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Growing up in the modern world can be difficult for teenage girls. Fortunately, Bible stories can help them stay on the path of chastity and worship. The relatable narratives help adolescent ladies understand their changing bodies in relation to God. These religious books can demystify the confusion of Christianity for easy understanding. Today's growing women can connect with Jesus now!

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Often times many people who are Christians have a hard time understanding their faith. One reason why this problem occurs has to do with their lack of biblical knowledge. A New Testament study guide can help them to learn key biblical figures and to understand key characters. This will help to increase their faith in God and their relationship with Christ.

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Children love stories. Their imaginations run wild when they hear tales of good and evil and heroism. The Christian Bible is full of wondrous accounts that would interest children. In homes where parents are Christians, or want their children to understand the religions of the world, these stories would give children a solid foundation of knowledge about the Christian faith.

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Why would anybody believe that God could sanction terrorism? Why has the rediscovery of religion&rsquo;s power in recent years manifested in such a bloody way? What, if anything, can be done about it?<BR /> &#160;<BR /><I>Terror in the Mind of God</I>, now in its fourth edition, answers these questions and more. Thoroughly revised and expanded, the book analyzes in detail terrorism related to almost all the world&rsquo;s major religious traditions: European Christians who oppose Muslim immigrants; American Christians who support abortion clinic bombings and militia actions; Muslims in the Middle East associated with the rise of ISIS, al Qaeda, and Hamas; Israeli Jews who support the persecution of Palestinians; India&#39;s Hindus linked to assaults on Muslims in the state of Gujarat and Sikhs identified with the assassination of Indira Gandhi; and Buddhist militants in Myanmar affiliated with anti-Muslim violence and in Japan with the nerve gas attack in Tokyo&rsquo;s subway.<BR /> &#160;<BR /> Drawing from extensive personal interviews, Mark Juergensmeyer takes readers into the mindset of those who perpetrate and support violence in the name of religion. Identifying patterns within these cultures of violence, he explains why and how religion and violence are linked and how acts of religious terrorism are undertaken not only for strategic reasons but to accomplish a symbolic purpose.&#160;<I>Terror in the Mind of God&#160;</I>continues to be an indispensible resource for students of religion and modern society.

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Why did Donald Trump follow Barack Obama into the White House? Why is America so polarized? And how does American exceptionalism explain these social changes?<BR /> &#160;<BR /> In this provocative book, Mugambi Jouet describes why Americans are far more divided than other Westerners over basic issues, including wealth inequality, health care, climate change, evolution, gender roles, abortion, gay rights, sex, gun control, mass incarceration, the death penalty, torture, human rights, and war. Raised in Paris by a French mother and Kenyan father, Jouet then lived in the Bible Belt, Manhattan, and beyond. Drawing inspiration from Alexis de Tocqueville, he wields his multicultural sensibility to parse how the intense polarization of U.S. conservatives and liberals has become a key dimension of American exceptionalism&mdash;an idea widely misunderstood as American superiority. While exceptionalism once was a source of strength, it may now spell decline, as unique features of U.S. history, politics, law, culture, religion, and race relations foster grave conflicts. They also shed light on the intriguing ideological evolution of American conservatism, which long predated Trumpism. Anti-intellectualism, conspiracy-mongering, a visceral suspicion of government, and Christian fundamentalism are far more common in America than the rest of the Western world&mdash;Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. <I>Exceptional America&#160;</I>dissects the American soul, in all of its peculiar,&#160;clashing, and striking manifestations.<BR />

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The connection between popular culture and religion is an enduring part of American life. With seventy-five percent new content, the third edition of this multifaceted and popular collection has been revised and updated throughout to provide greater religious diversity in its topics and address critical developments in the study of religion and popular culture.<BR /> &#160;<BR /> Ideal for classroom use, this expanded volume<BR /><UL><LI>gives increased attention to the implications of digital culture and the increasingly interactive quality of popular culture</LI><LI>provides a framework to help students understand and appreciate the work in diverse fields, methods, and perspectives</LI><LI>contains an updated introduction, discussion questions, and other instructional tools</LI></UL><BR /> &#160;

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Globally known as Amma, meaning «Mother,» Mata Amritanandamayi has developed a massive transnational humanitarian organization based in hugs. She is familiar to millions as the «hugging saint,» a moniker that derives from her elaborate darshan programs wherein nearly every day ten thousand people are embraced by the guru one at a time, events that routinely last ten to twenty hours without any rest for her. Although she was born in 1953 as a low-caste girl in a South Indian fishing village, today millions revere her as guru and goddess, a living embodiment of the divine on earth.<br> <br> <i>Reflections of Amma</i> focuses on communities of Amma’s devotees in the United States, showing how they endeavor to mirror their guru’s behaviors and transform themselves to emulate the ethos of the movement. This study argues that «inheritors» and «adopters» of Hindu traditions differently interpret Hindu goddesses, Amma, and her relation to feminism and women’s empowerment because of their inherited religious, cultural, and political dispositions. In this insightful ethnographic analysis, Amanda J. Lucia discovers how the politics of American multiculturalism reifies these cultural differences in «de facto congregations,» despite the fact that Amma’s embrace attempts to erase communal boundaries in favor of global unity.

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The Reverend Howard Finster (1916–2001) was called the «backwoods William Blake» and the «Andy Warhol of the South,» and he is considered the godfather of contemporary American folk and visionary art. This book is the first interpretive analysis of the intertwined artistic and religious significance of Finster’s work within the context of the American «outsider art» tradition. Finster began preaching as a teenager in the South in the 1930s. But it was not until he received a revelation from God at the age of sixty that he began to make sacred art.<BR /><BR /> A modern-day Noah who saw his art as a religious crusade to save the world before it was too late, Finster worked around the clock, often subsisting on a diet of peanut butter and instant coffee. He spent the last years of his life feverishly creating his environmental artwork called Paradise Garden and what would ultimately number almost fifty thousand works of «bad and nasty art.» This was visionary work that obsessively combined images and text and featured apocalyptic biblical imagery, flying saucers from outer space, and popular cultural icons such as Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Henry Ford, Mona Lisa, and George Washington. In the 1980s and 90s, he developed cult celebrity status, and he appeared in the Venice Biennale and on the <I>Tonight Show.</I> His work graced the album covers of bands such as R.E.M. and Talking Heads. This book explores the life and religious-artistic significance of Finster and his work from the personal perspective of religion scholar Norman Girardot, friend to Finster and his family during the later years of the artist’s life.<BR /><BR />

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Wild Religion is a wild ride through recent South African history from the advent of democracy in 1994 to the euphoria of the football World Cup in 2010. In the context of South Africa’s political journey and religious diversity, David Chidester explores African indigenous religious heritage with a difference. As the spiritual dimension of an African Renaissance, indigenous religion has been recovered in South Africa as a national resource. Wild Religion analyzes indigenous rituals of purification on Robben Island, rituals of healing and reconciliation at the new national shrine, Freedom Park, and rituals of animal sacrifice at the World Cup. Not always in the national interest, indigenous religion also appears in the wild religious creativity of prison gangs, the global spirituality of neo-shamans, the ceremonial display of Zulu virgins, the ancient Egyptian theosophy in South Africa’s Parliament, and the new traditionalism of South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma. Arguing that the sacred is produced through the religious work of intensive interpretation, formal ritualization, and intense contestation, Chidester develops innovative insights for understanding the meaning and power of religion in a changing society. For anyone interested in religion, Wild Religion uncovers surprising dynamics of sacred space, violence, fundamentalism, heritage, media, sex, sovereignty, and the political economy of the sacred.

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