KDL Recommends

The Faith Club was started when Ranya Idliby, an American Muslim of Palestinian descent, recruited Suzanne Oliver, a Christian, and Priscilla Warner, a Jew, to write a children’s book about their three religions. As the women’s meetings began, it became clear that they had their own adult struggles with faith and religion.

Albom explores the unifying power of religion as he plumbs the lives and callings of two “men of the cloth”—Albom’s childhood rabbi Albert Lewis who asks Albom to write and deliver his eulogy upon his demise; and Henry Covington, a Detroit inner-city pastor struggling to keep his mostly impoverished and disenfranchised congregation together as their dilapidated church crumbles around them.

Lamott’s faith isn’t about easy answers, which is part of what endears her to believers as well as nonbelievers. Against all odds, she came to believe in God and then, even more miraculously, in herself.

In Donald Miller’s early years, he was vaguely familiar with a distant God. In this intimate, soul-searching account, Miller describes his remarkable journey back to a culturally relevant, infinitely loving God.

In 1967, Bashir Al-Khayri, a Palestinian, journeyed to Israel to see the beloved house he and his family had fled nineteen years earlier. To his surprise, when he found the house he was greeted by Dalia Ashkenazi Landau, a nineteen-year-old Israeli college student, whose family fled Europe for Israel following the Holocaust.

Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses is the story of Bruce Feiler’s 10,000-mile trek from Mount Ararat to Mount Nebo, undertaken for reasons he did not understand at the outset and accompanied by a companion who was very nearly a stranger.

Written from the point of view of an American Muslim, the book addresses what readers in the Western world are most curious about, beginning with the basics of Islam and how Muslims practice their religion before easing into more complicated issues like jihad, Islamic fundamentalism, and the status of women in Islam.

This novel follows the author’s conversion from all-American atheist to Islam, a journey marked by her decision to relocate to Cairo, romance with a passionate young Egyptian, and her efforts to balance the virtues of both cultures.

Knitter argues that a Buddhist standpoint can encourage a more person-centered conception of Christianity, where individual religious experience comes first, and liturgy and tradition second.

When they met more than forty years ago, Cokie and Steve Roberts found common ground in their shared values, despite their different religious beliefs. Choosing to honor both of their faiths and traditions, they began hosting a Passover Seder that has evolved from a small family gathering to an event celebrated with loved ones.

In this insightful, deeply felt examination of the nature of community and religion, Gustav Niebuhr traces the roots of religious freedom in America and the setbacks and triumphs it has encountered along the way. From Hindus and Quakers in Queens to Catholics and Jews in Baltimore, to black Baptists and Catholics in Louisville, to Catholics and Buddhists in Los Angeles, Niebuhr focuses on the ways people build ties between groups.

Dalai Lama also explores where differences between religions can be genuinely appreciated instead of becoming sources of conflict. The Dalai Lama shows how a sincere believer can, with integrity, be a pluralist in relation to other religions without compromising commitment to the essence of the doctrinal teachings of their own faith.

Acts of Faith is a remarkable account of growing up Muslim in America and coming to believe in religious pluralism. Eboo Patel’s story is a hopeful and moving testament to the power and passion of young people—and of the world-changing potential of an interfaith youth movement.

Peter Kreeft crafts fictional characters and conversations about today’s moral, ethical, and religious issues. Between Allah & Jesus not only highlights where Christians and Muslims can agree and work together, but also clarifies and confronts the unchanging differences between the two great faiths.

Saldana easily took to a career of danger journalism, reporting from risky locales. When the love affair that had provided to her a sense of normalcy ended, she opted to take the Fulbright scholarship she had won to study the Muslim Jesus in Damascus, arriving in Syria in 2004 amid the post-9/11 war in Iraq.