 | Sermon on the Mount (Koinonia Publication) by Clarence Jordan
Buy new: $10.20 / Used from: $1.50 If you think the answer is anyone at all, you haven't read the Sermon on the Mount -- "love your enemies -- turn the other cheek." The ethics of Jesus are simple -- unconditional love & nonviolence.
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 | Christian America and the Kingdom of God by Richard T. Hughes
Buy new: $19.77 / Used from: $15.75 Hughes makes clear that the Kingdom of God is not the same thing as America, for anyone confused on the point. (Major clue: invading and waging war against other countries does not express the values of the Kingdom.)
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 | Red Letter Christians: A Citizen's Guide to Faith and Politics by Tony Campolo
Buy new: $13.59 / Used from: $3.56 Red Letter Christians, or Sermon On the Mount Christians, meaning Christians who try to follow the words & teachings of Jesus, and not End Times Prophecy, or all the barbarism of Leviticus, or some right-winger's interpretation who thinks he knows the Mind of God.
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 | The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America by Jim Wallis
Buy new: $17.13 / Used from: $0.01 Jim Wallis with an encouraging look at the disintegration of the religious right as the younger generation of evangelicals embraces a more progressive agenda.
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 | God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now by John Dominic Crossan
Buy new: $19.51 / Used from: $2.06 The prolific Crossan always amazes with his superb scholarship. Here he turns from excavation to application, examining the ethical obligations of Christians in a world of injustice and war.
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 | Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope by Brian D. McLaren
Buy new: $14.29 / Used from: $3.16 McLaren has discovered Herman Daly's ecological economics, and it adds tremendously to his latest book, which focuses on peace, social justice and ecology. Much better than "A Generous Orthodoxy" which lacked any punch in its eclecticism.
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 | A Civilization of Love: What Every Catholic Can Do to Transform the World by Carl Anderson
Buy new: $13.57 / Used from: $0.01 Imagine that!
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 | Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement by Donald E. Miller
Buy new: $15.34 / Used from: $8.00 surveys the progressive social ministries of the dynamic Pentecostal churches around the world
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 | The Politics of Jesus : Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of Jesus' Teachings and How They Have Been Corrupted by Obery M. Hendricks Jr.
Buy used from: $3.46 the latest exposition of Jesus as advocate of the poor, not of the wealthy and oppressors
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 | The Final Move Beyond Iraq: The Final Solution While the World Sleeps by Mike Evans
Buy new: $10.19 / Used from: $0.01 5 STARS -- SEE MY SARCASTIC REVIEW) Great! The latest right-wing call for Holy War against Islam. Jesus, the Prince of Peace, will lead the charge -- die, infidels!
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 | Culturally Incorrect: How Clashing Worldviews Affect Your Future by Rod Parsley
Buy used from: $0.01 Parsley leads a megachurch. He was a McCain supporter, and also apparently calls for a War On Islam. How Christian! Blessed are the Warmakers? Now McCain has disowned him, and a good thing.
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 | Epicenter: Why Current Rumblings in the Middle East Will Change Your Future by Joel C. Rosenberg
Buy new: $13.59 / Used from: $0.75 1 STAR -- SEE MY REVIEW) What sort of Christians spend their time speculating on End Time prophecy? Is that what Jesus said we should spend our time on? What's worse, most of it involves identifying Demons we should go to war against and slaughter. Just like the Prince of Peace said!
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 | Jesus for the Non-Religious by John Shelby Spong
Buy new: $19.96 / Used from: $4.73 the latest exposition of a non-literalist, non-dogmatic Christianity from Bishop Spong
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 | Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris
Buy new: $11.53 / Used from: $1.06 Harris ruthlessly critiques dogmatic right-wing fundamentalism -- the danger of his approach is a militant atheism that simply becomes another warring tribalism.
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 | The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right by Michael Lerner
Buy used from: $0.01 SEE MY REVIEW) excellent new call for a Spiritual Left from Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun Magazine
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 | We Walk the Path Together: Learning From Thich Nhat Hanh And Meister Eckhart by Brian J. Pierce
Buy new: $14.04 / Used from: $8.95 Brian Pierce, a Dominican friar, with a book comparing the Christian mysticism of Meister Eckhart with the Zen Buddhism of Thich Nhat Hanh -- beautiful!
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 | Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America: An Evangelical's Lament by Randall Balmer
Buy used from: $0.01 I look forward to reading this -- a critique of the religious right by a historian who is an evangelical Christian himself.
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 | A Chosen Faith: An Introduction to Unitarian Universalism by John A. Buehrens
Buy new: $10.88 / Used from: $4.02 with roots in early christianity, unitarian-universalism has extended to encompass the love & wisdom of all traditions and beyond
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 | Jesus and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings (Seastone series)
Buy new: $10.08 / Used from: $1.08 SEE MY REVIEW) what Jesus taught (as opposed to all the other stuff that's in the Bible) is remarkably similiar to what Buddha taught -- see my BHUDDA-DHARMA list.
