Finding God Beyond Religion
A Guide for Skeptics, Agnostics & Unorthodox Believers Inside & Outside the Church
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Take Your Understanding of Church Teachings from Limiting to Life-Giving—& Free Your Faith to Flourish
"No longer sustained by easy answers, we may find ourselves standing before a three-pronged fork in the road: we can wander in the direction of conventional beliefs and practices, we can reject God and turn away from religion altogether, or we can embrace our uncertainty as an invitation to a more vital understanding of both God and religion." —from the Introduction
Do you describe yourself as "spiritual but not religious"? Whether young or old, church connected or not, are you spiritually restless for an authentic faith life but do not find conventional religious teachings pertinent to you?
This accessible guide to a meaningful spiritual life is a salve for your soul. It reinterprets traditional religious teachings central to the Christian faith—God, Jesus, faith, prayer, morality and more—in ways that connect with people who have outgrown the beliefs and devotional practices that once made sense to them. It helps you find new ways to understand and relate to traditional, narrowly defined Christian “truths” that honor their full spiritual power and scope, and opens your mind and heart to the full impact of Christian teachings.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his third book, Catholic retreat leader and spiritual director Stella (A Faith Worth Believing) urges readers not to let religion of any denominational flavor become a stumbling block to a profound encounter with God. As Phyllis Tickle argues in her influential Great Emergence, Stella also believes the Western world is transitioning "between an epoch of religion that is on the decline and an epoch of spirituality that is on the rise." Positing that our culture is out of touch with its soul, Stella generously invites spiritual seekers and the "nones" those who say they have no religious affiliation -- to experience God as the "ground of being," not a "super being" made in humans' image. He tackles head-on thorny topics too often avoided in fuzzier writing on spirituality prayer in a non-theistic world, Jesus' distinctiveness, and God's existence in the midst of evil. Readers who appreciate the forward-thinking work of Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong, New Testament scholar Marcus Borg, and psychologist James Finley will find their perspectives used liberally. While not a book for Christian traditionalists, Stella offers a cup of cool water to the spiritually dehydrated.
