This book presents a correspondence between two friends who disagree about how to answer the question, “What does it mean to be a Christian?” Crosby argues that Christians understand themselves as hearing a definitive word of revelation spoken by God and intended for all human beings. But Betty sees Christianity as one of several options, usually the preferred way for those born in the faith, but no more unique or special than Hinduism or Buddhism. It is a debate over the kind of initiative the Christian God takes, or does not take, toward human beings. Throughout the debate Crosby alleges that Betty’s God is a very finite god, an all-too-human god, and for that very reason is something different from the God venerated by Christians, while Betty maintains that his theism remains within the Christian orbit and is a much needed corrective to a religion with exclusivist tendencies.
The debate between the two friends is presented here in the form of a correspondence they conducted over a period of two years (and did not originally intend for publication). It has undergone very little editing and revision; the authors have wanted to preserve the spontaneous give and take of their exchange. Together they have produced a work of philosophical dialogue that is unusually fruitful in its ability to clarify some fundamental issues of religion.

What Does It Mean to be a Christian?: A Debate

Religion & Spirituality

Betty, Stafford

Crosby, John F.

Christian Books & Bibles

St. Augustines Press

Ghost Boy is a middle grade/young adult paranormal love story. Seventh-grader Ben Conover sees people no one else can see. He can distinguish them from the "regular people" who walk the mall. He has power over dark spirits who aim to harm. He has a deeply loving connection with a spirit girl his same age who visits him, but he has no idea where his feelings come from. Ben's bold adventures, compassionate nature, and eerie encounters with an unseen world are woven together throughout the book. But Ghost Boy is more than a boy-book. Girls will identify with the mysterious heroine whose life in "heaven" leaves her yearning for earth, especially Ben. This multiracial novel does not have the feel of fantasy fiction. By bringing to light the sometimes wondrous, sometimes haunted world of clairvoyant children it has a revelatory quality; it seems real--because it is.

Ghost Boy

Teen & Young Adult

Literature & Fiction

Our Street Books

In this book Professor Stafford Betty pulls together the best evidences for survival of death. The very best, he maintains, come from psychical research. The near-death experience, deathbed visions, reincarnational memories of children, communication from the so-called dead through mediums, apparitions, poltergeists, spirits that reach out to us through electronic instruments, spirits that attach themselves to our bodies, and episodes of terminal lucidity in Alzheimer's patients are all included. But philosophy has a lot to say as well. In simple terms Betty lays out the evidence against reductive materialism that claims all our experience is generated by the brain and that we perish at death. Viewing the brain as an instrument put to good use by the immaterial self is much more consistent with the evidence. Finally, he surveys the universal affirmation by the world's religions that we survive death. Betty brings together memorable examples and careful analysis of each type of evidence. Each type is imposing enough by itself, but taken together they build a case for survival of death that is insurmountable. He shows that life after death, as mysterious as it is, should no longer be regarded as a hypothesis, but, like dark matter, a fact.

When Did You Ever Become Less By Dying? AFTERLIFE: The Evidence

Self-Help

Death & Grief

White Crow Books

Following his death Aiden Lovejoy finds himself in a strange but wonderful world-a vital, busy, challenging environment with great joy beckoning. There is much work to be done, however, and the progress that "the dead" are invited to make can stretch over eons. Aiden, a family therapist in earth life, picks up where he left off. Alongside the beauty that surrounds him are hellish zones where disfigured characters choose to live, and their suffering calls out to him. But he has troubles of his own, and souls from higher worlds inspire him to reach higher. For some readers this fast-paced, soul-searching novel will help make sense of the present crisis surrounding us. Professor Stafford Betty, author of The Afterlife Unveiled and other similar works, writes: "The laws of this world, its differences from the afterlife scenarios of the world's religions, and its rationality and 'amazingness' stand out. All that happens to the novel's characters is supported in a general way by evidence. The details are of course fanciful, but the world in which surviving souls are embedded owes far more to research than to unaided imagination. Something like this is the world I think we will all enter, whether Christian or Buddhist or atheist or whatever, when we die. As I see it, we are all pilgrims on an infinite march."

The Afterlife Therapist

Guardians of the Afterworld

The world in 2090 is on the verge of domination by the Caliphate. The future hangs in the balance as the religion of peace struggles against its counterfeit. Islamists covering the globe are killing, burning, and bombing in an extravagant display of well-coordinated force designed to terrorize humanity out of its "godless slumber." But two Muslim women, supported by a Christian religion professor, have another idea. Their weapons aren't guns and bombs but imaginative, fearless leadership and an unshakable commitment to mutual understanding and tolerance.Their mission takes them from their home base in New York to destinations as far apart as Japan, India, Sudan, and Britain. The bizarre massacres devised by the Caliphate keep steady pressure on these complex and courageous heroes, as do the multi-million-dollar fatwas on their lives.... Can the war for the very soul of Islam be won before its leaders are slain and their reforms launched?

