The statistics speak for themselves; record numbers of individuals who at one time identified as Christians are deconverting from the faith and identifying as unbelievers. Why is this happening and what can be done to prevent it? A Recipe for Disaster seeks to answer those questions by focusing on the four ways churches and parents unwittingly contribute to the deconversion process. By over-preparing, under-preparing, ill-preparing, and painfully preparing those they are responsible to disciple into mature believers, churches and parents instead set them up for a crisis of faith that all too often leads to the loss of faith. In response to each of the four methods of poor preparation, A Recipe for Disaster offers a recipe for success, four alternative methods of preparation designed to instill lifelong faith.

The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion offers a comprehensive exploration of the dynamics of religious conversion, which for centuries has profoundly shaped societies, cultures, and individuals throughout the world. Scholars from a wide array of religions and disciplines interpret both the varieties of conversion experiences and the processes that inform this personal and communal phenomenon. This volume examines the experiences of individuals and communities who change religions, those who experience an intensification of their religion of origin, and those who encounter new religions through colonial intrusion, missionary work, and charismatic and revitalization movements. The thirty-two innovative essays provide overviews of the history of particular religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Sikhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, indigenous religions, and new religious movements. The essays also offer a wide range of disciplinary perspectives-psychological, sociological, anthropological, legal, political, feminist, and geographical-on methods and theories deployed in understanding conversion, and insight into various forms of deconversion.

Why does God feel so far away? The reason--and the solution--is in your attachment style. We all experience moments when God's love and presence are tangible. But we also experience feeling utterly abandoned by God. Why? The answer is found when you take a deep look at the other important relationships in your life and understand your attachment style. Through his years working in trauma recovery programs, extensive research into attachment science, and personal experiences with spiritual striving and abuse, licensed therapist Krispin Mayfield has learned to answer the question: Why do I feel so far from God? When you understand your attachment style you gain a whole new paradigm for a secure and loving relationship with God. You'll gain insights about: How you relate to others--both your strengths and weaknesses The practical exercises you can use to grow a secure spiritual attachment to God How to move forward on the spirituality spectrum and experience the Divine connection we all were created for You'll learn to identify and remove mixed messages about closeness with God that you may have heard in church or from well-meaning Christians. With freedom from the past, you can then chart a new path toward intimate connection with the God of the universe.

This book presents case studies and empirical data of a phenomenon which increasingly gains popularity in Western societies: deconversion. There is, the authors argue, no better word than deconversion to describe processes of disengagement from religious orientations because these have much in common with conversion. Termination of membership may eventually be the final step of deconversion, but it involves biographical and psychological dynamics which can and need to be reconstructed by qualitative approaches and analyzed by quantitative instruments.In the Bielefeld-based Cross-Cultural Study on Deconversion disengagement processes from a variety of religious backgrounds in the USA and in Germany were examined, ranging from well-established religious organizations to new religious and fundamentalist groups. Nearly 1,200 persons participated in thestudy and were interviewed from 2002 to 2005. In the focus of the study are 100 deconverts from the USA and from Germany who were examined with narrative interviews, faith development interviews and an extensive questionnaire. For case study elaboration, the study followed a research design with an innovative triangulation of qualitative and quantitative data. Four chapters, corresponding to four types of deconversion, present 21 case studies. The highlights of the research project are new data on spirituality – the deconverts in particular appear to prefer a »more spiritual than religious« self-identification – and in-depth analyses of a variety of deconversion narratives with special focus on personality factors, motivation, attitudes, religious development, psychological well-being and growth, religious fundamentalism and right-wing authoritarianism. The results of this project which was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft are of special relevance for counselling and pastoral care, for religious education and for people concerned with administration and management of religious groups and churches, but also for a wider audience interested in contemporary changes in the religious fields in the USA and Germany.

A Clear Guide to Help Readers Understand Why They Can Trust the Bible We are often told we can no longer assume that the Bible is trustworthy. From social media memes to popular scholarship, so many attacks have been launched on the believability of Scripture that many have serious questions about the Bible, such as: Did Jesus actually live? Did the biblical writers invent their message? How can we trust the gospels since they were written so long after Jesus lived? How can we believe a Bible that is full of internal contradictions with itself and external contradictions with science? Aren't the biblical manuscripts we have just copies of copies that are so corrupted they don't represent what the original authors wrote? Why should we believe the books that are in the Bible, since many good ones were left out, like the Gospel of Thomas? Why trust the Bible when there are so many contradictory translations of it? If you find yourself unable to answer questions such as these, but wanting to, Why I Trust the Bible by eminent Bible scholar and translator William Mounce is for you. These questions and more are discussed and answered in a reasoned, definitive, and winsome way. The truth is that the Bible is better attested and more defensible today than it ever has been. Questions about the Bible are perhaps the most significant challenge confronting Christian faith today, but they can be answered well and in a way which will lead to a deeper appreciation for the truth and ongoing relevance of the Bible.