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Book Discussion Group
Our book discussion group provides an opportunity to read and discuss a wide variety of books related to religion and spiritual growth.
It ordinarily meets on the last Sunday of the month at 7:00 PM at the Forbes House. All are welcome--whether you have had a chance to read the book or not!
January 31, 2010
Jesus and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings by Marcus Borg and Jack Kornfield, shows two great spiritual teachers from two very different traditions guiding their followers along the same path. The book is a kind of "anthology of key beliefs within two of the world's great religions" (Amazon). Marcus Borg, a Christian and Jesus scholar, has paired a range of quotations from the Gospels with parallel sayings by the Buddha. The preface traces the origins of both Christianity and Buddhism and summarizes their beliefs.
February 28, 2010
In Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead author Peter Manseau, son of a former nun and priest who married but refused to renounce the church, presents a kind of travelogue describing his search for the tongue, bones, teeth, hair, or other revered remains of saints and martyrs. The book deals with how these relics are used to support the faith, whether Christian, Islam, or Buddhist, rather than whether the relics are themselves ligitimate or not. One reviewer calls the volume "a peculiar book about a peculiar subject . . . [that] looks at relics through the prism of history"(Booklist).
March 28, 2010
In Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don't Know About Them) Bible scholar and author of New York Times bestseller Misquoting Jesus Bart Ehrman, "addresses the larger issue of what the New Testament actually teaches . . . . The authors of the New Testament have diverging views about who Jesus was and how salvation works. The New Testament contains books that were forged in the names of the apostles by Christian writers who lived decades later. Jesus, Paul, Matthew, and John all represented fundamentally different religions. Established Christian doctrines—such as the suffering messiah, the divinity of Jesus, and the trinity—were the inventions of still later theologians. These . . . . have been the standard and widespread views of critical scholars across a full spectrum of denominations and traditions. Why is it most people have never heard such things? This is the book that pastors, educators, and anyone interested in the Bible have been waiting for—a clear and compelling account of the central challenges we face when attempting to reconstruct the life and message of Jesus" (book cover).
April 25, 2010
In Fingerprints of God: The Search for The Science of Spirituality, National Public Radio correspondent Barbara Bradley Hagerty's first book, Hagerty sets out to understand her own mystical encounter with the divine and the reasons she believes when others do not. She interviews neuroscientists and mystics, attempting to balance her own trust in both faith and science.
May 30, 2010
In The Case for God, internationally recognized religion scholar Karen Armstrong seeks to answer the question of why "God has become unbelievable. . . . Focusing especially on Christianity but including Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Chinese spiritualities, Armstrong examines the diminished impulse toward religion in our own time, when a significant number of people either want nothing to do with God or question the efficacy of faith. . . . [Armstrong] "makes a powerful, convincing argument for drawing on the insights of the past in order to build a faith that speaks to the needs of our dangerously polarized age. Yet she cautions us that religion was never supposed to provide answers that lie within the competence of human reason . . ." (book cover).
June 27, 2010
The Evolution of God by Robert Wright takes the reader "from the Stone Age to the Information Age [and] unveils . . . a hidden pattern that the great monotheistic faiths have followed as they have evolved. Through the prisms of archaeology, theology, and evolutionary psychology, Wright's findings overturn basic assumptions about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. . . . He explains why spirituality has a role today, and why science, contrary to conventional wisdom, affirms the validity of the religious quest. And this previously unrecognized evolutionary logic points not toward continued religious extremism, but future harmony" (book cover).
Previous selections are archived:
2009 selections
2008 selections
2007 selections
2006 selections