How did religion contribute to Russia's invasion of Ukraine? Heated disputes and alienation among Orthodox Christians in Ukraine and Russia contributed to Russian aggression in Crimea and Donbas in 2014, and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This book examines attempts from the early twentieth century to the present day to liberate the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from Russian control. It explores the causes of bitter alienation, Russia's use of soft power to maintain control, the development of hate speech used to discriminate against independent-minded Ukrainians, and the transition from soft to hard power from 2014 to the present.

How did religion contribute to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? Heated disputes and alienation among Orthodox Christians in Ukraine and Russia contributed to Russian aggression in Crimea and Donbas in 2014, and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This book examines attempts from the early twentieth century to the present day to liberate the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from Russian control. It explores the causes of bitter alienation, Russia’s use of soft power to maintain control, the development of hate speech used to discriminate against independent-minded Ukrainians, and the transition from soft to hard power from 2014 to the present.

While affirming that God is Creator of the universe, an evangelical Christian physics and astronomy professor tackles the controversial subject of how God actually did it. Paper.

For nearly four decades social critics such as Philip Rieff and Christopher Lasch have bemoaned the "triumph of the therapeutic" in our "culture of narcissism." But whatever their level of uneasiness about the psychologizing of reality, most Christians have made some degree of peace with the reigning power of psychotherapy and psychotherapeutic outlooks. Seth Farber is not one of those Christians. In his estimation psychotherapy has become "a replacement for involvement in the spiritual life of the church," with pastors and other Christian leaders too quickly deferring to psychiatrists and other mental health professionals. Unholy Madness is prompted by Farber's passionate insistence that Christianity and psychiatry are nothing less than competing faiths. Farber's radical argument cuts to the root of the mental health system and challenges the church to consider how much it may have constricted its own vision and neglected its unique responsibilities in its accomodation to that system. Taking on giants from Augustine to Freud, wide-ranging and never boring, Unholy Madness is not likely to persuade all its readers. But none will be able to see these issues in the same way again. -- Publisher.

Newsweek's Jerusalem bureau chief Joshua Hammer arrived in the West Bank in October 2000 -- just after Ariel Sharon made his inflammatory visit to the Haram al-Sharif, otherwise known as the Temple Mount. Sharon's trip ignited the worst violence the Middle East had seen in decades. Overnight, the peace process gave way to an ever-worsening cycle of attack, revenge, and retaliation, destabilizing the entire region, killing thousands, and culminating in Israel's reoccupation of Palestinian towns in 2002. A Season in Bethlehem is the story of one West Bank town's two-year disintegration, as witnessed by a reporter who was there from the beginning. Woven together from Hammer's own firsthand reportage plus hundreds of interviews, it follows a dozen characters whose lives collided on the streets of this biblical city. They include a Bedouin tribesman who rose to become the commander of Bethlehem's most feared and brutal gang of gunmen; the beleaguered governor, an opponent of the al-Aqsa intifada, who believed he had a mandate to stop the violence, only to discover that Yasser Arafat was undermining him; a Christian businesman who watched helplessly as his community was squeezed between Muslim militants and the Israeli army; an eighteen-year-old female honors student turned suicide bomber; and an Israeli reservist, son of a leader of the Peace Now movement, who wrestled with his left-wing convictions as he rode to battle through the predawn streets. The narrative reaches a climax with a moment-by-moment recreation of the epochal drama that drew many of these characters together: the thirty-nine-day siege of the Church of the Nativity. A clear-eyed chronicle of deepening chaos and violence, in which Hammer lets the opposing sides speak for themselves, A Season in Bethlehem is both a timely and timeless look at how longstanding religious and political tensions finally boiled over in a place of profound resonance: the birthplace of Jesus.

Acclaimed author James Reston, Jr.'s Warriors of God is the rich and engaging account of the Third Crusade (1187-1192), a conflict that would shape world history for centuries and which can still be felt in the Middle East and throughout the world today. James Reston, Jr. offers a gripping narrative of the epic battle that left Jerusalem in Muslim hands until the twentieth century, bringing an objective perspective to the gallantry, greed, and religious fervor that fueled the bloody clash between Christians and Muslims. As he recounts this rousing story, Reston brings to life the two legendary figures who led their armies against each other. He offers compelling portraits of Saladin, the wise and highly cultured leader who created a united empire, and Richard the Lionheart, the romantic personification of chivalry who emerges here in his full complexity and contradictions. From its riveting scenes of blood-soaked battles to its pageant of fascinating, larger-than-life characters, Warriors of God is essential history, history that helps us understand today's world.