Tuesday, October 5, 2021

Recommended on Religion from Outside the Box

Aldwin, C.; Park, C.; et al: Differing pathways between religiousness, spirituality, and health: A self-regulation perspective, in Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, Vol. 6, No. 9. September 2014.

Alighieri, D.: Delphi Complete Works of Dante Aleghieri, New York: Delphi, 2013.

Armstrong, K.: A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam; New York: MJF Books, 1993.

Armstrong, K.: The Case for God; New York: Alfred Knopf, 2009.

Armstrong, K.: Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence; New York: Anchor Books, 2015.

Arold, B.; Woessmann, L.; Zierow, L.: Can Schools Change Religious Attitudes? Evidence from German State Reforms of Compulsory Religious Education, in Center for Economic Studies Faculty of Economics of the University of Munich working papers, No. 9504, January 2022.

Arterburn, S.; Felton, J.: Toxic Faith: Understanding and Overcoming Religious Addiction, Nashville: Oliver-Nelson, 1991 (one foot in and one foot out of the box).

Assman, J.: Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism; Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. Press, 1998.

Assman, J.: The Price of Monotheism; Palo Alto, CA: Stanford U. Press, 2009.

Backman, E. L.: Religious Dances in the Christian Church and in Popular Medicine, London: Allen & Unwin, 1952.

Batchelor, S.: Buddhism Without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening; New York: Riverhead / Penguin, 1997.

Batchelor, S.: Confession of a Buddhist Atheist, New York: Random House, 2011.

Batchelor, S.: After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age; New Haven, CT: Yale U. Press, 2015.

Beder, S.: Selling the Work Ethic: From Puritan Pulpit to Corporate PR; London: Zed Books, 2001.

Bellah, R. N.: Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-traditional World; New York: Harper & Row, 1970.

Bellah, R. N.: Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age; Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. Press, 2011.

Berger, P.: The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion; New York: Doubleday, 1967.

Bergson, H.: The Two Sources of Morality and Religion; Notre Dame, IN: U. Notre Dame Press, (1932) 1977.

Boethius of Rome: Consolation of Philosophy; orig. written c. 524 AD; New York: Penguin Books, 1999.

Booth, L.: When God Becomes a Drug; New York: TarcerPerigee (Penguin), 1992.

Booth, L.: The God Game: It's Your Move: Healing the Wounds of Religious Addiction & Religious Abuse; Edinburgh, Scotland, UK: SCP Ltd, 1998.

Booth, L.: The Happy Heretic: Seven Spiritual Insights for Healing Religious Codependency, Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications Inc., 2012.

Bottero, J.: The Birth of God: The Bible and the Historian; orig. pub. 1986; Philadelphia: Penn State Press, 2010.

Bottero, J.; et al.: Ancestor of the West : Writing, Reasoning, and Religion in Mesopotamia, Elam, and Greece; Chicago: U. Chicago Press, 2000.

Carpenter, J.: Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism; New York: Oxford U. Press, 1997.

Carrier, R.: Sense and Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism, Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2005.

Clarke, J. J.: The Tao of the West: Western Transformations of Taoist Thought; London: Routledge, 2000.

Debray, R.: God: An Itinerary; London: Verso, 2004.

Durkhem, E.: The Elementary Forms of Religious Life; London: Allen & Unwin, 1915.

Edwards, J.; Smith, J. P.: A New Narrative of the Revival of Religion..., Glasgow: 1829. (As cited in Sargant, 1957.)

Ehrman, B.: How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee; New York: HarperOne, 2015.

Ehrman, B.: The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World; New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018.

Ehrman, B.: Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife; New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020.

Epstein, M.: Open to Desire: The Truth About What the Buddha Taught; New York: Gotham Books, 2006.

Epstein, M.: Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective (2nd revised edition); New York: Persesus / Basic Books, 2013.

Finch, J. L.: You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity, self-published, 2019. (This listing is NOT an endorsement.) 

Finney, C. G.: Lectures on Revivals of Religion, (13th edition), London: Simpkin & Marshall, 1840. (As cited in Sargant, 1957.)

Frankopan, P.: The Silk Roads: A New History of the World; New York: Vintage, 2017.

Fronsdal, G.: The Buddha Before Buddhism; Boulder, CO: Shambala, 2016.

Freud, S.: The Future of an Illusion; orig. pub. 1927, New York: W. W. Norton, 1961.

Freud, S.: Moses and Monotheism; orig. pub. 1939, New York: Penguin, 1955.

Gervais, W.; Najle, M.; Caluori, N.: The Origins of Religious Disbelief: A Dual Inheritance Approach, in Social Psychological and Personality Science, Vol. 12, No. 7, October 2021.

Goldfield, D.: America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation, New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2012.

