By Thomas R. Kelly
with an introduction by Richard J. Foster

Since its first publication in 1941, A Testament of Devotion, by the renowned Quaker teacher Thomas Kelly, has been universally embraced as a truly enduring spiritual classic. Plainspoken and deeply inspirational, it gathers together five compelling essays that urge us to center our lives on God's presence, to find quiet and stillness within modern life, and to discover the deeply satisfying and lasting peace of the inner spiritual journey. As relevant today as it was a half-century ago, A Testament of Devotion is the ideal companion to that highest of all human arts-the lifelong conversation between God and his creatures.

Another book by Kelly: The Eternal Promise

by Mark Russ

'What is Quakerism?' can be a difficult question to answer, especially when Quakers today struggle to find a shared religious language. In this book, Mark Russ answers this question from a personal perspective, telling his story of trying to make sense of Jesus within the Quaker community. Through this theological wrestling emerges a 'Quaker Shaped Christianity' that is contemporary, open and rooted in tradition. In reflecting on how to approach the Bible, the challenges of Universalism, and the key events of the Jesus story, this book offers a creative, inspiring and readable theology for everyone who has wondered how Christianity and Quakerism fit together.

By Lisa Sharon Harper
with a forword by Walter Brueggemann

God once declared everything in the world “very good.”

Can you imagine it?

A Vision of Hope for a Broken World

Shalom is what God declared. Shalom is what the Kingdom of God looks like.

Shalom is when all people have enough.

It’s when families are healed.

It’s when churches, schools, and public policies protect human dignity.

Shalom is when the image of God is recognized in every single human.

Shalom is our calling as followers of Jesus’s gospel. It is the vision God set forth in the Garden and the restoration God desires for every relationship.

By Julie Clawson
with a forward by Tom and Christine Sine

Where does your chocolate come from? Does it matter if your coffee is fair trade or not? It matters--more than you might think. Julie Clawson takes us on a tour of everyday life and shows how our ordinary lifestyle choices have big implications for justice around the world. She unpacks how we get our food and clothing and shows us the surprising costs of consumer waste. How we live can make a difference not only for our own health but also for the well-being of people across the globe. The more sustainable our lifestyle, the more just our world will be. Everyday justice is one way of loving God and our neighbors. We can live more ethically, through the little and big decisions we make every day. Here's how.

By C. Wess Daniels
with a forward by Ben Pink Dandelion

A Convergent Model of Renewal addresses a perceived crisis for faith traditions. How do we continue to value tradition while allowing for innovative and contextual expressions of faith to emerge? How do we foster deeper participation and decentralization of power rather than entrenched institutionalism? Drawing on insights from contemporary philosophy, contextual theology, and participatory culture, C. Wess Daniels calls for a revitalization of faith traditions. In A Convergent Model of Renewal he proposes a model that holds together both tradition and innovation in ways that foster participatory change. This convergent model of renewal is then applied to two case studies based in the Quaker tradition: one from the early part of the tradition and the second from an innovative community today. The model, however, is capable of being implemented and adapted by communities with various faith backgrounds.

By Marcus J. Borg

In The Heart of Christianity, world-renowned Jesus scholar and author of the bestseller Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time argues that the essential ingredients of a Christian life—faith, being born again, the kingdom of God, the gospel of love—are as vitally important today as they have always been, even during this time of conflict and change in the church.

Borg wants to show us, as today's thinking Christians, how to discover a life of faith by reconceptualizing familiar beliefs. Being born again, for example, has nothing to do with fundamentalism, but is a call to radical personal transformation. Talking about the kingdom of God does not mean that you are fighting against secularism, but that you have committed your life to the divine values of justice and love. And living the true Christian way is essentially about opening one's heart—to God, and to others. Above all else, Borg believes with passion and conviction that living the Christian life still makes sense.

Other books by Borg: Speaking Christian and Convictions: How I learned What Matters Most

by Jim Wallis
with a forward by Bryan Stevenson

America’s problem with race has deep roots, with the country's foundation tied to the near extermination of one race of people and the enslavement of another. Racism is truly our nation's original sin.

"It's time we right this unacceptable wrong," says bestselling author and leading Christian activist Jim Wallis. Fifty years ago, Wallis was driven away from his faith by a white church that considered dealing with racism to be taboo. His participation in the civil rights movement brought him back when he discovered a faith that commands racial justice. Yet as recent tragedies confirm, we continue to suffer from the legacy of racism. The old patterns of white privilege are colliding with the changing demographics of a diverse nation. The church has been slow to respond, and Sunday morning is still the most segregated hour of the week.

