Bethany Meilani Hamilton is an American professional surfer and writer who survived a 2003 shark attack in which her left arm was bitten off and who ultimately returned to professional surfing. She wrote about her experience in the 2004 autobiography, Soul Surfer: A True Story of Faith, Family, and Fighting to Get Back on the Board, which was adapted into the 2011 feature film, Soul Surfer, in which she attributes her strength to her Christian faith. Hamilton was also the subject of a 2018 documentary, Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable, which discusses her marriage to Adam Dirks and how marriage and motherhood have affected her professional surfing career.
Philip Yancey is an American author who writes primarily about spiritual issues. His books have sold more than 15 million copies in English and have been translated into 40 languages, making him one of the best-selling contemporary Christian authors. Two of his books have won the ECPA's Christian Book of the Year Award: The Jesus I Never Knew in 1996, and What's So Amazing About Grace? in 1998. He is published by Hachette, HarperCollins Christian Publishing, InterVarsity Press, and Penguin Random House.
Matthew James Redman is an English Christian worship leader, singer-songwriter and author. Redman has released 16 albums, written 8 books, and helped start three church-plants. He is best known for his two-time Grammy Award-winning single, "10,000 Reasons ". Co-written with Jonas Myrin, the single reached No. 1 on the US Billboard Christian Songs chart in 2012.
Donald "Don" Miller is an American author, public speaker, and business owner. He is the CEO of StoryBrand, a marketing company. He is also an author of personal essays and reflections about faith, God, and self-discovery. His first New York Times bestselling book was Blue Like Jazz and his latest book is called Hero on a Mission.
Religion is one of many recurring themes on the American animated television series The Simpsons. Much of the series' religious humor satirizes aspects of Christianity and religion in general. However, some episodes, such as "Bart Sells His Soul" and "Alone Again, Natura-Diddily", can be interpreted as having a spiritual theme. The show has been both praised and criticized by atheists, agnostics, liberals, conservatives and religious people in general for its portrayal of faith and religion in society. The show can function as a mediator of biblical literacy among younger generations of irreligious viewers.
Timothy David Llewelyn Hughes is a British worship leader, singer, songwriter, and Anglican priest. Formerly the director of worship at Holy Trinity Brompton, a large Anglican church in central London, he has since been ordained as a minister in the Church of England and appointed Vicar of St Luke's, Gas Street Birmingham. He leads Worship Central, an international worship training and resource centre. Hughes has written a number of songs that are sung worldwide, including the Dove Award-winning "Here I Am to Worship", "Happy Day", "Beautiful One", "Jesus Saves", "At Your Name", and "The Way".
Victoria Louise "Vicky" Beeching is an English musician and religious commentator. She is best known for her work in the American contemporary worship music genre, and has been described by The Guardian as "arguably the most influential Christian of her generation" due to her Twitter following and appearances on BBC's Thought for the Day.
Christian Stephen Smith is an American sociologist, currently the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame. Smith's research focuses primarily on religion in modernity, adolescents and emerging adults, sociological theory, philosophy of science, the science of generosity, American evangelicalism, and culture. Smith is well known for his contributions to the sociology of religion, particularly his research into adolescent spirituality, as well as for his contributions to sociological theory and his advocacy of critical realism.
Roger Eugene Olson is an American Baptist theologian and Professor of Christian Theology of Ethics at the Baylor University.
Emily Windsnap is a series of children's fantasy novels written by British author Liz Kessler, inaugurated by The Tail of Emily Windsnap in 2003 and continuing as of 2020. It is illustrated primarily by Sarah Gibb and published by Orion Children's Books in Britain, and Candlewick Press in America. The series originated as a poem that Kessler was writing about a "little girl who lived on a boat but had a big secret"; an editor recommended that Kessler turn the poem into a book.
Soul Survivor or Soul Survivors may refer to:
Yellow Star is a 2006 biographical children's novel by Jennifer Roy. Written in free verse, it depicts life through the eyes of a young Jewish girl whose family was forced into the Łódź Ghetto in 1939 during World War II. Roy tells the story of her aunt Syvia, who shared her childhood memories with Roy more than 50 years after the ghetto's liberation. Roy added fictionalized dialogue, but did not otherwise alter the story. The book covers Syvia's life as she grows from four and a half to ten years old in the ghetto. Syvia, her older sister Dora, and her younger cousin Isaac were three of only twelve children who survived. After the war, Syvia moved to the United States, married, and only much later told her story to Roy. Since its publication in 2006, the book has received multiple awards, starred reviews, and other accolades, and has been made into a likewise well-received audiobook.
Rachel Held Evans was an American Christian columnist, blogger and author. Her book A Year of Biblical Womanhood was a New York Times bestseller in e-book non-fiction, and Searching for Sunday was a New York Times bestseller nonfiction paperback.
