New Titles Tuesday, January 21

Here is a selection of print and eBooks recently added to our collection

The adoptee’s journey: from loss and trauma to healing and empowerment /Cameron Lee Small. Every adoption is rooted in loss. Adoption is often framed by happy narratives, but the reality is that many adoptees struggle with unaddressed trauma and issues of identity and belonging. Adoptees often spend the majority of their youth without the language to explore the grief related to adoption or the permission to legitimize their conflicting emotions.  Adoptee and counselor, Lee Small names the realities of the adoptee’s journey, narrating his own and other adoptees’ stories in all their complexity. He unpacks the history of how adoption has worked and names how the church influenced adoption practices with unintended negative impacts on adoptees’ faith.

The inclusive language field guide: 6 simple principles for avoiding painful mistakes and communicating respectfully /Suzanne Wertheim, PhD.  Avoid inadvertently offending or alienating anyone, in today’s fast-moving and combative culture, language can feel like a minefield. Terms around gender, disability, race, sexuality and more are constantly evolving. Linguistic anthropologist Suzanne Wertheim offers six easy-to understand principles to guide any communication-written or spoken-with anyone.

The making of the modern Muslim state: Islam and governance in the Middle East and North Africa /Malika Zeghal. An analysis that traces the continuity of the state’s custodianship of Islam as the preferred religion in the Middle East and North Africa .  Zeghal reframes the role of Islam in modern Middle East governance. Challenging other accounts that claim that Middle Eastern states turned secular in modern times.

The riches of your grace: living in the Book of common prayer /Julie Lane-Gay. This book explores the vista of living in the Book of Common Prayer. It’s not a guide to its history, but the story of the author’s experiences of how its age-old prayers and liturgies have drawn her (and others) closer to God, and He to them-in the workday, the mundane, in weekly worship. It’s a book about how the Prayer Book can root us deep in Christ.

The spirit of the game: American Christianity and big-time sports /Paul Emory Putz. Displays of religious faith have become commonplace on America’s baseball diamonds, basketball courts, football fields, and beyond. How did religion become so entwined with big-time sports in America? ‘The Spirit of the Game’ provides the answer to this question by offering a sweeping history of the Christian athlete movement in the United States and its impact on American religion and the religion of sports.

The two-state delusion: Israel and Palestine : a tale of two narratives /Padraig O’Malley. Jewish state, and other intractable issues have repeatedly derailed peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine. O’Malley approaches the key issues pragmatically, without ideological bias, to show that we must find new frameworks for reconciliation if there is to be lasting peace between Palestine and Israel.

 True reconciliation: how to be a force for change /Jody Wilson-Raybould. There is one question Canadians have asked  Wilson-Raybould more than any other: What can I do to help advance reconciliation? It is clear that people from all over the country want to take concrete and tangible action that will make real change. We just need to know how to get started. For Wilson-Raybould, what individuals and organizations need to do to advance true reconciliation is self-evident, accessible, and achievable. True Reconciliation is broken down into three core practices-Learn, Understand, and Act-that can be applied by individuals, communities, organizations, and governments. The practices are based not only on the historical and contemporary experience of Indigenous peoples in their relentless efforts to effect transformative change and decolonization, but also on the deep understanding and expertise about what has been effective in the past, what we are doing right, and wrong, today, and what our collective future requires.

 What is reality?: an introduction to metaphysics /Ross D. Inman.  Inman introduces us to the tradition of metaphysics in Western philosophy, what it means to do metaphysics as a Christian, and considers timeless and universal inquiries into central topics of metaphysics: identity, necessity and possibility, properties, universals, substances, and parts and wholes.