Here are 100 books that The Politics of Persecution fans have personally recommended if you like
The Politics of Persecution.
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I'm a professor of New Testament theology who has served in a variety of Christian settings in higher education. My introduction to the world of the Middle East came in the 1970s when I spent a year in Beirut, Lebanon, at the American University. Here I studied Arabic, Islam, and regional politics—and unexpectedly had a front-row seat during the Lebanese civil war. After I completed a PhD in theology and began my career, I returned to the region many times. It was my frequent trips to Israel/Palestine that caught my attention. I’ve led countless student trips to this region and participated in theology conferences. But it's the puzzle of Israel-Palestine that always draws me back.
Chapman has been a theology professor and Islam specialist in the Middle East for many years.
He now resides in Cambridge, England, and has offered one of the best analyses of the current conflicts that don’t want to go away.
This book is unmatched for its clarity and willingness to call out countries—especially Israel—for astonishing human rights abuses. Few have the courage to do this, and Chapman does it with academic depth and conviction.
The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has profoundly affected the Middle East for almost seventy years, and shows no sign of ending. With two peoples claiming the same piece of land for different reasons, it remains a huge political and humanitarian problem. Can it ever be resolved? If so, how? These are the basic questions addressed in a new and substantially revised fifth edition of this highly acclaimed book. Having lived and worked in the Middle East at various times since 1968, Colin Chapman explains the roots of the problem and outlines the arguments of the main parties involved.…
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
I'm a professor of New Testament theology who has served in a variety of Christian settings in higher education. My introduction to the world of the Middle East came in the 1970s when I spent a year in Beirut, Lebanon, at the American University. Here I studied Arabic, Islam, and regional politics—and unexpectedly had a front-row seat during the Lebanese civil war. After I completed a PhD in theology and began my career, I returned to the region many times. It was my frequent trips to Israel/Palestine that caught my attention. I’ve led countless student trips to this region and participated in theology conferences. But it's the puzzle of Israel-Palestine that always draws me back.
Crump was a Christian theologian (Calvin University) for many years whose passion for justice took him to Israel/Palestine on numerous occasions.
He not only studied the issues surrounding this conflict, but he immersed himself, living in a refugee camp during some of Israel’s most severe periods of occupation.
But behind America’s support for Israel is often a less-understood set of doctrines called Christian Zionism. This book is the premier explanation of this movement and is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand why the American church sends millions of dollars to Israel every year.
When Christians collude in crimes against humanity, they betray their citizenship in the kingdom of God, demonstrating that Christ's Lordship does not rule over every area of their lives. The popular ideology known as Christian Zionism is a prime enabler of such widespread discipleship--failure in western Christianity. As the state of Israel continues to violate international law with colonial settlement in lands captured by warfare, legalized racial discrimination, and the creation of what many have called "the world's largest open-air prison" in Gaza, Christian Zionists continue their unqualified support for Zionist Israel. Though Israel advertises itself as "the only democracy…
I'm a professor of New Testament theology who has served in a variety of Christian settings in higher education. My introduction to the world of the Middle East came in the 1970s when I spent a year in Beirut, Lebanon, at the American University. Here I studied Arabic, Islam, and regional politics—and unexpectedly had a front-row seat during the Lebanese civil war. After I completed a PhD in theology and began my career, I returned to the region many times. It was my frequent trips to Israel/Palestine that caught my attention. I’ve led countless student trips to this region and participated in theology conferences. But it's the puzzle of Israel-Palestine that always draws me back.
If it is rare to read a Palestinian voice in this conflict, it is rarer still to hear a Jewish voice that is willing to speak honestly and critically about what is going on.
Braverman is an internationally known and respected Jewish author and activist whose first book, The Fatal Embrace, won him a wide readership. Here he narrows his work to Jerusalem itself and discloses secrets about the city and its politics that few Americans ever hear.
