Books published by Apocryphile Press

The first book to supply the English reader with a comprehensive view of the apocryphal literature connected to the New Testament. It contains translations of all the important texts in the style of the Authorized Version, and makes available the results of historic researches into their origin, history, and value.

Curious about therapy? Get oriented and comfortable before you begin. Psychotherapist and author Faith Freed (LMFT) believes that therapy benefits anyone brave and wise enough to begin. In this down-to-earth book, she shares her first-hand knowledge and clinical experience to send you off with confidence. Starting Therapy is an easy-to-read guide for anyone new to therapy or eager to learn more about it. It makes sense that you’d want to know what you’re signing up for before your first session. This book answers your questions before you hit the couch. -Decide with more certainty whether therapy is for you-Find a therapist and discern the right fit-Feel prepared for your first session and those to follow-Get the most value out of the time you invest-Glimpse what therapy is really like from actual case examples-Learn what’s expected of you and much more.Starting Therapy is a concise-yet-comprehensive guide that gets you primed and ready for your first session and beyond. If you like to look before you leap, you’ll love this preview and primer. This practical guide offers loads of helpful tips to make you feel at ease, even before you begin treatment. Read this jargon-free, user-friendly book and be thoroughly prepared for the life enhancing adventure of psychotherapy.Author and licensed psychotherapist (LMFT) Faith Freed brings over a decade of experience in the San Francisco Bay Area and two advanced degrees to her new private practice in downtown Santa Barbara. She collaborates with clients to know themselves better, improve their relationships, and reveal game-changing insights. Her specialties include personal growth, creativity, love, spirituality, anxiety, and EMDR. Find out more at FaithFreed.com.

Skeptical but drawn to spirituality? Explore the best of both worlds. A former evangelical seminarian and ex-Roman Catholic, Barrett A. Evans is an agnostic who has retained a fascination with contemplative spirituality. Building on what he learned in his divinity, counseling, and historical studies, the author draws on hundreds of religious and secular sources in an effort to combine honest doubt with the best of contemplative experience.Presented in a "devotional" format, The Contemplative Skeptic is meant to be an exploration into the value of skepticism, a source of solace from harmful forms of religious indoctrination, and a stimulus for more peaceful, authentic, and compassionate living. While openly discussing the inherent problems with dogmatic faith, efforts are also made to retain the best parts of spirituality-especially a sense of focus and purpose, an encouragement to live for others, and the consolation of certain contemplative and psychological disciplines. The author's rather iconoclastic approach is meant to appeal to agnostics, deists, pantheists, atheists interested in spirituality, and other non-traditional thinkers.In this book, you'll find: A frank exploration of the dubious and harmful aspects of traditional religious belief. An invitation to acknowledge the unverifiable, the improbable, and the unknown. Meditations and exercises for those seeking to enlarge their sense of purpose, wonder, compassion, and contentment. Select wisdom from a variety of religious traditions to help soften those who have an overly negative view of religion or religious people. Suggestions for utilizing a conservative religious past in a positive way.The Contemplative Skeptic is a journey into the nexus of doubt, wisdom, and healthy contemplative practice. If you find value in spirituality but are weary of the fearmongering and appeals to credulity that so often accompany traditional dogmatic approaches, then you'll love this book.

How can we possibly find our purpose if everything that can happen does happen?See how Jesus is more relevant than ever in the dizzying, infinite multiverse.As cutting edge physics increasingly suggests that we may live in a multiverse filled with alternative realities, what possible relevance can Jesus have for our lives?  Discover how faith is vitally necessary for the integrity of our souls in this new vision of God’s glorious, endless creation.Theologian, pastor, and critically acclaimed science fiction author David Williams leads us on a journey through this complex and mindbending topic with grace and humor.Christ and the Multiverse shows the growth of human knowledge brought us to the realization that there could be countless alternative realities.  In the face of that dizzying possibility, the book lays out how this cosmology connects with the Gospel.  Deeper still, it shows how the moral teachings of Jesus are even more critically relevant.

