Bøger udgivet af Apocryphile Press

The first book to supply the English reader with a comprehensive view of the apocryphal literature connected to the New Testament. It contains translations of all the important texts in the style of the Authorized Version, and makes available the results of historic researches into their origin, history, and value.

In the old Celtic Traditions, and even in more recent, historic times, interaction between humans and spirit beings was not an unusual occurrence. Even in more recent, historic times, interaction between the realms of human and faery was not a rare event. Faery Healing: The Lore and the Legacy is about the traditions of Faery Healing among the Celtic peoples of the British Isles, as evidenced in faery lore and folk healing customs. The focus is specifically on beliefs, traditions, and practices both mystical and magical as they relate to Faery Healing, with an emphasis on the development and use of new versions of these traditions for our era.This informed and comprehensive overview of the Faery Healing traditions allows us to see how these mystical beliefs and traditions demonstrate the deeply religious nature of the Celts from ancient times right into more historical times, and serves as a link between past and present, as well as a bridge into understanding the old pagan religious world view that preceded the rise of Christianity.The beliefs standing behind some of these healing traditions and practices are indeed very archaic. This glimpse into ancient ideologies and practices shows us the remarkable continuity of spiritual beliefs, no matter in what religious garb they may be clothed.Yet Faery Healing is not just an historical curiosity. It is as relevant today as it was several centuries ago. This book takes us into the future of Faery Healing, demonstrating its value in this day and age, and offering both visionary and practical techniques and procedures to move into that future, and into a more harmonious relationship with our "kin," the faery folk.

Hilarious, heart-warming, faith-enlarging ..."I don't love God." Little did Gen-Z seminarian Katie Westcott know that when she made that confession to English professor Martin Bonham one fine summer day it would throw the quiet campus of Cupperton University into an uproar. Nothing would be the same again. Together, this unlikely pair of oddballs poses this question: What if students could major in "loving God"-not religion or theology, but in the daily challenge of loving the Creator with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength? Well, now they can ... in the new and innovative Department of Theophily-the department of loving God. Yet, strangely enough, not everyone is happy about the new department, and they will stop at nothing to see it shut down.Part sitcom, part inspiration, this thoughtful theological comedy is like a Venn diagram in which C. S. Lewis and P. G. Wodehouse intersect.

Even in the warmest and most welcoming evangelical churches, patriarchy looms as an ever-present force......suppressing women's possibilities and debilitating whole communities. Well-intentioned churchgoers and church leaders have bought into deeply-entrenched male-dominated mindsets, power structures, and theologies that are not working-not for women, and really not for anyone.Part memoir and part faith-based feminist manifesto, Nice Churchy Patriarchy takes an unflinching look at the ways misogyny's subtler forms impact every aspect of women's experiences in church. From leading a church college ministry, to attending seminary, to eventually developing the confidence to preach, Liz Cooledge Jenkins weaves together her own journey with reflections on biblical interpretation, church history, and intersectional feminism. After confronting misogyny's faces head-on, Liz goes on to explore how we can build better faith communities together. For all who long to see women's gifts greeted in churches with gratitude rather than a suspicious side eye, Nice Churchy Patriarchy points the way.

Do you feel your spiritual life is dry, ineffectual, and lifeless? Ready for new, life-changing experiences? Take a deep dive into a life-changing book.Many Christians are hungry for more power in their spiritual life. Come Holy Spirit is an invitation to believers at any level of maturity to journey with the animating, life-giving Spirit. This book intends to launch you, the reader, into the midst of the Spirit's transforming life. And once turned onto the Spirit, for you to use your spiritual gifts in service to Jesus to change the world. Join with the Spirit in healing, intuition, action, and ministry. Track with the Spirit and your life will blossom into a beautiful fruit and manifest the presence and power of God. The Spirit is moving. A new era of Jesus' life through the Spirit is dawning. Say yes to adventure, to growth, to change, to the call of an ever-deepening experience of God's life through the Spirit and the practice of your spiritual gifts. Grab on. The Spirit train is on the move.Stephen M. Bull holds a Masters of Divinity (M.Div.) and a Masters of Social Work (MSW). He combines twenty-two years of Christian ministry and twenty years of therapy to blend personal narrative, practical teaching, and his rich experiences in ministry and therapy to provide a trustworthy advocacy and approachability to this important dimension of life in the Spirit and spiritual gifts.