The conflict between Israel and Palestine is at the center of a firestorm of political controversy, religious zeal, and bloodshed in the Middle East. Many feel that they have a biblical obligation to 'stand with Israel' - but do we really understand the conflict? And is Zionism the true path to peace?
An American Jew, Mark Braverman was transformed by witnessing firsthand the devastating consequences of the struggle between Israelis and Palestinians to bring peace to their land. From the bustling communities on either side of the Jerusalem barrier, to the historical intricacies of the Holocaust and South African apartheid,…
At five years old, Kasiel was found with the pointed ends of his ears cut off. Despite that brutal start, he’s lived twelve peaceful years with the man who took him in. Keeping his hair long over his mutilated ears helps him hide the fact that he is Vanrian, a…
I'm a professor of New Testament theology who has served in a variety of Christian settings in higher education. My introduction to the world of the Middle East came in the 1970s when I spent a year in Beirut, Lebanon, at the American University. Here I studied Arabic, Islam, and regional politics—and unexpectedly had a front-row seat during the Lebanese civil war. After I completed a PhD in theology and began my career, I returned to the region many times. It was my frequent trips to Israel/Palestine that caught my attention. I’ve led countless student trips to this region and participated in theology conferences. But it's the puzzle of Israel-Palestine that always draws me back.
Canon is the executive director of Churches for Middle East Peace based in Washington D.C. and a person with wide academic and personal experience with the churches in Israel/Palestine.
Here she has edited a collection of 29 chapters written by a vast array of Christian leaders from around the world, from Desmond Tutu to Shane Claiborne. Each is reflecting on the conflict in Israel/Palestine and Christian responses to it.
It is the diversity of views that gives this book its strength and quickly you’ll see that there is hope for the Middle East if we are simply honest about the origin and nature of the struggle.
A Land Full of God gives American Christians an opportunity to promote peace and justice in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It shows them how to understand the enmity with brief, digestible, and comprehensive essays about the historical, political, religious, and geographical tensions that have led to many of the dynamics we see today. All the while, A Land Full of God walks readers through a biblical perspective of God's heart for Israel and the historic suffering of the Jewish people, while also remaining sensitive to the experience and suffering of Palestinians. The prevailing wave of Christian voices are seeking a pro-Israeli,…
After my third visit to this part of the world, I decided to revisit the locales that had become engrained in my memories in the company of a character I had tentatively invented some years back who was in search of a time and place to emerge it seemed. As a retired archaeologist and amateur historian of early time periods I became fascinated with Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire, which lasted for a thousand years and has received so little attention in average history books and even college and public school teaching. Constantinople sat at the center of a unique and important world and deserves far more attention than we have often given it.
Are you a fan of travel literature? If so, then you will be as amazed as I was to find this remarkable account. In the 1990s, the author, a noted travel writer, undertook a task that would be impossible to duplicate today for obvious reasons. Based upon the contents of a rare manuscript, he decided to trace the footsteps of two eastern orthodox monks who, in the Sixth Century, traveled through much of the Byzantine World, moving from one ancient monastery to another while describing their adventures. Tracing their route, the author relates in a witty, yet always respectful and well-written narrative the many obstacles he and his predecessors 1,300 years earlier faced. “The more things (and people) change the more they stay the same,” if for different reasons, and nothing can point that euphemism out better than this entertaining and informative book of a lost world and a time…
In the spring of A.D. 587, John Moschos and his pupil Sophronius the Sophist embarked on a remarkable expedition across the entire Byzantine world, traveling from the shores of Bosphorus to the sand dunes of Egypt. Using Moschos’s writings as his guide and inspiration, the acclaimed travel writer William Dalrymple retraces the footsteps of these two monks, providing along the way a moving elegy to the slowly dying civilization of Eastern Christianity and to the people who are struggling to keep its flame alive. The result is Dalrymple’s unsurpassed masterpiece: a beautifully written travelogue, at once rich and scholarly, moving…
I was infuriated to learn how my government was misrepresenting the recent war in Syria. I learned of this deceit from Syrians who had fled their war-torn country and relayed a very different narrative from the one we're all hearing. From 2016-17 Baylor University’s Institute for Oral History sponsored and archived our collection of audio-recorded interviews of Syrian Christians. This book is the end result of their entrusting us with their harrowing testimonies. I'm a Senior Lecturer in History at Baylor University. I routinely teach, among other courses, the history of the United States from a Global Perspective in which I discuss with my students the same lessons I learned while writing Syria Crucified.