Refresh your prayer life with this fresh take on the Psalms.We all pray. And we all struggle at it. We need help. For thousands of years, God’s people have turned to the Psalms for that help. This ancient collection of prayers, songs, and wisdom poems has been a faithful guide for those who pray. Even Jesus used them. There’s no better place to shape a biblical spirituality that takes into account the realities of everyday life.Peter Santucci’s love of the Psalms was ignited by his mentor Eugene Peterson. Peter has been a pastor, a journalist, a hospital/hospice chaplain, and a volleyball coach. He blogs at GodAndLifeAndStuff.com and lives with his family in Bend, Oregon."Transforming old lines into strikingly modern ones, Peter Santucci’s new translation of Psalms offers a fresh and down-to-earth rendering of the Hebrew text. Frustration, questioning, and complaint, alongside praise, joy, and trust — Santucci invites us to experience the wide range of the psalmists’ deepest emotions: faith and fear combined. Clearly the Bible’s message is for us today! Enter in and enjoy!" —Dr. Lynell Zogbo, Bible Translation Consultant and Author, United Bible Societies"The Psalms are the prayerbook of the Bible. Here we are invited to pray with utter honesty, leaving nothing out including the hard, the bad and the ugly and turn to God with all of our might. In this fresh and creative rendering, Peter Santucci unlocks the Psalms for us, removes archaic language and recovers for us what it means to pray all of life back to God like a reversed thunder. Don’t miss this!" —Dr. Gisela Kreglinger, author of The Soul of Wine:Savoring the Goodness of God.

You are allowed to laugh.Too often our faith is like wearing a T-shirt that’s two sizes too small. We keep trying to pull it and tug it and all the while it feels like we are slowly suffocating.You are allowed to laugh.The finger pointers and the self-appointed judges of what’s appropriate and what isn’t sit in the back row and scowl. They sing “Joy to the World” as if it were a funeral dirge. They say, “Stop that laughing. You are in CHURCH!”You are allowed to laugh.Jesus did. He must have. How could any human being (or divine being) made of love and joy spend all his life being a scowler and fun-spoiler?Most people don’t know, just prior to his career as an itinerant minister Jesus took a shot a sketch comedy. Long before Abbot and Costello or the Pythons or any of those people on Saturday Night Live—there was Scott and Jesus, traveling around Jerusalem playing wedding receptions and open-mic nights. (Well there was no “mics” but you get the idea.)So what if it didn’t last? Jesus and Scott took a shot. Now Jesus has moved on and we must take a look at the bits Scott saved so that some day you could hold this book. Someday in the midst of all the arguments...you could laugh.Laugh. God is not judging you. God loves you. Sit back. Relax. Oh, and it’s probably best not to drink coffee sitting across from someone you love while reading this book—just fair warning.Oh, and did we mention? It’s okay to laugh.

Who was Carlos Duarte Costa? Some called him "courageous and democratic," "the antifascist bishop," and the "Rebel in Rio." Others called him "completely misguided," "disturbed," and a "psychical anomaly." He was an outspoken critic of fascism, imperialism, capitalism and the Vatican, and he exposed links between them. He preached the compatibility of socialism and Christianity, decades before his one-time friend Hélder Câmara described himself as a 'socialist bishop.'Duarte Costa was both prophetic and pioneering, anticipating Catholic debate (and dissent) over celibacy, divorce, religious freedom, authority, and clericalism by several decades, and not waiting for permission to enact reforms. His groundbreaking 1945 Manifesto is presented here with comprehensive commentary, analysis, contextualization, and explanatory references. The Manifesto is both a handbook for dissenting Catholics and a forerunner of Liberation Theology, offering an impassioned Marxist-inspired critique of organized Christianity, Capitalism, and the Papacy.Carlos Duarte Costa: Testament of a Socialist Bishop examines the bishop's life, thought, influences, and discusses his lasting legacy. In an age when the relationship between faith and politics is more hotly debated than ever, the words and witness of this extraordinary individual are as relevant, incisive and portentous as they were seventy-five years ago.

A pastor with a kind heart. A black op with a deadly aim. All wrapped up in one amazing woman...Blood sacrifice. Could there be anything more evil? What happens when the symbols of grace get turned upside down? Are we left without hope?Set in the Adirondack Mountains, the clash between good and evil escapes its local confines to threaten the nation and even engulf the globe. The selling of souls to perdition fuels the fires of hell so that we on Earth cannot avoid the heat.Discover Leona's Law: You know it's the voice of Satan when you hear the call to shed innocent blood.

Moving from one country to another constitutes a rite of passage for many. It all begins with the decision that a change is right, and it’s time to make that change. What follows that decision is a process that involves a number of stages...What is it like to leave work, friends, and family behind and move to another country? Moving to Mexico: Relocation as a Rite of Passage explores the progression people negotiate when moving from one country to another.Mexico has become home to many from all over the world. A range of expatriates from not only the U.S. and Canada, but also Germany, Kenya, Japan, Russia, and Scotland shared personal stories of the inspiration for their move, how they negotiated the process, and successfully adapted to a new life.Sydney Metrick is the author of I Do, and Crossing the Bridge, and co-author of The Art of Ritual, and Rituals for Life, Love and Loss. She has a doctorate in Expressive Arts and she specializes in supporting individuals, couples and groups through life transitions by using creative expression, ceremony, and strategic planning techniques.

