Showing titles in History

In Defenders of the West, the author of Sword and Scimitar follows up with vivid and dramatic profiles of eight extraordinary warriors—some saints, some sinners—who defended the Christian West against Islamic invasions. Discover the real Count Dracula, Spain’s El Cid, England’s Richard Lionheart, and many other historical figures whose true and original claim to fame revolved around their defiant stance against jihadist aggression.

Hidden treasures. Secret societies. War and plunder. You’ve heard the stories, seen the movies, pondered the conspiracy theories. You know that the Knights Templar are said to be connected with the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, the Freemasons—even Oak Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia. But who were they really?

Based on Pope Benedict XVI's weekly teaching on the relationship between Christ and the Church, this book tells the drama of Jesus' first disciples—his Apostles and their associates—and how they spread Jesus' message throughout the ancient world. Far from distorting the truth about Jesus of Nazareth, insists Pope Benedict, the early disciples remained faithful to it, even at the cost of their lives.

The Bible as we know it today is best understood as a process, one that begins in the tenth century BCE. In this revelatory account, a world-renowned scholar of Hebrew scripture joins a foremost authority on the New Testament to write a new biography of the Book of Books, reconstructing Jewish and Christian scriptural histories, as well as the underappreciated contest between them, from which the Bible arose. The Making of the Bible is the most comprehensive history yet told of the world's best-known literature, revealing its buried lessons and secrets.

Benny Hinn's best-selling Good Morning, Holy Spirit introduced millions of Christians to the Holy Spirit as a personal guide and friend. Now, in the companion book Welcome, Holy Spirit, Hinn reveals the transforming, energizing power of the Holy Spirit as He works in Hinn's life, and tells how you, too, can experience this tremendous power, love, and grace.

James was a vegetarian, wore only linen clothing, bathed daily at dawn in cold water, and was a life-long Nazirite. In this profound and provocative work of scholarly detection, eminent biblical scholar Robert Eisenman introduces a startling theory about the identity of James - the brother of Jesus - who was almost entirely marginalized in the New Testament.

This tenth anniversary revised edition of the authoritative text on Christianity's first thousand years of history features a new preface and an updated bibliography. The essential general survey of medieval European Christendom, Brown's vivid prose charts the compelling and tumultuous rise of an institution that came to wield enormous religious and secular power.

Jesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. Through the Eye of a Needle is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar of late antiquity.

This prize-winning account of the pre-Reformation church recreates lay people's experience of religion, showing that late-medieval Catholicism was neither decadent nor decayed, but a strong and vigorous tradition. For this edition, Duffy has written a new introduction reflecting on recent developments in our understanding of the period.

Dan Brown's immensely popular New York Times best-selling The Da Vinci Code is one of the most successful books of recent history. It has captivated millions the world over with its enthralling suspense and its provocative questions about the true nature of Jesus' life.

This audiobook highlights how Jesus and the Apostle Paul provided their faith communities with clarity during the cultural mishmash of ideological confusion during their day, while maintaining the ethos, pathos, and logos of the kingdom of God. The hope is, by examining how they confronted the various violent, religiously nationalist, ethnically biased, imperialistic, and corrupt ideologies of their day, that twenty-first century church leaders can develop roadmaps for discipling their faith communities into the salt and light of the world, without them becoming as the world.

You have been lied to about Christopher Columbus. You know the year he sailed the ocean blue. And maybe you heard that he committed crimes against humanity. But The Last Crusader sets the record straight. More than anything, Christopher Columbus sought the means to subsidize a new Crusade to free the Holy Land from the Moslem hordes. Yes Columbus hoped to open trade routes to the Indies, and he certainly aspired to the privileges and titles that come with discovering new lands. But Christian zeal for the Great Commission was the animating principle for a life of danger and risk and discovery.

A respected and controversial scholar argues that the Crusades were a justified war waged against Muslim terror and aggression This book takes on the current vogue in liberal thinking to argue that, in fact, the Crusades were not unprovoked. They were not the first round of European colonialism...

This runaway best seller shows both the basic logic of the Enneagram and its harmony with the core truths of Christian thought from the time of the early Church forward. Experience author Richard Rohr's expertise and advanced thought on the subject, easily laid out for all audiences.

Written between A.D. 413 and 426, The City of God is one of the great cornerstones in the history of Christian thought, a book which is vital to the understanding of modern Western society. Augustine originally intended it to be an apology for Christianity against the accusation that the Church was responsible for the decline of the Roman Empire, which had occurred just three years earlier. Indeed, Augustine produced a great amount of evidence to prove that paganism was responsible for this event. However, by the time the work was finished, the book had taken on a larger theme.

Over 330,000 copies sold. This is the story of the church for today's listeners. Bruce Shelley's classic history of the church brings the story of global Christianity into the twenty-first century. Like a skilled screenwriter, Shelley begins each chapter with three elements: characters, setting...

Centuries on, what the Reformation was and what it accomplished remain deeply contentious. Peter Marshall's sweeping new history argues that 16th-century England was a society neither desperate for nor allergic to change, but one open to ideas of "reform" in various competing guises. This engaging history reveals what was really at stake in the overthrow of Catholic culture and the reshaping of the English Church.

New York Times bestselling author and Bible expert Bart Ehrman reveals how Jesus’s divinity became dogma in the first few centuries of the early church. The claim at the heart of the Christian faith is that Jesus of Nazareth was, and is, God. But this is not what the original disciples...

As we all know, and as many of our well-established textbooks have argued for decades, the Inquisition was one of the most frightening and bloody chapters in Western history, Pope Pius XII was anti-Semitic and rightfully called "Hitler's Pope", the Dark Ages were a stunting of the progress of knowledge to be redeemed only by the secular spirit of the Enlightenment, and the religious Crusades were an early example of the rapacious Western thirst for riches and power. But what if these long-held beliefs were all wrong?

In this definitive and long-awaited biography, Jonathan Edwards emerges as both a great American and a brilliant Christian. George Marsden evokes the world of colonial New England in which Edwards was reared - a frontier civilization at the center of a conflict between Native Americans, French Catholics, and English Protestants. Drawing on newly available sources, Marsden demonstrates how these cultural and religious battles shaped Edwards' life and thought.