Want to meet the two great Christian founders who never met each other? Jesus' words and Paul's words have changed millions of lives, and will change yours. The Bible records their teachings separately, so we must join them afresh as one. This book will open your ears and your heart to their shared work. Both teachers challenged commonplace religious talk, and launched faith communities that spread worldwide. The Roman state executed both: here you will discover why. Jesus spoke up for the truth, confronting illusions. Paul chained ancient values together, transforming our spiritual path. All the threads you knot together here will color your vision when you next read the Bible. You will create a lively personal connection with these teachers, and will find it easy to talk about your insights with thoughtful people anywhere. Rick Fabian, an Episcopal priest, founded St Gregory Nyssen Church at San Francisco, and for thirty-eight years made the teachings of Jesus and Paul its thinking core. This book brings that central core to you, too, in a way that thinking Christians can put to use, and thinking non-Christians can welcome. These down-to-earth teachers enrich everyone, of whatever faith. Just seize and read a copy.

It's alive. Oh God, it's alive.Can a monster pray?The creature invented by Mary Shelley was not the shambling mumbling monster from the movies (apologies to Mr. Karloff). Shelley's creature learned to reason and speak with his ear to the cabin wall of a family who lived in the woods. He learned to read when he discovered a leather satchel full of books in that same forest. What if one of those books was a Bible?He had no memories, no sense of identity, and his only understanding of people came when they ran screaming from his face. How would this creature understand the word "father?" How would he comprehend "creator?" How would Frankenstein's monster pray?Wouldn't this being of rage and pity ask all the same questions of God that we do? Who am I? What is my purpose? Do you love me? How can you possibly love me?Imagine unearthing a collection prayers written by the monster and somehow hidden behind the wall of a rectory in England. The Frankenstein Book of Prayer follows Shelley's original tale and invites us into the soul of one of literature's most tragic and misunderstood characters.

In recent years, the term polycrisis has emerged to describe the tangled relationship between myriad crises on our planet and how they invariably intersect to create a predicament that is not solvable but can only be responded to. This book offers a treasure-trove of practical tools for grounding ourselves emotionally and spiritually amid both the long-term crises and the related challenges that confront us moment to moment as we navigate unprecedented events and their invariable consequences. Apocalypse Anytime is the culmination of fifteen years of the author's writing and research on the demise of industrial civilization and its psychospiritual impact on Earth's living beings. It offers a life-altering challenge for readers who are willing to accept the assignment."No one understands or writes about our contemporary evolutionary dark night more wisely or more groundedly than Carolyn Baker. Apocalypse Anytime is the clean and fierce distillation of decades spent in the trenches of collapse and its warrior wisdom, presented with her customary vibrant clarity, is indispensable for all those who are beginning to understand that terrible though our times are, they also offer unexpected and amazing opportunities for radical transformation. This book is a must read for all those who want to find joy in despair, courage in paralysis, calm in desperation, purpose in growing bewilderment. Indispensable reading from an indispensable elder. Andrew Harvey, co-author of Radical Regeneration: A Guide to Sacred Activism with Carolyn Baker." -Andrew HarveyCarolyn Baker, Ph.D., is the author of Sacred Demise, Collapsing Consciously, and Undaunted: Living Fiercely Into Climate Meltdown in An Authoritarian World. She lives and writes in Boulder, Colorado.