Today I was leaving my familiar little home patch to explore a much wider home...Slow Travels in Unsung Spain is a warts n' all trip through some of Spain's hidden gems: towns, cities, landscapes and cultural highlights that are typically overlooked by foreign tourists but which the Spanish often keep to themselves.Against a backdrop of strikes and continuing economic hardship across Spain, the author travels alone by rail and bus, encountering the vibrant heritage of the regions, including a singing Gypsy by an ancient well in remote, unspoilt Extremadura, the creativity and resilience of a gourmet beggar in the big city of Zaragoza and a lone disabled pilgrim going home from the Camino de Santiago after quitting the road.As well, he discovers intrepid ex-pats who are carving out their own lives away from international communities.Slow Travels in Unsung Spain is new and fresh because it largely ignores Spain's over-developed coastal resorts and islands, bypassing the standard fare of Spain's beaches and fiestas or clichés around bullfighting, the siesta, and football. Instead the author, uncovers the real heartland where the next future waves of tourism could well be.Brett Hetherington is a long-time Spanish resident and journalist. His sweet-and-sour travelogue uncovers a deeper Spain that has a rich culture and past, alive and well in these hidden corners of Europe.

Sedevacantism, American Catholicism's only homegrown "new religious movement" (NRM), argues that the Catholic Church has sunk into heresy at the hands of false popes. It sits at the extremes of two growing phenomena: Traditionalist Catholicism and Independent Catholicism. The only Roman Catholic bishop ever to espouse Sedevacantism was Archbishop Pierre Martin Ngô-dinh-Th¿c - but who was he?ARCHBISHOP TH¿C, Godfather of Vietnam's notorious ruling clan, key CIA contact, and apologist for a brutal, failing regime. But Th¿c escaped, leaving behind a mysterious fortune, secret deals, abuse cover-ups, and the Vietnam War. In exile, Th¿c helped launch the fanatical Palmarian cult (which later canonized Franco and Hitler), inspired assorted renegades, and reemerged as the icon of a new hardline movement called Sedevacantism. SEDE VACANTE: The Life and Legacy of Archbishop Th¿c painstakingly reconstructs this remarkable story: from French Indochina to the Japanese occupation; from the Communist revolution to the doomed US-backed puppet regime; from Th¿c's exile to his role in Vatican II. Sede Vacante investigates the origins of the secretive Palmarian cult and analyzes the theological, sacramental, and canonical issues arising from all of Th¿c's exploits; it explains why, now more than ever, Catholics and non-Catholics alike should be aware of Sedevacantism.

Two decades before the Second Vatican Council, a section of the Catholic Church decided to enact sweeping reforms of its own. The Brazilian Catholic Apostolic Church, or I.C.A.B., abolished latin, celibacy and confession, embraced religious freedom, and redefined the pope as just another bishop.I.C.A.B. became the renegade church within a church. With over half a million members in Brazil, and up to four million in a complex worldwide network, I.C.A.B.'s offshoots are at the center of the hottest and most controversial clashes between Catholics and their hierarchy.Independent Catholicism, progressive Catholicism, women's ordination, celibacy, homosexuality, and church reform in general, cannot be fully understood without understanding I.C.A.B. Whether sect or schism, I.C.A.B. represents the most extraordinary attempt in modern times to defy the Vatican and reform the Catholic Church from below.God, Land and Freedom, The True Story of I.C.A.B., tells this remarkable story as it has never been told before. Much archival material has been translated for the first time. I.C.A.B.'s alleged links to freemasonry, communism, the occult, and the far right are investigated. I.C.A.B.'s theology is explained, and the exploits of I.C.A.B.'s founders are revealed. It is a story that can no longer be ignored.

Here, collected in one voume, is the entire Oblivion Saga, including the short story prequel, "Operation Catskill" and all four blockbuster novels, Oblivion Threshold, Oblivion Flight, Oblivion Quest and Oblivion Gambit.In an adventure encompassing hostile alien aggressors, and spanning two universes, this bold story follows two starship captains-Jeff Bowers and Jo Taylor. Once lovers, they are now estranged by grief, time, and death. Yet fate continues to throw them together, and somehow they must find a way to work together for the sake of not just one universe, but two.The Oblivion Saga is the first full-length collaboration between J.R. Mabry and B.J. West, frequent creative collaborators since their years together in high school. If you love Star Trek and Starship Troopers, you simply cannot pass up this adventure.

