Religious Trauma
Leaving the Fold: A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving Their Religion by Marlene Winell
Religion is supposed to be good for you. Yet people get hurt in religious systems, sometimes seriously. Leaving the Fold by Psychologist Dr. Marlene Winell equips readers to understand and recover from religious trauma. It has been a leading resource in psychology & religion studies for over 30 years.
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When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High-Control Religion by Laura Anderson
Drawing from her own life and therapy practice, Dr. Laura Anderson helps readers understand what religious trauma is and isn't, and how high-control churches can be harmful and abusive, often resulting in trauma. She shows how elements of fundamentalist church life--such as fear of hell, purity culture, corporal punishment, and authoritarian leaders--can cause psychological, relational, physical, and spiritual damage
Religious Deconstruction
Deconstructing Your Faith without Losing Yourself by Angela Herrington
Deconstruction is a lonely journey. Sometimes people are on the journey for years before they even know what’s happening to them. In this book, the author reminds us that we are not alone on this journey. She offers essential tools to navigate the nuances of this life-changing shift in our world view.
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God Ater Deconstruction by Thomas Oord and Tripp Fuller
This book invites you to an alternative view of God after deconstruction. The authors offer radically different – but they believe radically helpful – ideas. They invite the reader to ponder God, science, sexuality, the Bible, community, gender, politics, knowledge, and more in healthier ways than you might have been taught.
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Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdelene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend by Bart Ehrman.
Bart Ehrman separates fact from fiction, presenting complicated historical issues in a clear and informative way relating vivid anecdotes culled from the traditions of these three followers. He notes, for instance, that there is no evidence to suggest that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute (this legend can be traced to a sermon preached by Gregory the Great five centuries after her death). Similarly, there is no historical evidence for the well-known tale that Peter was crucified upside down. He points out that most scholars agree that only seven of the 13 letters attributed to the Apostle Paul in the New Testament were actually written by Paul.
Spirituality
No Nonsense Spirituality: All the Tools No Belief Required by Brittney Hartley
Drawing from the wellsprings of science, philosophy, religion, and psychology, this illuminating work charts a course for those who seek a meaningful life without dogma or woo. Hartley draws on her work as an atheist spiritual director to provide practical guidelines for navigating a secular approach to ritual, morality, awe, transcendence, wisdom, community, intuition, connection, and meaning that can withstand the harsh truths of reality.
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Christianity without God by Lloyd Geering
Just as the bible ceased, in the nineteenth century, to be convincing as the repository of divinely revealed knowledge, so the twentieth century witnessed the death of the conventional image of God. Lloyd Geering asks whether this death of God spells the imminent death of the whole Christian tradition or simply means the end of conventional Christian doctrine.
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Beyond Religion: A Personal Program for Building a Spiritual Life Outside the Walls of Traditional Religion by David Elkins
Although many still find ample spiritual resources within the religious traditions, others have opted to take charge of their own spiritual development. Elkins covers eight alternative paths to the sacred: the feminine, the arts, the body, psychology, mythology, nature, relationships, and dark nights of the soul. The author concludes with a three-month pilot program for spiritual growth.
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The Spiritual Child by Lisa Miller
Lisa Miller takes the elusive subject of spirituality, subjects it to rigorous scientific inquiry, and teaches us more about it than we ever imagined. While honoring its depth and complexity, she shows us how and why spirituality nourishes our children’s well-being. And most important of all, she shows parents how to help this happen.
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The Awakened Brain by Lisa Miller
Lisa Miller’s book reveals that humans are universally equipped with a capacity for spirituality and that our brains become more resilient and robust as a result. She combines cutting edge science (from MRI studies to genetic research, epidemiology, and more) with on the ground application for people of all ages and from all walks of life, illuminating the surprising science of spirituality and how to engage it in our lives.
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Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris
Waking Up is a guide for the millions of Americans who want spirituality without religion. Throughout this book, Harris explores the scientific underpinnings of spirituality and argues that there is more to understanding reality than secular culture and science generally allow. No other book marries contemplative wisdom and modern science in this way.
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Science and Spiritual Practices by Rupert Sheldrake
The effects of spiritual practices are now being investigated scientifically as never before and many studies have shown that religious and spiritual practices generally make people happier and healthier. Sheldrake shows how science helps validate seven practices on which many religions are built, and which are part of our common human heritage.