Who wants to live forever? Learn about how people have sought physical immortality since the beginning of time, what means are employed to escape death, how various religions promise you eternal life, and about the men and women who are said to have already become immortal. The history of immortality is a tale about salvation and eternal misery, extreme diets and children put in the fire, healing and cannibalism, alchemy and sex with gods. It is no straightforward story. For what are the parallels between bloodsucking vampires, the sleeping King Arthur, and the resurrected Jesus? Who were the many that achieved eternal life in ancient Greek, Mesopotamian and Jewish tradition? How are we to gain immortality according to religious beliefs if our bodies have been annihilated? And in what way is all this related to people who vanish mysteriously, to decapitated saints who do not die, and to holy corpses that remain incorruptible forever? The alternative to death may appear as easy as unachievable. As we steadily have enhanced our human nature through science and medicine, we may soon, however, for the very first time, be able to achieve immortality outside the realm of myths and religion. As we face this ultimate possibility, the question remains whether eternity is what we really want. Dag Øistein Endsjø is Professor in the Study of Religion at the University of Oslo, an acknowledged expert in various religious themes, the author of several books, and published in 13 languages.

Are you surrounded by so much junk and clutter in your life that you can't find the things that matter? What do you need to let go of, and what do you need to keep? The Monk, the Trunk, & the Junk is a parable about how to hold on to the things that matter, how to let go of the things that no longer serve you, and how to tell the difference between the two. Adapting a 1,500-year-old Benedictine practice of creating and living by your own personal rule, this book will provide tools and insights into the transformation that is possible through purposeful "letting go" and intentionally organizing your most meaningful and valued possessions. For the past twenty years Dr. Alan Harris has served as a healthcare chaplain in hospitals, hospice, and long-term care. An Associate of the Order of the Holy Cross (Episcopal), he holds a certificate in spiritual companionship. He has earned master's degrees in counseling and business, and a doctorate in theology. He is also certified as a grief specialist who has conducted hundreds of funerals, memorial services, and celebrations of life. Not once has he ever seen a hearse pulling a U-Haul trailer at a funeral or a graveside service. In addition, Dr. Harris writes of what he knows personally, as he has managed his parents' and siblings' possession after their deaths, and has since benefitted from doing his own pre-death cleaning. In this book you'll discover how to: ¿ discern what to keep, collect, or release.¿ recognize and benefit from the wake-up calls in your life.¿ understand your motivations behind collecting "stuff."¿ use your possessions for transformative growth.¿ keep a journal that will provide a wealth of insight.¿ gain perspective from looking back-while not getting lost in the past. The Monk, the Trunk, & the Junk is a story and a roadmap out of clutter and confusion and into spiritual discernment and clarity. Discover the importance and benefits of mindfulness, simplicity, and a "less is more" attitude, and at the same time learn how to "widen" the present to savor every moment. Get The Monk, the Trunk, & the Junk today and say goodbye to all the clutter-inside and out!

In God on Psychedelics, veteran journalist Don Lattin trains his eye on some previously unexamined questions. Why do relatively few people in the burgeoning psychedelic renaissance connect chemically induced mystical states with their own religious traditions? Can sacred plant medicines be a source of renewal for Christians, Jews and other people of faith?Some clergy and laity think they can. Judaism and Christianity each have centuries-old mystical paths. Yet since the early 1960s, and in the current psychedelic revival, countless North American psychonauts have turned to Buddhism, Hinduism or Native American spirituality to understand the revelatory experience they encountered on magic mushrooms, LSD and other psychoactive drugs.Today, psychedelics are increasingly used as therapeutic tools to help those suffering from depression, trauma and substance abuse. Meanwhile, decriminalization campaigns and cognitive freedom crusades are sprouting up across the nation, inspiring churches and other fellowships to move beyond the divisive doctrine and denominationalism of old-time religion.Don Lattin has been writing about altered states of consciousness since the 1970s - first as an award-winning religion reporter for daily newspapers in San Francisco and more recently as a bestselling author.God on Psychedelics takes the reader on a magical mystery tour across the nation's changing religious landscape, exploring a new kind of trinity that blends psychedelic insight, psychological healing and spiritual revival.Praise for some of Don Lattin's previous works:"I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy just about every page," NY Times critic Dwight Garner on The Harvard Psychedelic Club."Carefully researched and disarmingly honest," religion scholar Huston Smith on Distilled Spirits."Reaches beyond market themes to social issues, culture wars, the search for community, and the varieties of spirituality," American religion historian Martin Marty on Shopping for Faith.