Baffled as to why your church visitors never come back? Solve the mystery and get them to return again and again starting this Sunday.Rev. Tracy Barnowe is an ordained UCC pastor and a nationally-recognized expert in church growth. She has systematically created, taught, tested, and refined church growth methods with hundreds of churches in numerous denominations over 20 years, tracking the results to ensure they are reliable and replicable in any church setting by ordinary people.In Grow Your Church! Rev. Barnowe reveals the rich fruits of decades of data: the most effective, tried-and-true tools that will help every congregation turn its "church shoppers" into actively-involved church members.In this book you will learn:• how to get 85% of your first-time visitors to return the following Sunday• how to get first-time visitors actively involved in your church over just one cup of coffee• four big questions that will get your visitors halfway toward membership their first week• simple, easy-to-learn tools that cost nothing to use and that anyone can doWhether you are a minister, greeter, usher, or simply a member in the pews that loves and worries about your church, you can start being the change your church needs today. Even if your church has been in decline for years, this book will help you reverse the downturn, infuse new life into your congregation, and turn the arguments over "how come no one ever comes back?" into "what are we going to do with all these kids?!"Read this book today. Grow your church this Sunday. Don't let your next first-time visitor become another empty spot in the pew.

Does your daily schedule make setting aside time to pray difficult? Do you feel too distracted even in those rare times when you can finally sit down to pray? Learn spiritual practices to seek God's presence even in your busiest moments.Jeffrey Nelson is a pastor, spiritual director, author, and blogger who has been speaking and writing about ways for busy people to deepen their spiritual lives for years.Prayer in Motion is an accessible commentary on how to weave spirituality into one's entire life, where it was always meant to be. Grounded in wisdom from some of the great Christian spiritual thinkers, Prayer in Motion offers easy-to-use spiritual practices while at work, exercising, doing chores, during one's daily commute, and more.In this book you'll learn:-Stories from the Bible where people discover God's presence in ways besides sitting in stillness or silence;-Personal anecdotes and stories that help illustrate what spirituality in everyday activities looks like;-Insights from classic spiritual practices such as walking the labyrinth, using prayer beads, and making a pilgrimage adapted and applied to everyday activities;-Real-life application through thought-provoking questions and useful suggestions for prayer at the end of every chapter.Prayer in Motion not only gives you permission to move while praying, but tells you how to do so in easy-to-use, concrete ways. This is the practical guide you've been looking for to carry spiritual practices out of retreat centers and houses of worship and into the places where you spend most of your time.Get Prayer in Motion and start using its tips to connect more deeply with God in the midst of fidgety and frantic days.

A pastor with a kind heart. A black op with a deadly aim. All wrapped up in one amazing woman….When you've given your conscience to God and your country is in peril, how fiercely are you willing to fight? This is the question for Leona Foxx, who leads a double life. She is unwillingly called back into CIA espionage while serving as a parish pastor on the South Side of Chicago. Leona's skills as a defender of America against threats both foreign and domestic conflict with her conscience, a conscience shaped by her faith and her compassion for both friends and enemies.In this, her first adventure, Leona uncovers a terrorist plot hatched by American mercenaries who intend to blame Iran. She takes off her clerical collar and picks up her .45 Kimber Super Match II to rally a counter-terrorist alliance of street gang members and professional crime fighters.Discover how even a saint cannot avoid sinning boldly. Get your copy of For God and Country today!

If you believe the Book of Revelation is a detailed and accurate account of the End of Days and how God will choose the righteous and leave the rest behind and anyone who makes fun of this sacred work is committing blasphemy...buy this book anyway. You're in as much trouble just for reading the book description as I am for writing the book.If you are a fan of that author who is famous for his work about green holiday haters and felines wearing head apparel...you will enjoy this book. If you are one of those rare individuals who understands that religion is sometimes just flat out ridiculous...salvation lies within.

Leona Foxx is a black op with a white collar, who worships at two altars, her country and her God. She fights with ferocity for both.The black op with the white collar, Leona Foxx, takes on renegade Transhumanists making themselves kingmakers by selling espionage technology. Leona's strategy is to turn superintelligence against itself in order to preserve global peace. Can a mere human prevail against the posthuman? If you want to grasp the promises and risks of enhancing human intelligence in a world riddled with competition for supremacy, buy this book.