The Measure of God, now in paperback, is a lively historical narrativeoffering the reader a sense for what has taken place in the God and science debate over the past century. 
 Modern science came of age at the cusp of the twentieth century. It was a period marked by discovery of radio waves and x rays, use of the first skyscraper, automobile, cinema, and vaccine, and rise of the quantum theory of the atom. This was the close of the Victorian age, and the beginning of the first great wave of scientific challenges to the religious beliefs of the Christian world.
 Religious thinkers were having to brace themselves. Some raced to show that science did not undermine religious belief. Others tried to reconcile science and faith, and even to show that the tools of science, facts and reason, could support knowledge of God. In the English speaking world, many had espoused such a project, but one figure stands out. Before his death in 1887, the Scottish judge Adam Gifford endowed the Gifford Lectures to keep this debate going, a science haunted debate on "all questions about man's conception of God or the Infinite." The list of Gifford lecturers is a veritable Who's Who of modern scientists, philosophers and theologians: from William James to Karl Barth, Albert Schweitzer to Reinhold Niebuhr, Niels Bohr to Iris Murdoch, from John Dewey to Mary Douglas.

The Measure of God: Our Century-Long Struggle to Reconcile Science & Religion

History

Witham, Larry

World

HarperOne

From colonial times to the present, the sermon has shaped America’s self-understanding, been the dynamic medium where America conducts its most important debates, and sparked some of its most historic moments.

A City Upon a Hill: How the Sermon Changed the Course of American History

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

The Measure of God: History's Greatest Minds Wrestle with Reconciling Science and Religion

The Words That Stirred a Nation From colonial times to the present, from Abraham Lincoln to Billy Graham, the sermon has been the dynamic medium through which America conducts its most important debates, motivating us to fight wars as well as fight for peace and ultimately defining the course of our history. A City Upon a Hill tells the American story through these powerful words, showing us at our best—and sometimes at our worst.

A City Upon a Hill: How Sermons Changed the Course of American History

Two centuries after Adam Smith illuminated the workings of the marketplace, a new movement among economists and social scientists is expanding his insights into a groundbreaking "economics of religion." Using cutting edge ideas from the behavioral sciences, and a deep knowledge of religious history, this new approach is making sense not only of past beliefs, but of religion today. In Marketplace of the Gods, award-winning journalist Larry Witham tells the inside story of this expanding "economic approach" to religion, the puzzles it tries to solve, the controversies it has stirred, and the people who are making it happen. He shows that the economic approach, while evoking images of stock markets or accounting ledgers, actually begins with a simple idea about human beings as rational actors, judging costs and benefits in life. Every life has limits, so human experience is a series of trade-offs, balancing resources to make choices for the best possible benefits. As the economics of religion shows, this model can be applied to the rich story of the human race and its gods. Beginning with the individual, the choices in religion shape households, groups, movements, and entire "religious economies" of nations. On the one hand, this mixing of the profane and the sacred, the economic and the religious, is an exciting exchange of ideas between economics, sociology, psychology, history, and theology. On the other, it has spurred a lively protest. Indeed, for some, the economic approach seems to transform our good angels into grubby consumers. As Witham shows, however, the economic approach to religion has insights for everyone, believers and skeptics alike. He illuminates this approach in a volume rich with ideas, history, contemporary events, and the insights of some of our sharpest modern-day thinkers.

Marketplace of the Gods: How Economics Explains Religion

Religion & Spirituality

Religious Studies

Oxford University Press

The God Biographers presents a sweeping narrative of the Western image of God since antiquity, following the theme of how the "old" biography of God has been challenged by a "new" biography in the twenty-first century. The new biography has made its case in free will theism, process thought, evolutionary doctrines, relational theology, and "open theism"―a story of people, ideas, and events that is brought up to the present in this engaging narrative. Readers will meet the God biographers in the old and new camps. On the one side are Job, Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, Aquinas, and Calvin. On the other side is a group that includes the early Unitarian and Wesleyan thinkers, the process thinkers Alfred North Whitehead, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Charles Hartshorne, and finally a new breed of evangelical philosophers. This story looks closely at the cultural and scientific context of each age and how these shaped the images of God. In the twenty-first century, that image is being shaped by new human experiences and the findings of science. Today, the debate between the old biographers and the new is playing out in the forums of modern theology, courtrooms, and social movements. Larry Witham tells that panoramic story in an engaging narrative for specialists and general readers alike.

The God Biographers: Our Changing Image of God from Job to the Present

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

Lexington Books

Through biography, history, theology and courtroom drama, this book recountsthe quintessential conflict between an American theologian and the Vatican. 9cassettes.

Curran Vs Catholic University

Blackstone Pub

Vladimir Rodzianko, a prominent Orthodox priest, is known in the Soviet Union, Europe, and the United States. His notoriety begins with a prominent family line that extends back to the birth of the Russian nation. After his family fled the Bolshevik revolution, his career evolved from emigre priest to Russian-language broadcaster for the BBC and finally as a ruling bishop in America. By recounting Rodzianko's life, a parallel story emerges-the story of the Russian Orthodox Church from the 1917 Revolution to the Christian Millennium there in 1988. This story concludes in June 1990 with the election of a new Russian Orthodox patriarch in the era of glasnost. Moreover, this is a biography of a priest, Russian emigre, and broadcaster who confronts the reality of the Orthodox church under communism, a situation so problematic that it has created martyrs and traitors inside the USSR and has deeply divided Christians in the West.

Rodzianko

University Press of America

Vladimir Rodzianko, a prominent Orthodox priest, is known in the Soviet Union, Europe and the US. His notoriety begins with a prominent family line that extends to the birth of the Russian nation. After his family fled the Bolshevik revolution, his career evolved from emigrant priest to Russian-language broadcaster for the BBC and finally as a ruling bishop in America. By recounting Rodzianko's life, a parallel story emerges - the story of the Russian Orthodox Church from the 1917 Revolution to the Christian Millennium there in 1988. This story concludes in June 1990 with the election of a new Russian Orthodox patriarch in the era of glasnost. Moreover, this is a biography of a priest, Russian emigre and broadcaster, who confronts the reality of the Orthodox Church under communism.

Rodzianko: An Orthodox Journey from Revolution to Millennium, 1917-1988

Curran Vs. Catholic University: A Study of Authority and Freedom in Conflict

Edington-Rand

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Books by Witham, Larry