned in his daily radio program and have read the over 30 books that he has written. His books have sold over 15 million copies. In his lectures he points out how real people have radically improved their lives by applying specific aspects of his concepts, and gives the listener guidelines on how they too can enrich their lives Never say, "I can't." Overcome that fear by substituting the following, "I can do all things through the power of my own subconscious mind." Make his teachings a part of your life with Dr. Joseph Murphy Live!

Religion's Cell by Cynthia McClaskey is a masterful exploration of the ways in which organized religion has, through the centuries, systematically denied woman her proper role in the church and the world. Beginning with a firsthand account of her own subjugation within a fundamentalist sect, McClaskey moves forward with detailed and extensively referenced explanations of the God-intended role of woman. Along the way, she provides explanations of how man, in seeking to retain power and authority in both religion and the world, has relegated woman to a subservient position in both areas, in violation of God's intended plan. McClaskey's evidence is compelling and her logic flawless as she argues against the God-as-stern-judge mentality that permeates most modern religious sects and emphasizes the true nature of God as a loving father --a father who wants only the best for both genders of His crowning creation. She points out that Christ surrounded himself with women and that women played major roles in the early years of Christianity, providing copious scriptural support for her position. In Religion's Cell, McClaskey has issued a clarion call for true gender equality, both inside and outside organized religion. This is a book women will want to read and men should be required to read.

Play, Pain and Religion is the first consideration of the practices associated with BDSM (bondage, domination, sadism and masochism) in the context of religious studies scholarship. The focus is an exploration of BDSM experience as it emerges from the complex interactions of kink activities and relationship. Experiences categorised by BDSM practitioners as 'religious' and 'spiritual' are commonly described in the same terms, and given the same value, as descriptions of experiences which are not so categorised. Play, Pain and Religion examines practitioner accounts of BDSM experience alongside those practitioners' personal identification with these terms. This book argues that the significance of a given experience is not located solely within any intrinsic quality ascribed to it but in subsequent constructions around the nature and meaning of the event. It examines some such constructions, moving away from absolute definitions of religion or religions to consider the religious as an active process of meaning-, world- and story-making. By using this 'religioning' framework, this book examines ways in which BDSM can potentially be used in such processes. Play, Pain and Religion is a valuable resource for scholars of religion and of kink, for people interested in the complexities of ascribing meaning and value to human behaviour, and for kinksters interested in their own kink and why it is they do what they do.

Since the early-modern encounter between African and European merchants on the Guinea Coast, European social critics have invoked African gods as metaphors for misplaced value and agency, using the term “fetishism” chiefly to assert the irrationality of their fellow Europeans. Yet, as J. Lorand Matory demonstrates in The Fetish Revisited, Afro-Atlantic gods have a materially embodied social logic of their own, which is no less rational than the social theories of Marx and Freud. Drawing on thirty-six years of fieldwork in Africa, Europe, and the Americas, Matory casts an Afro-Atlantic eye on European theory to show how Marx’s and Freud’s conceptions of the fetish both illuminate and misrepresent Africa’s human-made gods. Through this analysis, the priests, practices, and spirited things of four major Afro-Atlantic religions simultaneously call attention to the culture-specific, materially conditioned, physically embodied, and indeed fetishistic nature of Marx’s and Freud’s theories themselves. Challenging long-held assumptions about the nature of gods and theories, Matory offers a novel perspective on the social roots of these tandem African and European understandings of collective action, while illuminating the relationship of European social theory to the racism suffered by Africans and assimilated Jews alike.

Emancipation, manumission, and complex legalities surrounding slavery led to a number of women of color achieving a measure of freedom and prosperity from the 1600s through the 1800s. These black women held property in places like Suriname and New Orleans, headed households in Brazil, enjoyed religious freedom in Peru, and created new selves and new lives across the Caribbean. Beyond Bondage outlines the restricted spheres within which free women of color, by virtue of gender and racial restrictions, carved out many kinds of existences. Although their freedom--represented by respectability, opportunity, and the acquisition of property--always remained precarious, the essayists support the surprising conclusion that women of color often sought and obtained these advantages more successfully than their male counterparts.

A New York Times bestseller, this controversial guide to improving your marriage has transformed thousands of relationships, bringing women romance, harmony, and the intimacy they crave. Like millions of women, Laura Doyle wanted her marriage to be better. But when she tried to get her husband to be more romantic, helpful, and ambitious, he withdrew—and she was lonely and exhausted from controlling everything. Desperate to be in love with her man again, she decided to stop telling him what to do and how to do it. When Doyle surrendered control, something magical happened. The union she had always dreamed of appeared. The man who had wooed her was back. The underlying principle of The Surrendered Wife is simple: The control women wield at work and with children must be left at the front door of any marriage. Laura Doyle’s model for matrimony shows women how they can both express their needs and have them met while also respecting their husband’s choices. When they do, they revitalize intimacy. Compassionate and practical, The Surrendered Wife is a step-by-step guide that teaches women how to: · Give up unnecessary control and responsibility · Resist the temptation to criticize, belittle, or dismiss their husbands · Trust their husbands in every aspect of marriage—from sexual to financial · And more. The Surrendered Wife will show you how to transform a lonely marriage into a passionate union.

Holy War and Human Bondage: Tales of Christian-Muslim Slavery in the Early-Modern Mediterranean tells a story unfamiliar to most modern readers—how this pervasive servitude involved, connected, and divided those on both sides of the Mediterranean. The work explores how men and women, Christians and Muslims, Jews and sub-Saharan Africans experienced their capture and bondage, while comparing what they went through with what black Africans endured in the Americas. Drawing heavily on archival sources not previously available in English, Holy War and Human Bondage teems with personal and highly felt stories of Muslims and Christians who personally fell into captivity and slavery, or who struggled to free relatives and co-religionists in bondage. In these pages, readers will discover how much race slavery and faith slavery once resembled one other and how much they overlapped in the Early-Modern mind. Each produced its share of personal suffering and social devastation—yet the whims of history have made the one virtually synonymous with human bondage while confining the other to almost complete oblivion.