Have you ever heard, "No self, no problem?" Discover just how empowering and liberating it is to let go of the idea of self.Having spent many years reading and studying the sacred texts from the world's major traditions such as Buddhism, Zen, Christianity, Taoism, Advaita Vedanta, Hinduism, and Judaism, Scott Moss perceived a pattern and unity in all of these traditions in their speaking in one way or another of the ultimate illusion of a separate, seeking, efforting self.The Book of No Self condenses the core message of the world's many spiritual traditions into short chapters in an accessible, modern English. Using paradox, metaphors, and humor to get to the essence of the big picture questions in spirituality, Moss has written a book that is neither poetry nor spiritual teaching, per se, but with certain elements of both of these, in order to get at the pilot light that lives in all apparently separate people, thus allowing the possibility of the disappearance of the self, the greatest of all reliefs possible in this world.Similar to Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy, all traditions are looked into and represented. Unlike Huxley's book, however, the present volume is not an exercise for the intellect nor a scholarly work, but rather an attempt to emulate the immediacy and potential for awakening found in zen koans.Pick up a copy of this book, and the pilot light within may be reached, igniting to an awakening, and leading to the peace that passes all understanding.

Queer people have bravely faced conflicts with church and society throughout history and around the world, including during the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Heavenly LGBTQ+ highlights the role of LGBTQ+ people in the Russia-Ukraine war and puts it into a broader context. Illustrated biographies tell the stories of seventeen diverse international LGBTQ figures from Alvin Ailey to Xenia of St. Petersburg. They include saints, activists, martyrs, ministers, writers, and performers from North and South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Most lived in the 20th and 21st centuries. Their courage inspires hope for LGBTQ+ people.Short, accessible text lets the pictures tell their stories. Lively commentary reflects on how sexuality, gender, and religion impacted the war in Ukraine. The book's deceptively simple comic-book style conveys sophisticated understandings. Large, colorful illustrations on every page present a fresh, unsentimental perspective on uplifting people who faced tough times. Intended for adults, the book naturally includes occasional nudity and violence, as they are part of history. Heavenly LGBTQ+ is the sequel to Jan Haen's first book, Heavenly Homos.Jan Haen is a Dutch visual artist and Redemptorist priest who has ministered in the Netherlands and South Africa. His art appears frequently in the LGBTQ Saints blog series at Qspirit.net. He painted murals in schools, churches and public places in Africa and across Europe. Haen is an active member of the Werkverband van Katholieke Homo-Pastores, an association of gay Catholic pastoral leaders.

The Psalms are not fluffy poetry read by a Shakespearean actor in tights and a puffy shirt.Picture David as the old bluesman in a smokey New Orleans bar. A whiskey and cigar beside him as he makes his instrument weep. Picture David in the dark eyeliner screaming out emo lyrics. Picture David on the back of a flatbed truck stage in the county fair parking lot.Some are from a dancer so filled with joy he can't help but move his feet. Some are from a man who screwed up so badly he's kneeling by the dumpster in the pouring rain, screaming until his throat is raw. Some are from the warrior praying before the battle, unsure if he will see the sunrise.Through a Psalm Briefly aims to take the book of Psalms off the pulpit and put it in the glove compartment, in the backpack, and in the hands of those who need to hear the words in a way they haven't before. These new interpretations of centuries-old lyrics are meant to be sung, danced, painted, played, and most of all...heard. Are you listening?Use the book as a coaster for your coffee mug. Crease the cover. Dog ear the pages. Use these psalms as a starting point for your prayers or as a way to ask God to grant you a quiet night and a peaceful end to a busy day.The stargazer, poet, warrior, dancer, adulterer, and king is just waiting to sing you a song.