A Separate Creation: The Search for the Biological Origins of Sexual Orientation, also published with the subtitle How Biology Makes Us Gay, is a 1996 book about the development of sexual orientation by the journalist Chandler Burr. It received mainly positive reviews, commending it as a useful discussion of scientific research on sexual orientation and the politics surrounding the issue.
What's So Amazing About Grace? is a 1997 book by Philip Yancey, an American journalist and editor-at-large for Christianity Today. The book examines grace in Christianity, contending that people crave grace and that it is central to the gospel, but that many local churches ignore grace and instead seek to exterminate immorality. What's So Amazing About Grace? includes Bible stories, anecdotes from Yancey's life, accounts of historical events and other stories. These include a modern retelling of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, an account of Yancey's friendship with Mel White who came out as gay, a comparison of the teachings of early Christians Pelagius and Augustine of Hippo, and a summary of Karen Blixen's short story "Babette's Feast".
Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find? is a book written by the evangelical writer Philip Yancey and published by Zondervan in September 2000. The popularity of Yancey's 1997 book What's So Amazing About Grace? helped boost the sales of Reaching for the Invisible God to the point that it appeared on religion bestseller lists immediately upon publication. Within a month, Zondervan reported sales of 94,000 copies. While preparing to write the book, Yancey asked several people how they knew that their trust in Jesus had changed their lives, and one Christian radio host responded, "I have no trouble believing God is good. My question is more, what good is he? ... I cry out to God for help, and it's hard to know just how he answers". Reaching for the Invisible God includes discussion of Yancey's bad experiences of growing up in a very judgmental church, a theme that he had previously discussed in The Jesus I Never Knew and What's So Amazing About Grace? and later returned to in Soul Survivor. In November 2000, Reaching for the Invisible God became the first print book to be released as an e-book by Zondervan, appearing on Microsoft Reader.
If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat is a 2001 book written by John Ortberg that uses the New Testament account of Jesus walking on water as a conceptual framework for discussing leaps of faith and encouraging readers to make them. It became a bestseller. In March 2003, If You Want to Walk on Water was the third-best-selling religious book in Britain and the fourth-best-selling religious book in Scotland. In his book God Can't Sleep: Waiting for Daylight On Life's Dark Nights, Palmer Chinchen writes that If You Want to Walk on Water is an "excellent book on faith". Religion News Service journalist Jonathan Merritt called the book a modern classic book. In 2002, If You Want to Walk on Water received the Christianity Today Book Award in the Christian Living category. Carol Rodman of The Commercial Appeal called the book "challenging". Willow Creek Community Church placed the book on its Essential Reading List. Mary Milla of St. Paul Pioneer Press said that If You Want to Walk on Water is "a must-read for anyone considering a career change ... It gives you the confidence you need to make a change, but without taking chances that wouldn't be the right fit for you".
The Great House Of God: A Home for Your Heart is a Christian religious book written by Max Lucado and published by Word Publishing in 1997. Terry Burns of the Pembroke Daily Observer called The Great House of God "an excellent book on the Lord's Prayer". The Christian Science Monitor listed The Great House of God fifth on its quarterly list of hardcover religion bestsellers in December 1997. In a Publishers Weekly review, Henry Carrigan writes that, although the thoughts in the book "might be powerful in their spoken form, the brevity and the shallowness of their written form abandons readers in the foyer". In a Booklist article, Ray Olson compares the book to Philip Yancey's What's So Amazing About Grace?, which was also published in 1997, and argues that, although Lucado and Yancey have each written several bestselling Christian books, Yancey's book is better edited.
Disappointment with God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud is a book written by Philip Yancey and published by Zondervan in 1988. It is one of Yancey's early bestsellers. Library Journal reviewer Elise Chase called the book "extraordinarily empathetic and persuasive; highly recommended". Mark DeVries of The Christian Century reviewed the book and wrote that, through the book, Yancey "cuts through the pollyannaish denials that so often characterize evangelical treatment of unbelief, disappointment and unanswered prayer". The Christian Bookstore Journal listed Disappointment with God as the fifth-bestselling Christian book in 1989. In a 1991 Ministry review, Daniel Guild calls the book "Yancey at his superlative best". In 2000, Jim Remsen of The Philadelphia Inquirer called the title of the book evocative. A 2001 article in U.S. Catholic states that Disappointment with God demonstrates Yancey's willingness to address difficult questions. In 2002, Mike Collins of the Charleston Gazette-Mail recommended the book for rape victims. In 2005, Christian apologist William Lane Craig wrote that he "enjoyed reading Disappointment with God and found much of it to be meaningful and poignant", but that he disagreed with the thesis of the book. Hong Kong film director Clement Cheng read the book and called it thought-provoking.
Tonya K. Bolden is an American writer best known for her works of children's literature, especially children's nonfiction.