Goldfield, D.: Still Fighting the Civil War: The American South and Southern History, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State U. Press, 2013.

Goleman, D.: The Meditative Mind: The Varieties of Meditative Experience; New York: Puttnam & Sons, 1988.

Gorski, P.: American Covenant: A History of Civil Religion from the Puritans to the Present, 2nd Ed., Princeton, NJ: Princeton U. Press, 2019.

Hallman, J.: The Devil is a Gentleman: Exploring America's Religious Fringe; New York: Random House, 2006.

Hecker, J. F. C.: The Epidemics of the Middle Ages, London: Sydenham Society, 1844. (As cited in Sargant, 1957.)

Heimlich, J.: Breaking their will: Shedding light on religious child maltreatment, Amherst, NY: Promethius Books, 2011.

Hervieu-Leger, D.: Religion as a Chain of Memory; New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers U. Press, 2000.

Heyrman, C.: Southern Cross; New York: Knopf, 1997.

Hoffer, E.: The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements; New York: Harper and Row, 1951, 1966.

House, H. W.; Ice, T.: Dominion Theology: Blessing or Curse? An Analysis of Christian Reconstructionism, New York: Penguin / Multnomah, 1988.

Ingersol, J.: Building God's Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction, London: Oxford U. Press, 2015.

Ingersol, R.: The Gods and Other Lectures, New York: D, M. Bennett, 1876 (many other publishers since then; available free on Kindle).

James, W.: The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature; London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1902 (far from being out of the box, but the single most significant starting point for the study of "comparative religion" and often aware of religious manipulation).

Jaynes, J.: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 1976.

Jenkins, P.: Mystics and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History, London: Oxford U. Press, 2001. 

Kent, A.: Religious justification for child sexual abuse in cults and alternative religions, in International Journal of Cultic Studies, Vol. 3, 2012. 

Kerouac, J.: Wake Up: A Life of the Buddha; orig. pub. 1956, New York: Viking, 2008.

Kimball, J.: When Religion Becomes Evil: Five Warning Signs; San Francisco: Harper-SanFrancisco, 2002.

Knox, R. A.: Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion; South Bend, IN, U. Notre Dame Press, 1950. (As cited in Sargant, 1957.)

Kobes du Mez, K.: Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Captured a Nation, New York: North Liveright, 2020. 

Krakauer, J.: Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, New York: Knopf / Anchor, 2004.

Krishnamurti, J.: This Matter of Culture; orig. pub. 1964, London: Victor Gollanz Ltd, 1974.

Krishnamurti, J.: On God, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992.

Krishnamurti, J.: Choiceless Awareness, Ojai, CA: Krishnamurti Foundation of America, (1948-1976) 1992.

Langberg, D.: Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church, Ada, MI: Brazos Press, 2020. 

Linn, M.; Linn, L.: Healing Spiritual Abuse and Religious Addiction, Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1994.

Lobdell, W,: Losing My Religion: How I Lost my Faith Reporting on Religion in America -- And Found Unexpected Peace; New York: HarperCollins, 2009.

Lopez, D.: From Stone to Flesh: A Short History of the Buddha, Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 2013.

Martin, W.: The Kingdom of the Cults; Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1967, 1977, 1987 (one foot in and one foot out of the box).

Masukawa, T.: The Invention of World Religions, Or, How European Universalism Was Perceived in the Language of Pluralism, Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 2003.

McDougall, W.: Promised Land, Crusader State; New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1997.

Meinig, D.: The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History: Vol. 3: Transcontinental America, 1850-1915; New Haven CT: Yale U. Press, 1998.

Meinig, D.: The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History: Volume 4: Global America, 1915–2000 ; New Haven CT: Yale U. Press, 2006.

Michael, T.: The Pristine Dao: Metaphysics in Early Daoist Discourse; Albany: State U. of NY Press, 2005.

Miles, J.: God, A Biography; New York: Random House 1996.

Miles, J.: Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God; New York: Random House, 2001.

Miles, J. (Ed.): The Norton Anthology of World Religion, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2015.

Miles, J.: Religion as we Know It: An Origin Story, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2015.

Miller, D.: Reinventing American Protestantism: Christianity in the New Millennium; Berkeley: U. California Press, 1997.

Miller, D.; Yamamori, T.: Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement, Berkeley CA: U. California Press, 2007.

Miller, R.; Stout, H.; Wilson, C.: Religion and the American Civil War; New York: Oxford U. Press, 1998.

Minor, R.: When Religion is an Addiction; Amherst, NY: Promethius / Humanity Works, 2007.

Mishra, P.: An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World, New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2004.

Moore, B.: Moral Purity and Persecution in History, Princeton, NJ: Princeton U. Press, 2000.

Moore, M.: "Dante's Infernal Crimes Forgiven," in The Daily Telegraph; June 17, 2008.

