"Amazing Grace" is a Christian hymn published in 1779, with words written in 1772 by the English poet and Anglican clergyman John Newton (1725–1807).
The Olney Hymns were first published in February 1779 and are the combined work of curate John Newton (1725–1807) and his poet friend, William Cowper (1731–1800). The hymns were written for use in Newton's rural parish, which was made up of relatively poor and uneducated followers. The Olney Hymns are an illustration of the potent ideologies of the Evangelical movement, to which both men belonged, present in many communities in England at the time.
John Stephen Piper is a theologian and pastor who is the founder and senior teacher of desiringGod.org, and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Piper taught Biblical Studies at Bethel University for six years (1974-1980) and then served as Pastor for Preaching and Vision of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, for 33 years (1980-2013). His books include ECPA Christian Book Award winners Spectacular Sins, What Jesus Demands from the World, Pierced by the Word, and God's Passion for His Glory, and bestsellers Don't Waste Your Life and The Passion of Jesus Christ. The organization Desiring God is named for his book Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (1986).
Philip Yancey is an American author who writes primarily about spiritual issues. His books have sold more than fifteen million copies in English and have been translated into forty 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.
James Melville "Mel" White is an American clergyman and author. White was a behind-the-scenes member of the Evangelical Protestant movement through the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, writing film and television specials and ghostwriting auto-biographies for televangelists such as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Billy Graham. After years of writing for the Christian right, he came out as gay in 1994 and devoted himself full-time to minister to lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender people, also writing extensively on the subject of gay Christians.
Max Lucado is an American author and pastor at Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, Texas.
Amazing Grace is a 2006 British-American biographical drama film directed by Michael Apted, about the campaign against the slave trade in the British Empire, led by William Wilberforce, who was responsible for steering anti-slave trade legislation through the British parliament. The title is a reference to the 1772 hymn "Amazing Grace". The film also recounts the experiences of John Newton as a crewman on a slave ship and subsequent religious conversion, which inspired his writing of the poem later used in the hymn. Newton is portrayed as a major influence on Wilberforce and the abolition movement.
The Da Vinci Code, a popular suspense novel by Dan Brown, generated criticism and controversy after its publication in 2003. Many of the complaints centered on the book's speculations and misrepresentations of core aspects of Christianity and the history of the Catholic Church. Additional criticisms were directed towards the book's inaccurate descriptions of European art, history, architecture, and geography.
Letter to a Christian Nation is a book by Sam Harris, written in response to feedback he received following the publication of his first book The End of Faith. The book is written in the form of an open letter to a Christian in the United States. Harris states that his aim is "to demolish the intellectual and moral pretensions of Christianity in its most committed forms." The book was released in September 2006. In October it entered the New York Times Best Seller list at number seven.
Roger Eugene Olson is an American Baptist theologian and Professor of Christian Theology of Ethics at the Baylor University.
Rediscovering God in America is a book written by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich with photography from his wife Callista Gingrich. and a film series based upon the book and narrated by the two Gingriches. The book was a New York Times bestseller.
How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It is a non-fiction book written by American historian Arthur Herman. The book examines the origins of the Scottish Enlightenment and what impact it had on the modern world. Herman focuses principally on individuals, presenting their biographies in the context of their individual fields and also in terms of the theme of Scottish contributions to the world.
Journals of Ayn Rand is a book derived from the private journals of the novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand. Edited by David Harriman with the approval of Rand's estate, it was published in 1997, 15 years after her death. Some reviewers considered it an interesting source of information for readers with an interest in Rand, but several scholars criticized Harriman's editing as being too heavy-handed and insufficiently acknowledged in the published text.
The Jesus I Never Knew is a popular 1995 Christological book by the American Christian author Philip Yancey. It won the Gold Medallion Book Award and ECPA Christian Book of the Year 1996: it is a book that appeals to the wider Christian public for its personal approach to the figure of Jesus, with a fresh and vivid portrayal extracted from a dynamic reading of the four canonical gospels.
Mars and Venus in the Bedroom: A Guide to Lasting Romance and Passion is a 1995 self-help relationship based book written by John Gray, author of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. It is part in a series of books exploring the oft-clashing relationships between men and women.
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 homosexual, 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.
Soul Survivor is a spiritual autobiography by Philip Yancey, a prominent Christianity Today columnist. With the subtitle How My Faith Survived the Church, the book was published in 2001 by Doubleday, which marketed it as a mainstream book. A five-hour-long, three-audio-cassette audiobook edition read by Yancey was also released that year with the same subtitle. In the United Kingdom, the book was published by Hodder & Stoughton with the subtitle Searching for Meaningful Faith. Random House published a paperback edition in 2003 with the subtitle How Thirteen Unlikely Mentors Helped My Faith Survive the Church.
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.
The surviving manuscript of the instructional work A Manual of Religious Belief is written in the form of a theological dialogue between father and child written out in holograph by John Murdoch for William Burnes, Robert Burns's father. William had started to compose and compile the work before Robert Burns's birth and wrote the first rough draft that has not survived. This work was originally composed with a stronger Scots language content that Murdoch modified, as well as making grammatical corrections.
