Marry For Love? With his sleek red sports car and polished good looks, Parker James was used to living life in the fast lane. The last thing he needed was a woman—particularly a wife—to slow him down. Still, marriage to native Hawaiian Ashley King could prove a profitable, if temporary, merger…. With her sweet-talking ways and her sultry appeal, business-minded Ashley King had no intention of staying poor. She had a plan…and his name was Parker James. Their marriage of convenience would be strictly business. After all, falling in love would prove fatal to her finances—if Parker discovered her hidden agenda!
Just when the clamor over "traditional" marriage couldn’t get any louder, along comes this groundbreaking book to ask, "What tradition?" In Marriage, a History, historian and marriage expert Stephanie Coontz takes readers from the marital intrigues of ancient Babylon to the torments of Victorian lovers to demonstrate how recent the idea of marrying for love is—and how absurd it would have seemed to most of our ancestors. It was when marriage moved into the emotional sphere in the nineteenth century, she argues, that it suffered as an institution just as it began to thrive as a personal relationship. This enlightening and hugely entertaining book brings intelligence, perspective, and wit to today’s marital debate.
Healthy marriages do not simply happen, though our culture's marriage landscape suggests otherwise. Married couples need a strong foundation that the majority of people cannot build on their own. How can ministers best prepare engaged couples for the altar? And how can ministers help provide the needed material for healthy growth among married couples in their cultures? Marriage Ministry: A Guidebook by noted pastors, authors, and seminar leaders Bo Prosser and Charles Qualls provides a ready help for ministers who provide premarital counseling, perform wedding ceremonies, and generally care for married couples and their families. Full of information and ideas that encourage conversation, communication, and interaction, this book will help ministers respond to the many needs of couples in the church. Whether your ministerial needs are with the newly married, the successfully married, or the struggling married, Marriage Ministry will surely help you help them.
Vita Sackville-West, novelist, poet, and biographer, is best known as the friend of Virginia Woolf, who transformed her into an androgynous time-traveler in Orlando. The story of her love affair with Violet Keppel Trefusis in 1920 is one of intrigue and bewilderment. In Portrait of a Marriage, Nigel Nicolson combines his mother's vivid memoir of escapade with what he learned from copious family letters and explains the context of this romantic crisis. He also describes how Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson went on to live the rest of their lives in harmonious marriage.
The revised edition of the bestselling Christian guide to a happy marriage For more than fifteen years, Scott Stanley's A Lasting Promise has offered solutions to common problems—facing conflicts, problem solving, improving communication, and dealing with core issues—within a Christian framework. Thoroughly revised and updated, this new edition is filled with sacred teachings of scripture, the latest research on marriage, and clear examples from the lives of couples. The book's strategies are designed to help couples improve communication, understand commitment, bring more fun into their relationship, and enhance their sex lives. Lead author Scott Stanley is co-director of the Center for Marital and Family Studies at the University of Denver and coauthor of Fighting for Your Marriage, which has sold more than a million copies. Offers reflections on how to enhance anyone's marriage over the long term and avoid divorce Covers recent cultural shifts, such as dealing with the endless technological distraction and issues with social networking New themes include the chemistry of love, the life-long implications of having bodies, and how to support one another emotionally Uses illustrative examples from couples’ lives and rich integration of insights from scripture This important book offers an invaluable resource for all couples who want to honor and preserve the holy sacrament of their union.
A new history explores the commercial heart of evangelical Christianity. American evangelicalism is big business. For decades, the world’s largest media conglomerates have sought out evangelical consumers, and evangelical books have regularly become international best sellers. In the early 2000s, Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life spent ninety weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers list and sold more than thirty million copies. But why have evangelicals achieved such remarkable commercial success? According to Daniel Vaca, evangelicalism depends upon commercialism. Tracing the once-humble evangelical book industry’s emergence as a lucrative center of the US book trade, Vaca argues that evangelical Christianity became religiously and politically prominent through business activity. Through areas of commerce such as branding, retailing, marketing, and finance, for-profit media companies have capitalized on the expansive potential of evangelicalism for more than a century. Rather than treat evangelicalism as a type of conservative Protestantism that market forces have commodified and corrupted, Vaca argues that evangelicalism is an expressly commercial religion. Although religious traditions seem to incorporate people who embrace distinct theological ideas and beliefs, Vaca shows, members of contemporary consumer society often participate in religious cultures by engaging commercial products and corporations. By examining the history of companies and corporate conglomerates that have produced and distributed best-selling religious books, bibles, and more, Vaca not only illustrates how evangelical ideas, identities, and alliances have developed through commercial activity but also reveals how the production of evangelical identity became a component of modern capitalism.
Marriage Rites for the Whole: Liturgical Resources 2 includes the marriage rites newly authorized for trial use and essays of pastoral, liturgical, and theological significance to the topic. This resource incorporates "The Witnessing and Blessing of a Marriage," "The Celebration and Blessing of a Marriage 2," "The Blessing of a Civil Marriage 2," and "An Order for Marriage 2" as authorized for trial use by the 79th General Convention.
Did you know that God has a divine blueprint for your marriage? It's true He deeply desires for you to have a strong and lasting relationship that defies the heartbreak of today's secular statistics. In this inspiring series of lessons, highly acclaimed teachers Carl Brecheen and Paul Faulkner present the ultimate designer's plan for you and your spouse. With an engaging style and some down-home humor, this dynamic duo teaches spiritual truths that will help you: Know how to build a loving and lasting marriage relationship.Understand the great importance of developing a good communication style within marriage.Appreciate the unique contribution that sexual intimacy makes to a healthy relationship. These, plus many more powerful lessons, show how God has shaped and designed the marriage relationship to be a great gift and a life-changing blessing.
