Forgive Us Our Debts

“Fasting is the body talking what the spirit yearns, what the soul longs for, and what the mind knows to be true.”

— Scot McKnight

Christianity has traditionally been at odds with the human body. At times in the history of the church, Christians have viewed the body and physical desires as the enemy. Now, Scot McKnight, best-selling author of The Jesus Creed , reconnects the spiritual and the physical in the ancient discipline of fasting.

Inside You'll Find:

• In-depth biblical precedents for the practice of fasting;
• How to fast effectively—and safely;
• Different methods of fasting as practiced in the Bible;
• Straight talk on pitfalls, such as cheating and motivation.

The Ancient Practices

There is a hunger in every human heart for connection, primitive and raw, to God. To satisfy it, many are beginning to explore traditional spiritual disciplines used for centuries . . . everything from fixed-hour prayer to fasting to sincere observance of the Sabbath. Compelling and readable, the Ancient Practices series is for every spiritual sojourner, for every Christian seeker who wants more.

"I think Jesus wanted his disciples and everyone who came after him to remember what they had together. What they made together. What it meant to be together. How the things he wanted them to do could not be done alone. How the things he did could not have been done without them."

In her inimitable style of memoir and personal reflection, Nora Gallagher explores the beauty and mystery of this most fascinating of topics.  Whether exploring the history of Christian Communion, taking us inside the workings of a soup kitchen or sharing times of joy and sadness with friends, the author reminds us what it means to partake of and be part of the body of Christ.

The Ancient Practices is an eight-book series with staggered releases through February 2010.  Though various books have covered some of these spiritual disciplines, there has never been an attempt at a definitive series until now.  Immensely compelling and readable, each classic book features a foreword by Phyllis Tickle, the general editor.

Praise for Doing More with Less

Bruce Piasecki redefines what winning looks like for all of us.

-GERALD BRESNICK, Vice President of Environment, Health & Safety and Social Responsibility, Hess

Bruce Piasecki has created a book about discovering and maintaining wealth that, in fact, redefines wealth itself to include much more than mere numbers in a bank account.

-JAY PARINI, bestselling author of The Last Station and The Passages of H.M.

Bruce Piasecki is one of the few thinkers really upping the ante for leaders in business and society.

-JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER, bestselling author of The Long Emergency and The Geography of Nowhere

Bruce Piasecki offers new grounds for hope in this century, as he elevates the roles of competition, innovation, and stewardship in our lives.

-BARBARA KASS, author and teacher

Bruce Piasecki's latest work artfully blends the practical with the profound. Piasecki teaches us now that frugality is not only a personal virtue but a dire necessity in a world filled with 7 billion souls.

-DEMETRI CHRISS, Senior Development OfficerNorth America, Anatolia College

Bruce Piasecki has a unique global perspective. He weaves powerful anecdotes and adroit business analysis to explain how our modern times work at its very core.

-EROL USER, President and CEO, User Corporation, Istanbul, Turkey

Piasecki is a prose master who inspires with information, persuasion, and delight, giving us informed glimpses of a poetry in our near future.

-HADASSAH BROSCOVA, founder and Editor in Chief of Carpe Articulum Journal and Foundation

This new book captures the humility and moral insights of Bruce Piasecki, whose life has been shaped by up-close encounters with an amazing range of governments and corporations. I have posted numerous radio shows on the life and work of Bruce Piasecki. They all are inspirational like this must-read book.

-DAVID WILLIAM GIBBONS, broadcaster of In Discussion, syndicated worldwide at DG Networks

Read this book and grow.

Americans have always put the past to political ends. The Union laid claim to the Revolution--so did the Confederacy. Civil rights leaders said they were the true sons of liberty--so did Southern segregationists. This book tells the story of the centuries-long struggle over the meaning of the nation's founding, including the battle waged by the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and evangelical Christians to "take back America."

Jill Lepore, Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer, offers a careful and concerned look at American history according to the far right, from the "rant heard round the world," which launched the Tea Party, to the Texas School Board's adoption of a social-studies curriculum that teaches that the United States was established as a Christian nation. Along the way, she provides rare insight into the eighteenth-century struggle for independence--a history of the Revolution, from the archives. Lepore traces the roots of the far right's reactionary history to the bicentennial in the 1970s, when no one could agree on what story a divided nation should tell about its unruly beginnings. Behind the Tea Party's Revolution, she argues, lies a nostalgic and even heartbreaking yearning for an imagined past--a time less troubled by ambiguity, strife, and uncertainty--a yearning for an America that never was.

The Whites of Their Eyes reveals that the far right has embraced a narrative about America's founding that is not only a fable but is also, finally, a variety of fundamentalism--anti-intellectual, antihistorical, and dangerously antipluralist.

In a new afterword, Lepore addresses both the recent shift in Tea Party rhetoric from the Revolution to the Constitution and the diminished role of scholars as political commentators over the last half century of public debate.

Moving from the fiery political baptism of Martin Luther King, Jr., to the corridors of Camelot where the Kennedy brothers weighed demands for justice against the deceptions of J. Edgar Hoover, here is a vivid tapestry of America, torn and finally transformed by a revolutionary struggle unequaled since the Civil War.

Taylor Branch provides an unsurpassed portrait of King's rise to greatness and illuminates the stunning courage and private conflict, the deals, maneuvers, betrayals, and rivalries that determined history behind closed doors, at boycotts and sit-ins, on bloody freedom rides, and through siege and murder.