The War for Islam: A Novel

Genre Fiction

Roundfire Books

A young Catholic woman, 22-year-old ex-Marine and unwed mother, begins to see cracks in the Church she grew up loving. Bad priests preying on children, harsh treatment of the divorced and LGBTQ, a deep-seated and toxic sexism, and archaic dogmas force Macrina McGrath to choose between leaving the Church or trying to make it better. Graduate school in theology at Georgetown and a trip to India help form her resolve: She will stop at nothing to take the Church out of the Middle Ages and deliver women from their abject status. She joins and soon heads the excommunicated Womanpriest movement and with help from the Archbishop of Boston becomes the leader of disaffected Catholics who want change. The world notices the indomitable American willing to take on the Vatican, and she achieves a spiritual stardom the equal of the pope. Where will all this lead? Meanwhile she contacts the daughter she gave up to adoption; and Ezra, the man she has long loved since their teaching days together at Amherst, reaches out to her one last time. She must choose between family life with him and the new Catholicism she helped create, where women and men minister on an equal basis. Her choice will affect world history.

The Womanpriest: A Novel

What happens to us when we die? Many think of heaven as an unimaginable state of bliss. As for hell, it's far out of proportion to any sin we might have committed and makes a travesty of God. But what if the afterlife was something very different? Three decades of research have taught the author, a world expert in the field of death and afterlife studies, where the most reliable sources are to be found. These accounts are far better developed and more plausible than anything found in the world's scriptures or theologies. We hunger for a reliable revelation telling us that life here and now is meaningful and good, that each of us has an important part to play in its proper unfolding, that we are accountable for all we do, and that the spirit-denying materialism all around us is a mistake. The world ahead, unlike ours, is fascinating and fair. Authentic channels through which the "dead" speak are the closest thing to the voice of God that our planet has.

The Afterlife Unveiled: What the Dead are Telling Us About Their World

New Age & Spirituality

6Th Books

Kiran is a gifted but self-absorbed college professor who grew up in Mumbai. Now working at a leading California university as a professional philosopher, he lives in a marriage of convenience to Lisa, an American, but this comes to an abrupt end on a visit home to India when he dies in a plane crash. Kiran watches annihilation advance toward him, then the moment of death. To his amazement he finds he's still alive--more alive than ever. Under the guidance of his grandparents, he gradually gets used to his ethereal body and the strange laws, landscapes, cities, and fellow inhabitants of Eidos, a spirit world. But he's not at home there; he's not ready to enjoy it. He undergoes Judgment (but not by a deity) by reliving the events of his selfish life from the point of view of his victims--his students, his fellow workers, above all the women who loved him. Eventually he seeks out Shalini, who committed suicide after he rejected her in favor of her rival, Lisa. Kiran, facing heavy odds, is assigned the task of rescuing Shalini from her self-made hell in the Shadowlands. Will he succeed -- and if he does, what then? He can't stay where he is. He must move ahead into diviner worlds or "repeat the grade." And what about Shalini? Where will her passion for Kiran take her next? Stafford Betty is a university professor and an afterlife researcher. He doesn't regard this novel as fantasy fiction. It grew out of his nonfiction book, "The Afterlife Unveiled," published a few months earlier. He believes that our own experiences in the afterworld will be something like Kiran's. "The Imprisoned Splendor" will suggest what probably lies ahead for all of us and entertain you in the process. This is his fourth novel, the previous one published by Penguin. "The Imprisoned Splendor" is a corrective to pessimistic novels like Camus' "The Stranger." The message here is positive and important.

The Imprisoned Splendor

Heaven and hell--are they real places, or are they fantasies invented to inspire good behavior and overcome our fear of dying? In this book Stafford Betty, a university professor and international expert on afterlife research, attempts to answer these questions. He allows deceased human beings speaking through authentic mediums to describe their actual worlds. They begin by telling us they are not "resting," as Christian theology often asserts. Rather, they live in a world of infinite possibility, and their wills are as free over there as they are here. They are busy beings living in a beautiful but challenging environment, and some are climbing toward higher realms while others are content to stay put--at least for a while. Suffering in the afterworld, not just joy, can be intense; it exists to awaken souls to their errors so they will enter into the happiness of those higher spheres, worlds of brilliant light where corruption can't enter. Professor Betty explores those heavens, those places where love reigns unchecked--as well as those unhappy places where it doesn't. He suggests that the religions we've fashioned here on earth could use an upgrade. They are moons that derive their light from the central sun. This book is about that sun.

Heaven and Hell Unveiled: Updates from the World of Spirit

Politics & Social Sciences

Sociology

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Books by Betty, Stafford