CTS Library

Developed over decades of ongoing clinical research, acceptance-based behavioral therapy (ABBT) is a flexible framework with proven effectiveness for treating anxiety disorders and co-occurring problems. This authoritative guide provides a complete overview of ABBT along with practical guidelines for assessment, case formulation, and individualized intervention. Clinicians learn powerful ways to help clients reduce experiential avoidance; cultivate acceptance, self-compassion, and mindful awareness; and increase engagement in personally meaningful behaviors. Illustrated with vivid case material, the book includes 29 reproducible handouts and forms.

You’ve heard the story more times than you can count. The arrest of Jesus. The trials before the judges. The passion. And of course, the resurrection. A story like that can never grow old—but it can become so familiar that you miss the parts that are right before your eyes. Following up on his The Characters of Christmas, Daniel Darling’s The Characters of Easter takes a new look at the people and circumstances that were part of the greatest story ever told. With a skillful blend of in-depth Bible interpretation and sanctified imagination, Darling introduces you to the villains, heroes, cowards, and crooks who witnessed history’s biggest miracle. Each chapter is accompanied by questions for group study as well as suggested songs—both old and new—that lead to heartfelt worship. Let The Characters of Easter lead your soul to rejoice with that ancient cry, “He is risen indeed!” Break free from the familiar, and discover untold treasures in the story you thought you knew.

Christians are hungry for a return to their own tradition to cultivate meditation practices that are both psychologically and spiritually fruitful. In recent decades, mindfulness meditation, which originates from the Buddhist tradition, has been embraced in many settings as a method for addressing a plethora of symptoms. What would it look like to turn instead to the Christian faith for resources to more effectively identify and respond to psychological suffering? Over the last decade, Dr. Joshua Knabb has conducted a variety of empirical studies on Christian meditation, focusing on both building theory and testing specific, replicable practices. In this overview and workbook he presents the foundations of a Christian-sensitive approach to meditation in clinical practice.

Just as the emergence of print and literacy created conditions for vast religious change at the time of the Reformation, the emergence of a digital culture shaped by computers and the internet has led to radically different assumptions about religious identity, how people connect and maintain transformative relationships, and how people follow and give authority to leaders. The central issues concerning this digital culture are not technological but theological and anthropological. Old models of stable religious identity and community seem irrelevant in a culture in which everyone is in motion. The book identifies three profound changes produced by digital culture which challenge existing understandings of church: 1) a shift to seeing Christian identity as an ongoing constructive project, 2) the development of fluid networked forms of community, and 3) the emergence of less hierarchical more conversational forms of leadership.

Drawing from a vast array of creation myths—Babylonian, Greek, Aztec, Maya, Inca, Chinese, Hindu, Navajo, Polynesian, African, Norse, Inuit, and more—this concise illustrated book uncovers both the similarities and differences in our attempts to explain the universe.

History is not, and has never been, inert, certain, merely factual, and beyond reinterpretation. Taking readers from Thucydides to the origin of the French Revolution to the Civil War and beyond, James M. Banner, Jr. explores what historians do and why they do it. Banner shows why historical knowledge is unlikely ever to be unchanging, why history as a branch of knowledge is always a search for meaning and a constant source of argument, and why history is so essential to individuals’ awareness of their location in the world and to every group and nation’s sense of identity and destiny. He explains why all historians are revisionists while they seek to more fully understand the past, and how they always bring their distinct minds, dispositions, perspectives, and purposes to bear on the subjects they study.

The field of biblical studies has championed the historical-critical method as the only way to guarantee objective interpretation. But in recent decades, women, people of color, scholars from the Two-Thirds World, and members of the the LGBTQIA+ community have pursued hermeneutical approaches that provide interpretations useful for marginalized communities who see the Bible as a resource in their struggles against oppression. Such liberative strategies remain at the margins of the field. The Liberation of Method argues that this marginality must end, and that liberative methods should become the central methods of biblical studies.

Pelagius, the first known British author, is famous for his defence of free will as the Roman Empire disintegrated. A persuasive advocate of two ideas - that human nature was inclined to goodness, and that man had free will - Pelagius was excommunicated in 418 after a campaign to vilify him for inventing a new and dangerous heresy. Setting this accusation of heresy against Pelagius in the context of recent scholarship, The Myth of Pelagianism proves that Pelagius did not teach the ideas attributed to him or propose anything new. In showing that Pelagius defended what was the mainstream understanding of Christianity, Bonner explores the notion that rather than being the leader of a separatist group, he was one of many propagandists for the ascetic movement that swept through Christianity and generated medieval monasticism. Ground-breaking in its interdisciplinarity and in its use of manuscript evidence, The Myth of Pelagianism presents a significant revision of our understanding of Pelagius and of the formation of Christian doctrine.

