In March 1987, the Reverend Jerry Falwell and the national news media found themselves in rare agreement: Jim Bakker, the charismatic, cash-hungry televangelist, was an accomplished sinner but a rather unconvincing penitent. The story had just broken that Bakker had fornicated with Jessica Hahn, a New York church secretary, and then tried to pay her off with $256,000. Once exposed, Bakker weepily begged Falwell to help him steer his ministry through the scandal. Falwell assented--but then demanded Bakker's resignation when he learned that the Hahn affair only hinted at Bakker's profligacy. The fight was on, and those stale jokes were born again: PTL, the acronym of Bakker's $172 million enterprise, stood not for "Praise the Lord" or "People That Love" but for "Pass the Loot" or "Pay the Lady." Veteran journalist Hunter James covered the story for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution from the first report of Bakker's double life until eight chaotic months later when the unwelcome Falwell left the bankrupt ministry in South Carolina and went home for good to his own church in Lynchburg, Virginia. Smile Pretty and Say Jesus is James's wry, personal account of the struggle for control of the PTL enterprise, which included a satellite network and a 2,300-acre theme park, Heritage USA. James's book is valuable for the important distinctions it makes between Pentecostals and Baptist fundamentalists and for its explanation of the "prosperity gospel" Bakker and his wife, Tammy Faye, professed. Combining straightforward reportage with human interest sketches and profiles, the book is also the most insightful to date on the attitudes and motives of the principal figures involved in the debacle.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From one of the world’s most influential spiritual thinkers, a long-awaited book exploring what it means that Jesus was called “Christ,” and how this forgotten truth can restore hope and meaning to our lives. “Anyone who strives to put their faith into action will find encouragement and inspiration in the pages of this book.”—Melinda Gates In his decades as a globally recognized teacher, Richard Rohr has helped millions realize what is at stake in matters of faith and spirituality. Yet Rohr has never written on the most perennially talked about topic in Christianity: Jesus. Most know who Jesus was, but who was Christ? Is the word simply Jesus’s last name? Too often, Rohr writes, our understandings have been limited by culture, religious debate, and the human tendency to put ourselves at the center. Drawing on scripture, history, and spiritual practice, Rohr articulates a transformative view of Jesus Christ as a portrait of God’s constant, unfolding work in the world. “God loves things by becoming them,” he writes, and Jesus’s life was meant to declare that humanity has never been separate from God—except by its own negative choice. When we recover this fundamental truth, faith becomes less about proving Jesus was God, and more about learning to recognize the Creator’s presence all around us, and in everyone we meet. Thought-provoking, practical, and full of deep hope and vision, The Universal Christ is a landmark book from one of our most beloved spiritual writers, and an invitation to contemplate how God liberates and loves all that is.

Join biblical culturalist Krisi McLelland as she takes you back to Jesus' first-century world, explaining the historical and cultural climate of His day. This 7-session Bible study is a look at several of Jesus' interactions with women.

The American landscape is host to numerous works of religious architecture, sometimes questionable in taste and large, if not titanic, in scale. In her lively study of satire and religious architecture, Margaret Grubiak challenges how we typically view such sites by shifting the focus from believers to doubters, and from producers to consumers. Grubiak considers an array of sacred architectural constructions—from "Touchdown Jesus" at the University of Notre Dame to the Wizard of Oz Mormon temple outside Washington D.C. to the renamed "Gumby Jesus" of the Christ of the Ozarks statue in Eureka Springs, Arkansas - and how such constructions are confronted by the doubt and dismissiveness articulated by the more skeptical of their viewers. These responses of doubt activate our religious built environment in ways unanticipated but illuminating, asking us, at times forcefully, to consider and clarify what it is we believe. Opening up new avenues of thinking about how people deal with theological questions in the vernacular, Grubiak’s book shows how religious doubt is made manifest in the humorous, satirical, blasphemous, and popular culture responses to religious architecture and image in modern America. Midcentury: Architecture, Landscape, Urbanism, and Design

One Nation Under God? is a remarkable consideration of how religion manifests itself in America today.

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Charisma, Medieval and Modern" that was published in Religions

Houses of God is the first broad survey of American religious architecture, a cultural cross-country expedition that will benefit travelers as much as scholars. Beautifully illustrated with over 100 photographs — some by well-known photographers such as Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange — this handsome book provides a highly accessible look at how Americans shape their places of worship into multifaceted reflections of their culture, beliefs, and times.