447. Title: Restoring Humanism to Religion: Why Religiousness Matters More Than Belief
Author: Galston, David
ISBN-10:
ISBN-13: 978-15981-5071-1
Date Finished: 2026-01-24
My Comments: A description of why we should replace the creeds and dogma of religion (Christianity) with the mystery and openness to change found in spirituality, which the author calls "religiousness". If we don't change the basis of religion, we will probably lose it altogether as church attendance statistics indicate. This is my kind of book and highly recommended.

Amazon Description: Restoring Humanism to Religion explores the decline of traditional religious beliefs and institutions, particularly Christianity, and advocates for a shift toward "religiousness," defined as human spirituality rooted in compassion, solidarity, and humanism. Galston critiques the historical and theological foundations of religion, emphasizing the need to move beyond dogmatic beliefs, authoritarian structures, and the concept of original sin, which have often led to anti-humanist practices.

448. Title: Words of Fire, Spirit of Grace
Author: Imathiu, R. Grace
ISBN-10: 0-9720841-0-X
ISBN-13:
Date Finished: 2026-04-27
My Comments: These are 12 sermons delivered by Grace all over the world. Each is about a lectionary subject so is definitely bible based. I find the theology very theistic as I would expect from someone who grew up in Africa. There is no hint of my favorite Radical Theology anywhere. She explains the parables of Jesus rather than using them to tweak your mind into new thoughts as I think Jesus did. I would recommend this book to anyone in our congregation as she is coming to be our new pastor in July.

Amazon Description: This title comprises 12 sermons preached at venues all over the world by New Testament scholar Rev. R. Grace Imathiu. Each sermon provides fresh insights, and even unexpected twists, to classic interpretations of the Biblical text. Grace Imathiu brings a womanist and African perspective to Bible scholarship, which has so often been dominated by male and Eurocentric interpretations. The book is a valuable resource for Bible study groups, seminary and divinity school classes on homiletics. The sermons are spiced with humor and many relevant examples from recent history. The book concludes with an interview section on preaching, featuring among others, Dr. Eddie Fox, the Director of Evangelism for the World Methodist Council. The foreword was written by Bishop Sharon Zimmerman Rader of Wisconsin.

449. Title: Miracles and Wonder The Historical Mystery of Jesus
Author: Pagles, Elaine
ISBN-10:
ISBN-13: 978-0-385-54746-8
Date Finished: 2026-05-01
My Comments: The author goes through the significant steps in Jesus life, considering the miracles from the Bible at each chapter. She agrees that we can't know (historically) what happened at each step, but looks at many scholar's opinions. I particularly appreciated the last chapter on how Jesus affects people today through art, music and movies. Recommended

Amazon Description: Early in her career, Elaine Pagels changed our understanding of the origins of Christianity with her work in The Gnostic Gospels. Now, in the culmination of a decades-long career, she explores the biggest subject of all, Jesus. In Miracles and Wonder she sets out to discover how a poor young Jewish man inspired a religion that shaped the world. The book reads like a historical mystery, with each chapter addressing a fascinating question and answering it based on the gospels Jesus's followers left behind. Why is Jesus said to have had a virgin birth? Why do we say he rose from the dead? Did his miracles really happen and what did they mean? The story Pagels tells is thrilling and tense. Not just does Jesus comes to life but his desperate, hunted followers do as well. We realize that some of the most compelling details of Jesus's life are the explanations his disciples created to paper over inconvenient facts. So Jesus wasn't illegitimate, his mother conceived by God; Jesus's body wasn't humiliatingly left to rot and tossed into a common grave - no, he rose from the dead and was seen whole by his followers; Jesus isn't a failed messiah, his kingdom is a metaphor: he lives in us. These necessary fabrications were the very details and promises that electrified their listeners and helped his followers' numbers grow. In Miracles and Wonder, Pagels does more than solve a historical mystery. She sheds light on Jesus's enduring power to inspire and attract.