For centuries, Pharisees have been well known but little understood—due at least in part to their outsized role in the Christian imagination arising from select negative stereotypes based in part on the Gospels. Yet historians see Pharisees as respected teachers and forward-thinking innovators who helped make the Jewish tradition more adaptable to changing circumstances and more egalitarian in practice. Seeking to bridge this gap, the contributors to this volume provide a multidisciplinary appraisal of who the Pharisees actually were, what they believed and taught, and how they have been depicted throughout history.

In this unique exploration of evangelical subculture, Daniel Silliman shows readers how Christian fiction, and the empire of Christian publishing and bookselling it helped build, is key to understanding the formation of evangelical identity. With a close look at five best-selling novels—Love Comes Softly, This Present Darkness, Left Behind, The Shunning, and The Shack—Silliman considers what it was in these books that held such appeal and what effect their widespread popularity had on the evangelical imagination.

Preaching and music are both regular elements of Christian worship across the theological spectrum. But they often don't interact or inform each other in meaningful ways. In this Dynamics of Christian Worship volume, theologian, pastor, and musician Noel A. Snyder considers how the church's preaching might be helpfully informed by musical theory. Just as a good musical composition employs technical elements like synchrony, repetition, and meter, the same should be said for good preaching that seeks to engage hearts and minds with the good news of Jesus Christ. By drawing upon music that lifts the soul, preachers might craft sermons that sing.

Hundreds of women studied and interpreted the Bible between the years 100–2000 CE, but their stories have remained largely untold. In this book, Schroeder and Taylor introduce readers to the notable contributions of female commentators through the centuries. They unearth fascinating accounts of Jewish and Christian women from diverse communities—rabbinic experts, nuns, mothers, mystics, preachers, teachers, suffragists, and household managers—who interpreted Scripture through their writings. This book recounts the struggles and achievements of women who gained access to education and biblical texts. It tells the story of how their interpretive writings were preserved or, all too often, lost. It also explores how, in many cases, women interpreted Scripture differently from the men of their times. Consequently, Voices Long Silenced makes an important, new contribution to biblical reception history. This book focuses on women's written words and briefly comments on women’s interpretation in media, such as music, visual arts, and textile arts. It includes short, representative excerpts from diverse women’s own writings that demonstrate noteworthy engagement with Scripture.

The success and survival of American democracy have never been guaranteed. Political polarization, presidential eccentricities, the trustworthiness of government, and the prejudices of the voting majority have waxed and waned ever since the time of the Founders, and there are no fail-safe solutions to secure the benefits of a democratic future. What we must do, argues the historian Robert Tracy McKenzie, is take an unflinching look at the very nature of democracy―its strengths and weaknesses, what it can promise, and where it overreaches. And this means we must take an unflinching look at ourselves. We the Fallen People presents a close look at the ideas of human nature to be found in the history of American democratic thought, from the nation's Founders through the Jacksonian Era and Alexis de Tocqueville. McKenzie, following C. S. Lewis, claims there are only two reasons to believe in majority rule: because we have confidence in human nature―or because we don't. The Founders subscribed to the biblical principle that humans are fallen and their virtue is always doubtful, and they wrote the US Constitution to frame a republic intended to handle our weaknesses. But by the presidency of Andrew Jackson, contrary ideas about humanity's inherent goodness were already taking deep root among Americans, bearing fruit in such perils as we now face for the future of democracy. Focusing on the careful reasoning of the Founders, the seismic shifts of the Jacksonian Era, and the often misunderstood but still piercing analysis of Tocqueville's Democracy in America, McKenzie guides us in a conversation with the past that can help us see the present―and ourselves―with new insight.

Why do we have bodies? When it comes to thinking about our bodies, confusion reigns. In our secular age, there has been a loss of the body's goodness, purpose, and end. Many people, driven by shame and idolatry, abuse their body through self-harm or self-improvement. How can we renew our understanding and see our bodies the way God does? In Wonderfully Made, John Kleinig forms a properly biblical theology of our bodies. Through his keen sensitivity to Scripture's witness, Kleinig explains why bodies matter. While sin has corrupted our bodies and how we think of them, God's creation is still good. Thus, our bodies are good gifts. The Son took on a body to redeem our bodies. Kleinig addresses issues like shame, chastity, desire, gender dysphoria, and more, by integrating them into the biblical vision of creation.