In America’s Original Sin, Wallis offers a prophetic and deeply personal call to action in overcoming the racism so ingrained in American society. He speaks candidly to Christians—particularly white Christians—urging them to cross a new bridge toward racial justice and healing.

by Mike McHargue

From the host of the popular podcasts, The Liturgists Podcast and Ask Science Mike, a story of having faith, losing it, and finding it again through science—revealing how the latest in neuroscience, physics, and biology help us understand God, faith, and ourselves.

Forty-four percent of Americans will go through a major faith transition in their lives. And now, with church attendance on the decline and increasing cultural independence from Christian social norms, this trend has reached a tipping point: the fastest growing religion in America is "none."

Mike McHargue understands the pain of unraveling belief. In Finding God in the Waves, Mike tells the story of how his Evangelical faith dissolved into atheism as he studied the Bible, a crisis that threatened his identity, his friendships, and even his marriage. Years later, Mike was standing on the shores of the Pacific Ocean when a bewildering, seemingly mystical moment motivated him to take another look. But this time, it wasn't theology or scripture that led him back to God—it was science.

By Lon Fendall, Jan Wood, and Bruce Bishop

To discern is to hear and understand God's voice as articulated by the Holy Spirit, resident within us. Discernment is a necessary precondition for faithfulness to God's leadings. This is as true for groups as it is for individuals, which means it is true for congregations and businesses that want to obey Christ....Group discernment is an essential ingredient of anything that Christ's followers seek to do together. Even the smallest Bible study group or informal gathering makes decisions. That decision making carries with it the potential of strengthening the spiritual depth of each member of the group--but it also makes misunderstanding, division, and even the complete destruction of the group possible.

By Richard J. Foster

Richard J. Foster’s Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth is hailed by many as the best modern book on Christian spirituality with millions of copies sold since its original publication in 1978.

In Celebration of Discipline, Foster explores the "classic Disciplines," or central spiritual practices, of the Christian faith to show how each of these areas contribute to a balanced spiritual life.

Foster, the bestselling author of several books (Prayer and Streams of Living Water) and intrachurch movement founder of Renovaré, helps motivate Christians everywhere to embark on a journey of prayer and spiritual growth.

BY Parker J. Palmer

In A Hidden Wholeness, Parker Palmer reveals the same compassionate intelligence and informed heart that shaped his best-selling books Let Your Life Speak and The Courage to Teach. Here he speaks to our yearning to live undivided lives—lives that are congruent with our inner truth—in a world filled with the forces of fragmentation.

Mapping an inner journey that we take in solitude and in the company of others, Palmer describes a form of community that fits the limits of our active lives. Defining a “circle of trust” as “a space between us that honors the soul,” he shows how people in settings ranging from friendship to organizational life can support each other on the journey toward living “divided no more.”

By Bruce Bawer

The time is past, says Bawer, when denominational names and other traditional labels provided an accurate reflection of Christian America's religious beliefs and practices. The meaningful distinction today is not between Protestant and Catholic, or Baptist and Episcopalian, but rather between "legalistic" and "nonlegalistic" religion, between the Church of Law and the Church of Love. On one side is the fundamentalist right, which draws a sharp distinction between "saved" and "unsaved" and worships a God of wrath and judgment; on the other are more mainstream Christians who view all humankind as children of a loving God who calls them to break down barriers of hate, prejudice, and distrust.

Pointing out that the supposedly "traditional" beliefs of American fundamentalism—about which most mainstream Christians, clergy included, know shockingly little—are in fact of relatively recent origin, are distinctively American in many ways, and are dramatically at odds with the values that Jesus actually spread, Bawer fascinatingly demonstrates the way in which these beliefs have increasingly come to supplant genuinely fundamental Christian tenets in the American church and to become synonymous with Christianity in the minds of many people.

By Ronald W. Richardson

Richardson helps us to understand how congregations function emotionally. Without being simplistic, he gives clear directions on how to improve their quality of life together and function more effectively in achieving mission goals. This book offers: A theory about human behavior that will aid understanding of how things can get out of control in the human community of the church; A practical set of leadership ideas and behaviors; Guidelines for how to behave in the midst of upsetting and conflictual circumstances; Personal steps that leaders in the church can take to become more positive forces for healing and cooperation.

by T. Vail Palmer Jr.