Atheism
Outgrowing God: A Beginners Guide by Richard Dawkins
In twelve fiercely funny, mind-expanding chapters, Dawkins explains how the natural world arose without a designer—the improbability and beauty of the “bottom-up programming” that engineers an embryo or a flock of starlings—and challenges head-on some of the most basic assumptions made by the world’s religions: Do you believe in God? Which one? Is the Bible a “Good Book”? Is adhering to a religion necessary, or even likely, to make people good to one another? Dissecting everything from Abraham’s abuse of Isaac to the construction of a snowflake, Outgrowing God is a concise, provocative guide to thinking for yourself.
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Why I am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell
One of the most blasphemous philosophical documents ever written, Bertrand Russell’s “Why I Am Not a Christian” is an eloquent critique of religious beliefs and dogma. Originally delivered as a lecture on March 6, 1927, the essay has since become one of Russell’s most famous works and a key text in the literature of atheism and skepticism. In it, Russell dismantles comfortable answers religion provides to questions of morality, justice, and the meaning of life—offering instead rational alternatives based on accountability, freedom, and consciousness. It has influenced generations of thinkers and has become a classic in the literature of secular philosophy.
Christian Nationalism
Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and fractured a Nation by Kristen Kobes Du Mez
Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping, revisionist history of the last seventy-five years of white evangelicalism, revealing how evangelicals have worked to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism―or in the words of one modern chaplain, with “a spiritual badass.” Challenging the commonly held assumption that the “moral majority” backed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 for purely pragmatic reasons, Du Mez reveals that Trump in fact represented the fulfillment, rather than the betrayal, of white evangelicals’ most deeply held values: patriarchy, authoritarian rule, aggressive foreign policy, fear of Islam, ambivalence toward #MeToo, and opposition to Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ community.
Recommended Reading
Reincarnation
Many Lives, Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, His Young Patient, and the Past-Life Therapy That Changed Both Their Lives by Brian Weiss M.D.
As a traditional psychotherapist, Dr. Brian Weiss was astonished and skeptical when one of his patients began recalling past-life traumas that seemed to hold the key to her recurring nightmares and anxiety attacks. His skepticism was eroded, however, when she began to channel messages from the “space between lives,” which contained remarkable revelations about Dr. Weiss’ family and his dead son. Using past-life therapy, he was able to cure the patient and embark on a new, more meaningful phase of his own career.
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Soul Survivor: The Reincarnation of a World War II Fighter Pilot by Bruce Leininger, Andrea Leininger, and Ken Gross
Soul Survivor is the story of how the Leiningers pieced together what their son, who was suffering from night terrors, was communicating and eventually discovered that he was reliving the past life of World War II fighter pilot James Huston. As Bruce Leininger struggled to understand what was happening to his son, he also uncovered details of James Huston's life-- and death-- as a pilot. In Soul Survivor, we are taken for a gripping ride as the Leiningers' belief system is shaken to the core, and both of these families come to know a little boy who, against all odds and even in the face of true skeptics, harbors the soul of this man who died long ago.
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Near Death Experiences (NDEs)
Dying to be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to near Death, to True Healing by Anita Moorjani
In this truly inspirational memoir, Anita Moorjani relates how, after fighting cancer for almost four years, her body began shutting down—overwhelmed by the malignant cells spreading throughout her system. As her organs failed, she entered into an extraordinary near-death experience where she realized her inherent worth . . . and the actual cause of her disease. Upon regaining consciousness, Anita found that her condition had improved so rapidly that she was released from the hospital within weeks—without a trace of cancer in her body!
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My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D.
Jill Bolte Taylor, a thirty-seven- year-old Harvard-trained brain scientist experienced a massive stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain. As she observed her mind deteriorate to the point that she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life-all within four hours-Taylor alternated between the euphoria of the intuitive and kinesthetic right brain, in which she felt a sense of complete well-being and peace, and the logical, sequential left brain, which recognized she was having a stroke and enabled her to seek help before she was completely lost. It would take her eight years to fully recover. For Taylor, her stroke was a blessing and a revelation. It taught her that by "stepping to the right" of our left brains, we can uncover feelings of well-being that are often sidelined by "brain chatter."
New Thought
Messages From the Masters: Tapping into the Power of Love by Brian Weiss, M.D.