For most people the concept of the Holy Land conjures up visions of Old Testament prophets and arcane holy wars whose harsh landscape was disrupted by the brief appearance of a first-century messiah which left the Roman and Hebrew world in upheaval. Journalist and historian Charles M. Sennott attempts to make sense of what are continuing realities of conflict and unease that the contemporary pilgrim will encounter when visiting the sacred sites connected to Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. Sennot lived among those families who continue to make the Holy Land their home in order to better detail the complicated mosaic of modern conflicts involving Israel, Lebanon, and the Palestinians that have shaped the political struggles of today.
As the Middle East has gone up in flames, no image so captured the clash of cultures as did the siege at the Church of the Nativity, where Christian monks were trapped inside the fortress-like church, as Palestinian gunmen faced off against the Israeli military for five weeks. As Muslim and Jew battled for control, the Christians were caught in the crossfire: endangered and largely forgotten, victims of somebody else's war. In The Body and the Blood, Charles M. Sennott examines the dwindling Christian communities of the modern Middle East in search of answers to the following questions: Why is…
Resonant Blue and Other Stories
by
Mary Vensel White,
The first collection of award-winning short fiction from the author of Bellflower and Things to See in Arizona, whose writing reflects “how we can endure and overcome our personal histories, better understand our ancestral ones, and accept the unknown future ahead.”
I have always been fascinated by stories where faith, myth, and the human condition collide in unexpected ways. The kinds of books that don’t just tell a story, but make you question God, morality, suffering, and what remains of humanity when everything collapses. These are the kinds of stories that stay in your head long after you finish reading. They mix faith, myth, and the end of the world in ways that feel strangely personal and unsettling. They are not simple fantasy, not traditional horror, and not religious fiction in the usual sense. They sit in a strange space where belief, suffering, and human nature all collide.
I love this book because it confronts faith in its most painful and uncomfortable form.
What struck me deeply was how the silence of God becomes louder than any answer. I felt emotionally torn watching the characters struggle between belief, doubt, and survival under unbearable pressure. This story made me question how faith survives when suffering seems endless and divine presence feels absent.
Few books have challenged me to think about belief, suffering, and moral conflict in such a profound way.
Now a major motion picture directed by Martin Scorsese, starring Liam Neeson, Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield.
With an introduction by Martin Scorsese
'One of the finest historical novels written by anyone, anywhere . . . Flawless' - David Mitchell
Father Rodrigues is an idealistic Portuguese Jesuit priest who, in the 1640s, sets sail for Japan on a determined mission to help the brutally oppressed Japanese Christians and to discover the truth behind unthinkable rumours that his famous teacher Ferreira has renounced his faith. Once faced with the realities of religious persecution Rodrigues himself is forced to make an impossible…
I was infuriated to learn how my government was misrepresenting the recent war in Syria. I learned of this deceit from Syrians who had fled their war-torn country and relayed a very different narrative from the one we're all hearing. From 2016-17 Baylor University’s Institute for Oral History sponsored and archived our collection of audio-recorded interviews of Syrian Christians. This book is the end result of their entrusting us with their harrowing testimonies. I'm a Senior Lecturer in History at Baylor University. I routinely teach, among other courses, the history of the United States from a Global Perspective in which I discuss with my students the same lessons I learned while writing Syria Crucified.
The Way of the Pilgrim is a Christian classic that should be read repeatedly. It is a beautiful guide to a pilgrim’s pursuit of St. Paul’s directive to pray without ceasing. Set in nineteenth-century Orthodox Russia, the penitent pilgrim wanders the countryside with a bag of dried bread at his side and the "Jesus Prayer" on his lips. For a twenty-first-century Westerner like me, this narrative was an introduction to the persisting spirituality of ancient Rus. This small book is a simple yet powerful story of a man and his rule of prayer.