The writings of George Fox, Edward Burrough, and Margaret Fell demonstrate that at least these three, first-generation Friends, were reading the Bible with empathy. They stood within the thought and life-world of the earliest Christians and looked at the world through the window of biblical faith. For them the heart of the Bible lay in its personal narratives—the stories of living men, women, and communities; unlike many Christians, then and now, they did not look at the Bible as a legal constitution. They reveled in the poetic language of the Bible’s rich symbol and metaphor. Out of this empathetic reading emerged not only some of their strange behaviors, such as going naked in public "as a sign," but also their innovative understanding of the Christian way of life—their anti-war testimony and commitment to social justice (through their empathetic “Lamb’s War” reading of the Book of Revelation), their insistence on the full equality of women and men in preaching and declaring the Christian message.

By Peggy Senger Morrison

Morrison was known as a storyteller from an early age - sometimes "a bit of a prevaricator" - so it stands to reason that a hooligan God set her on a path so full of the improbable that few would believe it. From a Holiness Womenʼs Clergy convention in Texas, to an African war zone, this motorcycle-riding, Gospel-preaching, trauma healing Quaker in high heels and leathers takes you on a wild ride as she learns to navigate life on Godʼs terms.

By Peggy Senger Morrison

Quaker minister and spiritual adventurer, Peggy Senger Morrison writes about finding God in unexpected places. The book starts by proposing 12 spiritual disciplines for the 21st century. These include: adventure, courage, surrender, compassion and failure. The idea is to develop and hold an unmediated experience of God and then courageously take that connection to the physical and metaphorical edges of the world. Because life is short and mastery is hard, this can only be accomplished by accepting the fact that we are all permanent student drivers. Applying a practical and optimistic theology, and coddling no lies, Peggy uses her own experiences in the United States and Central Africa to make plain a new and useful Christianity.

by Eckhart Tolle

With his bestselling spiritual guide The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle inspired millions of readers to discover the freedom and joy of a life lived “in the now.” In A New Earth, Tolle expands on these powerful ideas to show how transcending our ego-based state of consciousness is not only essential to personal happiness, but also the key to ending conflict and suffering throughout the world. Tolle describes how our attachment to the ego creates the dysfunction that leads to anger, jealousy, and unhappiness, and shows readers how to awaken to a new state of consciousness and follow the path to a truly fulfilling existence.

Illuminating, enlightening, and uplifting, A New Earth is a profoundly spiritual manifesto for a better way of life—and for building a better world.

by Dalai Lama XIV and Desmond Tutu translated by Douglas Carlton Abrams

Two spiritual giants. Five days. One timeless question.

Nobel Peace Prize Laureates His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu have survived more than fifty years of exile and the soul-crushing violence of oppression. Despite their hardships—or, as they would say, because of them—they are two of the most joyful people on the planet.

In April 2015, Archbishop Tutu traveled to the Dalai Lama's home in Dharamsala, India, to celebrate His Holiness's eightieth birthday and to create what they hoped would be a gift for others. They looked back on their long lives to answer a single burning question: How do we find joy in the face of life's inevitable suffering?

They traded intimate stories, teased each other continually, and shared their spiritual practices. By the end of a week filled with laughter and punctuated with tears, these two global heroes had stared into the abyss and despair of our time and revealed how to live a life brimming with joy.

This book offers us a rare opportunity to experience their astonishing and unprecedented week together, from the first embrace to the final good-bye.

by Rob Bell

In Love Wins, bestselling author, international teacher, and speaker Rob Bell (Velvet Elvis, Drops Like Stars) addresses one of the most controversial issues of faith—hell and the afterlife—arguing, would a loving God send people to eternal torment forever?

Rob Bell is an electrifying, unconventional pastor whom Time magazine calls “a singular rock star in the church world,” with millions viewing his NOOMA videos.

With searing insight, Bell puts hell on trial with a hopeful message—eternal life doesn’t start when we die; it starts right now. And ultimately, Love Wins.

Also by Bell: Velvet Elvis

by Richard Rohr

Now in a new edition, this thought-provoking book by popular author Richard Rohr offers a critique of religion as a system that often creates an alternative pious world without really challenging oppression, materialism, and sectarianism in our modern world. Religion, he says, without this contemplative stance is often part of the problem. Drawing from Jesus parable of the rich man, Rohr believes that religion can only rediscover itself as a transformational system if it passes through the eye of a needle, if it overcomes its own temptation to power, wealth, and fundamentalism. A true contemplative stance crosses boundaries, is not concerned with who s in and who s out. It is not a worthiness competition. In fact, the accessibility of the contemplative awareness to all is, Rohr believes, the key to the Gospel message:, The kingdom of heaven is hidden in plain sight.

Also by Rohr: Falling Upward, From Wild Mat to Wise Man, Immortal Diamond, Everything Belongs, The Naked Now, Contemplation in Action