The true story of a prominent psychiatrist, his young patient, and the past-life therapy that changed both their lives. As a traditional psychotherapist, Dr. Brian Weiss was astonished and skeptical when one of his patients began recalling past-life traumas that seemed to hold the key to her recurring nightmares and anxiety attacks. His skepticism was eroded, however, when she began to channel messages from the "space between lives," which contained remarkable revelations about Dr. Weiss' family and his dead son. Using past-life therapy, he was able to cure the patient and embark on a new, more meaningful phase of his own career.
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Love is Letting Go of Fear by Gerald G. Jampolsky, M.D.
Love Is Letting of Fear is among the most widely read and best-loved classics on personal transformation. Both helpful and hopeful, this little gem of a guide offers twelve lessons to help us let go of the past and stay focused on the present as we step confidently toward the future.
Renowned all over the world as the founder of Attitudinal Healing, Dr. Gerald Jampolsky reminds us that the impediments to the life we long for are nothing more than the limitations imposed on us by our own minds. Revealing our true selves, the essence of which is love, is ultimately a matter of releasing those limited--and limiting--thoughts and setting our minds free.
Love Is Letting of Fear has guided millions of readers along the path of self-healing with its deeply powerful yet profoundly humble message. Embrace it with an open mind and a willing heart and let it guide you to a life in which negativity, doubt, and fear are replaced with optimism, joy, and love.
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Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul by Jane Roberts
This essential guide to conscious living clearly and powerfully articulates the furthest reaches of human potential, and the concept that we all create our own reality according to our individual beliefs. Having withstood the test of time, it is still considered one of the most dynamic and brilliant maps of inner reality available today.
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The Alchemist: A Fable about Following Your Dream by Paulo Coelho
Paulo Coelho's masterpiece tells the mystical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure. His quest will lead him to riches far different—and far more satisfying—than he ever imagined. Santiago's journey teaches us about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, of recognizing opportunity and learning to read the omens strewn along life's path, and, most importantly, to follow our dreams.
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Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation by Joseph Campbell
Joseph Campbell said that one of the basic functions of myth is to help each individual through the journey of life, providing a sort of travel guide or map to reach fulfillment or, as he called it, bliss. For Campbell, many of the world's most powerful myths support the individual's heroic path toward bliss.
In Pathways to Bliss, Campbell examines this personal, psychological side of myth. He anchors mythology's symbolic wisdom to the individual, applying the most poetic mythical metaphors to the challenges of our daily lives. Campbell dwells on life's important questions. Combining cross-cultural stories with the teachings of modern psychology, he examines the ways in which our myths shape and enrich our lives and shows how myth can help each of us truly identify and follow our bliss.
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How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan.
A unique and elegant blend of science, memoir, travel writing, history, and medicine, How to Change Your Mind is a triumph of participatory journalism. By turns dazzling and edifying, it is the gripping account of a journey to an exciting and unexpected new frontier in our understanding of the mind, the self, and our place in the world. The true subject of Pollan's "mental travelogue" is not just psychedelic drugs but also the eternal puzzle of human consciousness and how, in a world that offers us both suffering and joy, we can do our best to be fully present and find meaning in our lives.
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Mind to Matter: The Astonishing Science of How Your Brain Creates Material Reality by Dawson Church.
Every creation begins as a thought, from a symphony to a marriage to an ice cream cone to a rocket launch. When we have an intention, a complex chain of events begins in our brains. Thoughts travel as electrical impulses along neural pathways. When neurons fire together, they wire together, creating electromagnetic fields. These fields are invisible energy, yet they influence the molecules of matter around us the way a magnet organizes iron filings. In Mind to Matter, award-winning researcher Dawson Church explains the science showing how our minds create matter. Different intentions produce different fields and different material creations. The thoughts and energy fields we cultivate in our minds condition the atoms and molecules around us. We can now trace the science behind each link in chain from thought to thing, showing the surprising ways in which our intentions create the material world. The science in the book is illustrated by many authentic case histories of people who harnessed the extraordinary power of the mind to create.
Eastern Philosophy
Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda
Yogananda was the first yoga master of India whose mission brought him to live and teach in the West. His firsthand account of his life experiences in India includes childhood revelations, stories of his visits to saints and masters in India, and long-secret teachings of yoga and Self-realization that he first made available to the Western reader.