Are you fed up with an activism that isn't truly transformative? Discover a practice that revolutionizes oppressive social arrangements into ones that truly sets people free...including the activist you!An activist and community organizer for 55 years, Tim Stevenson has been involved in anti-war and civil rights campaigns, a community newspaper collective, an alternative childcare arrangement, and an activist commune. He has been involved in resistance against a nuclear power plant and a box store invasion, and has struggled alongside women and people of color around issues of male supremacy and white privilege. In 2005 he founded Post Oil Solutions, an award-winning, highly successful climate crisis organization. He is the author of Resilience and Resistance: Building Sustainable Communities for a Post Oil Age.Transformative Activism is an effective guide to growing into the spiritual maturity we need to be effective agents of human liberation and transformative change in a collapsing world. It invites us into spiritual practices that foster the peace, freedom, and social justice we seek.In this book you'll discover:· how to realize your potential as an activist· how to achieve revolutionary change· a way to ground your values in everyday practices· how to become a living representative of the transformed world you aspire toTransformative Activism is precisely what you need to be an agent and exemplar of transformative change. Along with a concrete analysis of the personal/political barriers that prevent you from achieving this success, it provides an in-depth, practical discussion of how to free yourself from these impediments. Transformative Activism is a complete package of life-changing wisdom for the revolutionary activist.Read Transformative Activism and begin a practice of revolution that is truly revolutionary!

Are you a Christian who senses there is something deeper both within and beyond your inherited religion? Do you wonder if you can find a spiritual community for your expanding heart and deepest beliefs?Join Len Schreiner, a priest in the Ecumenical Catholic Church, as he shares his own deep, interior experience as a church insider who embarked on an inner journey that drew him into a wider spiritual universe, where Christ lives beyond the limits of any one religion. After four decades of sharing ministry with interfaith friends, Schreiner confidently shares insights and principles that rise up from Scripture and the spirit of Christ's life, which constantly invites us to step into the universal circle of Gospel love that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called "the Beloved Community."The Soul's Journey illustrates how one can become a new kind of Christian who is no longer limited to following sectarian, institutional assumptions when they contradict the spirit of Christ, and his genius for relating to others. The open, inclusive invitational style of Jesus' life and ministry provides a template for how love, compassion and equality are meant to be practiced between diverse kinds of believers from the world's many religions and spiritualities.In this book you'll discover:· The dangers and dynamics of religion· The Word of God is a universal revelation· The fullness of Christ who lives in everyone and everything· The perennial wisdom available within the treasures of the world's religions.· The Divine is living with us in different colors, shapes, and images.A lively read marked by verve and a passion for what's possible, The Soul's Journey invites readers on a mystical journey into "interspirituality" that honors the divine presence in all religions, all peoples, and all places.You are not alone on this journey. Discover spiritual companions you never knew you had. Begin The Soul's Journey today.

Uneasy about religion but not sure why? A God of Our Invention will make it clear. Daniel Kohanski has spent decades working on problems of religion. Starting from a solid background in Conservative Judaism, he has studied law, Talmud, history, philosophy. He has researched the sources and pored over the scholarship and gotten much help from scholars along the way. Kohanski has achieved a book that historians of religion are calling "a wide-ranging introduction to Jewish and Christian theology," "a most fruitful analysis of both traditions," and "a stimulating contribution to vital discussions in Biblical studies and the science of religious history." A God of Our Invention takes the reader from the gods of the Ancient Near East to the modern threat of global climate change. It explains how one of those ancient nations, the Israelites, came up with an idea of a single God who rules over all, and how Christians used-and misused-Jewish ideas to become the leading power in Europe and to dominate much of the world. A God of Our Invention will explain:How Nebuchadnezzar's destruction of Jerusalem led to the Israelites' believing in one god;When the Jews began to believe in personal immortality and judgment after death;Why the Roman conquest of Judaea was critical to the birth of Christianity;Why the Jews have always been indifferent to Jesus-and why Christians can't accept that;How Christians went from being pacifists to calling for holy war;How the insistence that the world is about to end has impacted the way we deal with sex, life, death, and global climate change;How doubt and reality combined to break Christianity's hold on power. A God of Our Invention is the book for anyone who has questions about western religion but doesn't know where to start looking for answers. If you want to know why religion has such an impact on your life when you're not religious, this book is for you. And if you want to know how religion can still do good in the world, this book is also a must-read. Buy A God of Our Invention for a clear understanding of the world we live in today!