Murdoch, D. M.: Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection, Ashland, OR: Stellar House, 2009. (A little frothy for my taste, but a lot of people like it.) 

Noll, M.: The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind; Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 1995.

Noll, M.: The Old Religion in a New World; Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 2002.

Oren, M: Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present, New York: W. W. Norton, 2007. 

Pagels, E.: The Gnostic Gospels, New York: Random House, 1979.

Pagels, E.: Adam and Eve and the Serpent, New York: Random House, 1988.

Pagels, E.: The Origin of Satan, New York: Random House, 1995.

Pagels, E.: Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelations; New York: Viking, 2012.

Pals, D.: Eight Theories of Religion (2nd Ed.), New York: Oxford U. Press, 2006.

Phillips, K.: The Cousins' Wars: Religion, Politics, and the Triumph of Anglo-America; New York: Basic Books, 1999.

Phillips, K.: American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religions, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century; New York: Viking, 2006.

Prothero, S.: God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World; New York: Harper Collins, 2010.

Quigley, C.: Tragedy and Hope: A History of The World in Our Time, New York: Macmillan & Co., 1966, (Chapter III: The Russian Empire to 1917). 

Raine, S.; Kent, S.: The grooming of children for sexual abuse in religious settings: Unique characteristics and select case studies, in Journal of Aggression and Violent Behavior, Vol. 48, September 2019. 

Ray, D.: The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture; Bonner Springs, KA: IPC Press, 2009.

Rubenstein, J.: Armies of Heaven: The First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse; New York: Perseus - Basic Books, 2011.

Salmon, G.: The Evidence of the Work of the Holy Spirit, Dublin: Hodges & Smith, 1859. (As cited in Sargant, 1957.)

Sargant, W.: Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brain Washing; orig. pub. 1957, Cambridge, MA: Malor Books, 1997 (includes excellent material on Wesleyan Methodism and the "religion" of Soviet communism).

Setton, K.: The Papacy and the Levant, 1204-1571, Vol. 1: The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries; London: Arner Philosophical Society, 1976.

Shupe, A,: Wolves within the fold: Religious leadership and abuses of power, Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers U. Press, 1998.

Shupe, A.; Stacey, W. (editors): Bad Pastors: Clergy Misconduct in Modern America, New York: NYU Press, 2000. 

Smith, A.: Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity; New York: Oxford U. Press, 2002.

Smith, H.: The World's Religions: The Revised & Updated Edition of The Religions of Man; orig. pub. 1958, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991 (one foot in and one foot out of the box).

Smith, H.: Forgotten Truth: The Common Vision of the World's Religions; orig. pub. 1976, New York: HarperOne, 1992.

Spong, J. S.: Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers in Exile; New York: HarperOne, 1999. (one foot in, for sure, but the other is well out)

Sprague, W. B.: Lectures on Revivals of Religion, 2nd edition, Glasgow: Wm. Collins, 1833. 

Stark, R.; Finke, R.: The Churching of America, 1776-1990; New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers U. Press, 1993.

Stewart, K.: The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism; London: Bloomsbury, 2020.

Strausberg, M. (Ed.): Contemporary Theories of Religion: A Critical Companion; London: Routledge, 2009.

Strozier, C.: Apocalypse: On the Psychology of Fundamentalism in America, Eugene OR, Wipf & Stock, 2002.

Strozier, C.; Terman, D.; et al: The Fundamentalist Mindset: Psychological Perspectives on Religion, Violence, and History; London: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Sutton, M.: Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America; Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. Press, 2009.

Taylor, M.: After God, Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 2007.

Tillich, P.: Theology of Culture, London: Oxford U. Press, 1964.

Trungpa, C.: The Heart of the Buddha; Boston: Shambala: 1991.

Tuchman, B.: Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour; New York: Alfred A, Knopf, 1976.

Vallient, J.; Fahey, W.: Creating Christ: How Roman Emperors Invented Christianity, Hertford, NC: Crossroad Press, 2018.

Wathey, J.: The Illusion of God’s Presence; Amherst, NY: Promethius Books, 2016.

Watts, A.: The Way of Zen; New York: Random House / Pantheon, 1957.

Watts, A.; Al Chung-liang Huang: Tao: The Watercourse Way; New York: Pantheon, 1975.

Weber, M.: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism; Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1930.

Wehner, P.: The Evangelical Church is Breaking Apart, in The Atlantic, October 24, 2021.

Wesley, J.: The Journals. There is no single book but rather a long series dating from approximately 1725 to 1775. 

Whitehead, A.; Perry, S.: Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States, New York: Oxford U. Press, 2021.

Wright, R.: The Evolution of God, New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2009.

Youssoupoff, F.: Lost Splendor, London: Jonathan Cape, 1953. (As cited in Sargant, 1957.)

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