Beneath our culture's obsession with wealth and power, status and celebrity, millions of Americans are quietly engaged in a deeply religious struggle to free themselves from petty selfishness and to embrace a life of benevolence and compassion. Drawing on an extensive random survey of 1,200 men and women across the United States, Matthew Lee, Margaret Poloma, and Stephen Post here shed new light on how Americans wake up to the reality of divine love and how that transformative experience expresses itself in concrete acts of benevolence. The authors find that the vast majority of Americans (eight out of ten) report that they have felt God's love increasing their compassion for others, one of many important revelations uncovered by the survey. In order to more fully flesh out the meaning of the survey's results, the authors also conducted 120 in-depth interviews with Christian women and men from all walks of life and from across the country who are engaged in benevolent service. Their stories offer compelling examples of how receiving God's love, loving God, and expressing this love to others has made a difference in the world and given their lives deeper significance. As a result, some provide community service, others strive for social justice, still others seek to redefine religion and the meaning of "church" in America. Interviewees who may have grown up with judgmental images of God tended to trade them in for a loving and accepting God more consistent with their own emotionally powerful personal experiences. Based on equal measures of scholarly research and human insight, The Heart of Religion offers an unprecedented level of detail about the experience and expression of divine love.

The Heart of Religion: Spiritual Empowerment, Benevolence, and the Experience of God's Love

Politics & Social Sciences

Post, Stephen G.

Poloma, Margaret M.

Lee, Matthew T.

Sociology

Oxford University Press

Human Nature and the Freedom of Public Religious Expression

Drawing on current research in science and religion, distinguished bioethicist Stephen G. Post provocatively argues that human beings are, by nature, inclined toward a presence in the universe that is higher than their own. In consequence, the institutions of everyday life, such as schools, the workplace, and the public square, are not justified in censoring the spiritual and religious expression that freely arises from the wellspring of the human spirit. Post believes that the privatization of religious expression, coupled with the imposition of a secular monism, is a departure from true liberal democracy in which citizens are free to assert themselves in ways that manifest their full nature. Utilizing research in the neurosciences, psychiatry, the social sciences, and evolutionary psychology, he provides scientific information supporting the idea, familiar to theories of natural law, that religious expression and freedom are essential human goods. Post’s perspective privileges no particular religion, but rather asks that adherents to all faiths, including secularism, be allowed to freely express their core values in a civil, respectful, and public manner. Post calls for a recovery of the full meaning of liberal democracy in all domains of public life, so that we might again discover the value of freedom of expression.

History

World

University of Notre Dame Press

The world's religions affirm it to be so and recent research across a number of disciplines tell us that "Helping others not only benefits those we assist but is good for us as well." The recent and astonishingly generous outpouring of help and donations in response to the earthquake in Haiti is a clear demonstration of this phenomenon, but what if we could be convinced to make helping others a way of life, even when times are hard? 
<ul>
<li>Post is author of the widely praised Why Good Things Happen to Good People
</li> <li>Filled with inspirational anecdotes about the transformative power of doing good</li> <li>The author is a leader in the study of altruism, compassion, and love as well as the President of the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love</li> <li>Beautiful packaging, ideal for gift giving</li> </ul>
The Hidden Gifts of Helping Others will leave you with the unshakable feeling that the world is an essentially good place.

The Hidden Gifts of Helping: How the Power of Giving, Compassion, and Hope Can Get Us Through Hard Times

Religion & Spirituality

Jossey-Bass

Christian Love and Self-Denial: An Historical Normative Study of Jonathan Edwards, Samuel Hopkins, and American Theological Ethics

Univ Pr of Amer

A Theory of Agape: On the Meaning of Christian Love

Christian Books & Bibles

UNKNO

Post (Case Western Reserve U.) integrates insights from ethics, theology, history, and sociology in this discussion of love within and outside the family. He argues for a new nuclear familialism consistent with justice for women, for a renewal of parental love, and for a moral balance between love i

Spheres of Love: Toward a New Ethics of the Family

Philosophy

Southern Methodist Univ Pr

Social Sciences

The biological revolution, with its attendant technological powers to alter nature and human nature, demands fundamental and cautionary reflection on questions of the highest ethical importance. In this thoughtful book on contemporary issues in bioethics, Stephen G. Post explores nine major topics ranging from birth and adolescence to aging and death.  Using an interdisciplinary approach, Post clearly illuminates the issues, probes the ethical alternatives, and examines the cultural changes that shape current presuppositions about the right and good. This book will be of interest to scholars in bioethics, philosophy, and religious studies; health-care professionals; and the general reader concerned with these pressing questions of life and death.

Inquiries in Bioethics (Not In A Series)

Georgetown University Press

Inquiries in Bioethics

Medical Books

Medicine

Georgetown Univ Pr

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Post, Stephen G.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Post, Stephen G.