{"title":"Books by Richard Beck","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781506487670","title":"Hunting Magic Eels","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWe live in a secular age, a world dominated by science and technology. Increasing numbers of us don't believe in God anymore. We don't expect miracles. We've grown up and left those fairy tales behind, culturally and personally.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eYet five hundred years ago the world was very much enchanted. It was a world where God existed and the devil was real. It was a world full of angels and demons. It was a world of holy wells and magical eels. But since the Protestant Reformation and the beginning of the Enlightenment, the world--in the West, at least--has become increasingly disenchanted.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhile this might be taken as evidence of a crisis of belief, Richard Beck argues that it's actually a crisis of attention. God hasn't gone anywhere, but we've lost our capacity to see God.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe rising tide of disenchantment has profoundly changed our religious imaginations and led to a loss of the holy expectation that we can be interrupted by the sacred and divine. But it doesn't have to be this way. \u003ci\u003eHunting Magic Eels\u003c\/i\u003e shows us that with attention and an intentional, cultivated capacity to experience God as a living, vital presence in our lives, we can cultivate an enchanted faith in a skeptical age. This new paperback edition includes a foreword from Sean Palmer as well as four new, additional chapters, including \"\"Why Good People Need God,\"\" \"\"Live Your Beautiful Life,\"\" and \"\"The Primacy of the Invisible.\"\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56301385974133,"sku":"9781506487670","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781506487670_2d88eb64-8386-447f-8328-fd73fa94fa5c.jpg?v=1786021877"},{"product_id":"9781836740728","title":"Homeland","description":"For twenty years after September 11, the war on terror was simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. With all of the military violence occurring overseas, Americans found themselves living in two worlds at the same time. In one of them, soldiers fought abroad so that nothing at home would have to change at all. In the other, life in the United States took on all kinds of unfamiliar shapes, altering people’s sense of themselves, their neighbours, and the strangers they sat next to on aeroplanes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn a fascinating and exhaustive account of the meaning of twenty-first-century America, Richard Beck delivers a gripping exploration of the transformation of American life wrought by the war. He describes sports stadiums fortified to look like military bases. The surging sales of guns, SUVs, and pickup trucks. The racism and xeno-phobia, the erosion of free speech, and the normalisation of mass surveillance. Beck searchingly asks why those Americans who excused the worst abuses of the war on terror also had the easiest time understanding themselves as patriots. The war fuelled an impunity culture, he argues, that came to a head with Trump’s rise to power. To see America through the lens of \u003ci\u003eHomeland \u003c\/i\u003eis to understand the country like never before.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56307907527029,"sku":"9781836740728","price":30.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781836740728.jpg?v=1790000771"},{"product_id":"the-shape-of-joy","title":"The Shape of Joy","description":null,"brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57484249792885,"sku":"9781506496726","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781506496726.jpg?v=1786266300"},{"product_id":"the-book-of-love","title":"The Book of Love","description":null,"brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57484250382709,"sku":"9781506496733","price":18.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781506496733.jpg?v=1791212750"},{"product_id":"trains-jesus-and-murder","title":"Trains, Jesus, and Murder","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"Saints and sinners, all jumbled up together.\" That's the genius of Johnny Cash, and that's what the gospel is ultimately all about.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJohnny Cash sang about and for people on the margins. He famously played concerts in prisons, where he sang both murder ballads and gospel tunes in the same set. It's this juxtaposition between light and dark, writes Richard Beck, that makes Cash one of the most authentic theologians in memory.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eTrains, Jesus, and Murder\u003c\/em\u003e, Beck explores the theology of Johnny Cash by investigating a dozen of Cash's songs. In reflecting on Cash's lyrics, and the passion with which he sang them, we gain a deeper understanding of the enduring faith of the Man in Black.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57505054196085,"sku":"9781506433769","price":13.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781506433769.jpg?v=1786954000"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-richard-beck.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}