This collector's edition is cleanly formatted for easy reading. The Way of a Pilgrim was written by an anonymous nineteenth-century Russian peasant and depicts his examination of how to pray without ceasing. Through his voyages and travels, he delves into the value and power of prayer. As he becomes open to the promptings of God, the reader, too, is enlightened as he shares these rich religious experiences, presented in a humble, simple, and beautiful narrative.
Growing up in a household with a fantasy author dad and a philosophy professor mom, I learned to appreciate stories that expressed big ideas. I realized the books and movies I liked weren’t just vehicles for ideology, but that ideas are the hooks that draw me into a story. I’ve also always loved animals and monsters. Like Miyazaki and C.S. Lewis, I was attempting to create a narrative that brought my beliefs and interests together. Now I live in Southern California with my husband, son, and cat, surrounded by rattlesnakes, tarantulas, hawks, and coyotes. It’s an imperfect, beautiful world!
I’ve always loved Hong Kong New Wave movies, but they often emphasize action and flashy melodrama over historical context. For someone wanting to dig a little deeper, the graphic novel Boxers & Saints is a look into the parallel lives of two Chinese teenagers during the Boxer Rebellion—One is a red-blooded patriot eager to fight Western invaders. The other is a troubled girl who finds liberation in Christianity. Both characters are carried along, motivated, and then betrayed by fanaticism. When their paths cross, they are forced to learn the difference between religious faith and religious mania. The simple artwork isn’t meant to be lingered over…I read all 512 pages at breakneck speed.
The Boxers & Saints Boxed Set from Gene Luen Yang, one of the greatest comics storytellers alive, brings all his formidable talents to bear in this astonishing work.
In two volumes, Boxers & Saints tells two parallel stories. The first is of Little Bao, a Chinese peasant boy whose village is abused and plundered by Westerners claiming the role of missionaries. Little Bao, inspired by visions of the Chinese gods, joins a violent uprising against the Western interlopers. Against all odds, their grass-roots rebellion is successful.
But in the second volume, Yang lays out the opposite side of the conflict.…
After her mother is killed in a rare Northern Michigan tornado, Sadie Wixom is left with only her father and grandfather to guide her through young adulthood. Miles away in western Saskatchewan, Stefan Montegrand and his Indigenous family are displaced from their land by multinational energy companies. They are taken…
I’m an executive coach, personal branding consultant, and reputation management expert helping global executives, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders manage how they’re perceived and drive towards ideal opportunities. A long-time passionate supporter of the military, I volunteer to help veterans transitioning to civilian careers. My work with veterans comes from gratitude for their sacrifice. I regularly speak at military installations, podcasts, and events on veteran transition and hiring, teach in the TAP program at the US Air Force Academy, and serve on the Board of Directors at Project Sanctuary, which focuses on healing military families. Since 2012, I’ve also been a writer for Military.com.
I loved this book! It’s easy to get stuck on being busy with many tasks and responsibilities, and not move forward in our lives and careers.
This book helped me learn systems to become more efficient (in life and work), identify what was holding me back from being more empowered with my choices, and recognize when to say yes, and when to say no. Leaving the military – where “no” isn’t as much of an option, this is a good skill for veterans to embrace.
Do you feel like you're living busily but not abundantly? Are you struggling to find balance in life? Have you ever felt like you've reached your capacity and just need a break?
Bestselling author Alli Worthington dismantles common happiness myths and empowers you to rediscover your God-given purpose. In ten succinct chapters, Alli breaks apart the sources of our stress and tackles major topics like relationships, calling, traditions, and decisions. With her trademark candor, practicality, and uproarious true stories, she will help you:
Find your peace in a world of worry.
Find your rhythm in a world that's constantly overwhelmed.…