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 | Salt and Light: Living the Sermon on the Mount by Eberhard Arnold
Buy used from: $2.33 The application of the Sermon on the Mount in the form of the Bruderhof Communities -- some of the most sincere, committed followers of Jesus on the planet today.
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 | The Politics of Jesus by John Howard Yoder
Buy new: $14.96 / Used from: $12.50 Jesus was not a conservative, or a right-winger, or an advocate of war, hate or violence, despite what you might think based on some of his loudest supposed followers in the U.S. today.
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 | The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer In Christian Ethics by Stanley Hauerwas
Buy new: $18.81 / Used from: $0.01 Stanley Hauerwas is a Methodist theologian who teaches that Jesus taught nonviolence.
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 | Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh
Buy used from: $0.99 another book, by a Zen teacher, stressing the commonality of Buddha and Jesus
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 | The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love by John Shelby Spong
Buy used from: $2.09 SEE MY REVIEW) a very useful compendium of Bible passages used to support oppression.
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 | Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity by Bruce Bawer
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $0.01 Bawer with a brilliant examination of why so many so-called Christians not only fail to grasp the spirit of love, but embrace hate instead.
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 | The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) by Robert Spencer
Buy new: $14.36 / Used from: $6.43 SEE MY REVIEW) Did Jesus say to HATE YOUR ENEMY? Oh right, it was LOVE YOUR ENEMY! Of course most Muslims are not enemies anyway, but they're sure being provoked.
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 | Glorious Appearing: The End of Days (Left Behind #12) by Jerry B. Jenkins
Buy new: $16.49 / Used from: $0.01 Jesus as a sort of Conan the Barbarian slaughtering the heathen? I don't think so. This is clearly an anti-Jesus vision of "Christianity."
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 | The Jefferson Bible by Thomas Jefferson
Buy new: $10.88 / Used from: $5.44 Jefferson's solution to the contradictions of the Bible was to use only the teachings of Jesus. This avoids all the smiting of the Old Testament (see Tolstoy and Twain below).
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 | The Gospel in Brief (Texts & Contexts) by Leo Tolstoy
Buy new: $11.01 / Used from: $3.94 Tolstoy took the same approach as Jefferson -- this is his unified Gospel, which he translated from the original Greek.
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 | The Gospel According to Jesus: A New Translation and Guide to His Essential Teachings for Believers and Unbelievers by Stephen Mitchell
Buy new: $11.97 / Used from: $1.21 Mitchell focuses on the teachings of Jesus, and compares them to teachings from Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufi Islam & Judaism -- the message is the same.
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 | Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings (Perennial Classics) by Mark Twain
Buy new: $10.04 / Used from: $2.72 Twain with a hiliarious skewering of Biblical morality. How many people does God kill in the Old Testament? If that's ethics, I choose anti-ethics. (Which is what Jesus taught!)
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 | The Bible According to Mark Twain: Irreverent Writings on Eden, Heaven, and the Flood by America's Master Satirist by Mark Twain
Buy new: $11.52 / Used from: $5.51 More Twain on the Bible -- includes "Letters from the Earth."
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 | Plain Living: A Quaker Path to Simplicity by Catherine Whitmire
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $2.64 The Quakers have been truer to the teachings of Jesus advocating peace and nonviolence than most other Christians.
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 | Loaves and Fishes by Dorothy Day
Buy new: $13.60 / Used from: $4.09 Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, stuck to the teachings of Jesus and tried to live according to them.
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 | Clarence Jordan: Essential Writings (Modern Spiritual Masters Series)
Buy new: $14.04 / Used from: $2.98 Jordan founded an interracial farming community in the South in the 1940s. He had a Ph.D. in New Testament Greek from the S. Baptist Theo. Seminary, & translated the Gospels into Southern vernacular.
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 | Fighting the Lamb's War: Skirmishes with the American Empire by Fred A Wilcox
Buy used from: $1.92 Phil Berrigan recently died, after a long life fighting against war and injustice. An inspiring example of a true follower of Jesus.
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 | The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
Buy new: $15.95 / Used from: $39.32 Tolstoy broke with Orthodoxy, which he decided was not the Christian Church, but rather the "Church of the Holy Spirit." He advocated actually following the teachings of Jesus -- what a radical concept!
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 | Walk in the Light: And Twenty-Three Tales by Leo Tolstoy
Buy used from: $3.67 Great fiction -- "Ivan the Fool" is one of my favorite stories, and really should be read by anyone trying to "do what Jesus would do."
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