450. Title: The Triumph of Faith
Author: Stark, Rodney
ISBN-10: 161017138-1
ISBN-13:
Date Finished: 2026-06-09
My Comments: A Baylor university professor describes all the reasons he thinks religion is growing in the world rather than diminishing. He considers the world geographically with chapters on religions around the world. I have previously found the author much more conservative than I am, so his conclusions are not surprising. I found a few logic errors in his arguments and many places where he steps away from statistics and draws different conclusions than I do. But it's easy to read. He relies mainly on a couple of surveys so I wonder if he is cherry picking his results. He even says that the majority of the writers in this area are wrong. I wonder.....

Amazon Description: "God is not dead." -Wall Street Journal Believe it or not, the world is more religious than ever before. Everyone seems to take it for granted that the world is getting more secular-that faith is doomed by modernity. Scientists, secularists, and atheists applaud the change; religious believers lament it. But here's the thing: they're all wrong-and the bestselling author and influential scholar of religion Rodney Stark has the numbers to prove it.The Triumph of Faith explodes the myth that people around the world are abandoning religion. Stark marshals an unprecedented body of data-surveys of more than a million people in 163 nations-to paint the full picture that both scholars and popular commentators have missed. And he explains why the astonishing growth of religion is happening and what it means for our future. Stark's bracing book is full of insights that defy the conventional wisdom. With vigorous prose he reveals: Why claims about Millennials' lack of religion are overblown and historically ignorant Why Islam is NOT overtaking Christianity How 4 out of 5 people worldwide now belong to an organized religion How 50 percent have attended a worship service in the past week Why much-ballyhooed studies from the Pew Research Center and others get the religious landscape wrong Why atheists remain few, anywhere-despite all the talk of the "New Atheism" As Stark shows, secularists have been predicting the imminent demise of religion for centuries. It is their unshakable faith in secularization that may be the most "irrational" of all beliefs. As the author of How the West Won, The Victory of Reason, and many other bestselling works, Rodney Stark has a richly deserved reputation for writing page-turning, myth-busting books. He is also a groundbreaking scholar who has so reshaped the social scientific study of religion that his work has become the basis of a "new paradigm." Stark puts all those talents on full display in The Triumph of Faith.This book will change how you see both religion and the forces of secularization.

451. Title: Taking America Back for God
Author: Whitehead, Andrew L and Samuel L Perry
ISBN-10:
ISBN-13: 978-0190057909
Date Finished: 2026-07-08
My Comments: A sociology of religion in America describing how Christian Nationalism interacts with a bunch of characteristics of American culture. While the authors did a good job with their numbers, most of their measurements were of things I already knew. I found very few new ideas. Half the book is appendix. Not as good as I hoped.

Amazon Description: Why do so many conservative Christians continue to support Donald Trump despite his many overt moral failings? Why do many Americans advocate so vehemently for xenophobic policies, such as a border wall with Mexico? Why do many Americans seem so unwilling to acknowledge the injustices that ethnic and racial minorities experience in the United States? Why do a sizeable proportion of Americans continue to oppose women's equality in the workplace and in the home? To answer these questions, Taking America Back for God points to the phenomenon of "Christian nationalism," the belief that the United States is-and should be-a Christian nation. Christian ideals and symbols have long played an important role in American public life, but Christian nationalism is about far more than whether the phrase "under God" belongs in the pledge of allegiance. At its heart, Christian nationalism demands that we must preserve a particular kind of social order, an order in which everyone--Christians and non-Christians, native-born and immigrants, whites and minorities, men and women recognizes their "proper" place in society. The first comprehensive empirical analysis of Christian nationalism in the United States, Taking America Back for God illustrates the influence of Christian nationalism on today's most contentious social and political issues. Drawing on multiple sources of national survey data as well as in-depth interviews, Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry document how Christian nationalism shapes what Americans think about who they are as a people, what their future should look like, and how they should get there. Americans' stance toward Christian nationalism provides powerful insight into what they think about immigration, Islam, gun control, police shootings, atheists, gender roles, and many other political issues-very much including who they want in the White House. Taking America Back for God is a guide to one of the most important-and least understood-forces shaping American politics.