It took Brian, my husband, and me some time to grasp the idea of purity while we were dating. After reading our story, you’ll see that making the commitment to purity was just the beginning. We had tasted the forbidden fruit for a number of years. Then I got to know Jesus in a new and powerful way as I recovered from an eating disorder. Brian eventually followed, and we knew things had to change. We had the difficult task of trying to figure out how to have a Christian dating relationship, living in the Garden of Eden, so to speak, right next to the tree but resisting the habit and compulsion of reaching for that fruit. How close to the forbidden tree can you get? Can you actually hold the apple in your hand but not taste it? There is no hard-and-fast rule I can give you for where to draw the line. However, I will share with you some lessons that I learned to show you how to build your relationship together through Christian dating. I will describe some strategies to keep the pilot light of your passion lit but under God’s gentle control. Then, how does it work to take two imperfect people, joined under God to become one in a loving marriage?

In the early 1990s, the animist and Hindu traces in adat, or Malay custom, became contentious for resurgent Islam in Malaysia. Reclaiming Adat focuses on the filmmakers, intellectuals, and writers who reclaimed adat to counter the homogenizing aspects of both Islamic discourse and globalization in this period. They practised their project of recuperation with an emphasis on sexuality and a return to archaic forms such as magic and traditional healing. Using close textual readings of literature and film, Khoo Gaik Cheng reveals the tensions between gender, modernity, and nation. Khoo weaves a wealth of cultural theory into a rare analysis of Malay cinema and the work of new Malaysian anglophone writers. Reclaiming Adat makes an essential contribution to our knowledge of the complexities embedded in modern Malaysian culture, politics, and identity.

Whens the last time your church spoke openly about sexuality? Messages about sex are everywhere. Books, magazines, films, television, and billboards bombard us daily with the cultures standards and beliefs about sexuality. And while the world tells us how we should live in regards to our relationships and sexual identity, the church has too often been silent. But sexuality is not an issue that can be ignored. Pure Love deals openly, honestly, and biblically with these core issues of sexuality facing young people today: dating singleness modesty emotional purity pornography masturbation homosexuality Confident in the power of the gospel, Timon and Sarah draw on their own experiences and the truth of the Scriptures to show you how you can be freed from the slavery of sexual temptation and walk in a manner worthy of your calling as a Christian.

From substance abuse to temptation, relationships to breakups, peer pressure to popularity, teens face all sorts of tough issues. How teens respond to these challenges will influence their future, possibly define their future, maybe even determine whether they have a future or not. What if parents could help their teens prepare for these hot buttons—before the issues arise? Now they can, and in a way that’s serious but fun, direct but nonconfrontational, and abundantly beneficial to the parentteen relationship. These two new editions in the popular Hot Buttons Series each offer creative scenarios, discussion points, and Bible verses to help parents create conversation on difficult topics. Hot Buttons Sexuality Edition offers: the facts about teen sexuality, backed by statistics; specifics for how to talk frankly about sex with your kids, discussion about the growth of homosexuality and bisexuality among teens; and compassionate advice for guiding your teen to reclaim purity. The Hot Buttons Series continues to be a quick-reference resource that parents can use to safeguard their children from today’s negative influences.

An intimate biography of the avant-garde poet and spiritual seeker who abandoned his career to join the circus and live among fishermen in Greece. Robert Lax inspired Thomas Merton, Jack Kerouac, William Maxwell and many others with his quest to live a true life as both an artist and a spiritual seeker. Known in Europe as a avant-garde poet, Lax worked at The New Yorker, wrote Hollywood screenplays and edited a Paris literary journal—when he wasn’t studying philosophy, serving the poor in Harlem or living in a sanctuary high in the French Alps. Lax called his approach to life pure act: a way of living in the moment that was both spontaneous and practiced, God-inspired and self-chosen. By devoting himself to simplicity, poverty and prayer, he expanded his capacity for peace, joy and love while producing distinctive poetry of such stark beauty critics called him “one of America’s greatest experimental poets” and “one of the new ‘saints’ of the avant-garde.” Biographer Michael N. McGregor met Lax in Greece when he was a young seeker himself. He continued to visit him regularly over fifteen years. Pure Act is a tale of adventure, an exploration of friendship, an anthology of wisdom, and a testament to the liberating power of living an uncommon life. Excellence in Publishing Award, Association of Catholic Publishers Honorable Mention, Catholic Press Association Book Award Finalist, Washington State Book Award

The post-2016 election era in the United States is commonly presumed to be an era of crisis. Reclaiming Time argues that the narratives used to make this crisis a meaningful national story (e.g., Hillbilly Elegy, Strangers in Their Own Land) are not only gendered and racialized but also give a thin account of time, one so superficial as to make the future unimaginable. Examining the work of feminist theorists, performance artists, writers, and activists—from Octavia Butler and Jesmyn Ward to the Combahee River Collective and Congresswoman Maxine Waters—Tanya Ann Kennedy shows how their work disturbs dominant temporal frames; rearticulates the relations between past, present, and future; and offers models for "doing" the future as reparation. Reclaiming Time thus builds on while also critiquing feminist literary critical practices of reparative reading. Kennedy further aligns the method of reparative reading with the theories and aims of reparative justice, making the case for more fully engaging with social movement activism.

'A serious work of theory.' The Guardian ‘Jonathan Allan has come up with a whole theory of the arsehole.’ Dazed and Confused In a resolute deviation from the governing totality of the phallus, Reading from Behind offers a radical reorientation of the anus and its role in the collective imaginary. It exposes what is deeply hidden in our cultural production, and challenges the authority of paranoid, critical thought. A beautiful work that invites us beyond the rejection of phallocentricism, to a new way of being and thinking about sex, culture and identity.