Stafford Betty

Macrina McGrath, a young 23-year-old Catholic ex-Marine and unwed mother, begins to see cracks in the Church she grew up loving. Bad priests preying on children, harsh treatment of the divorced and LGBTQ, a deep-seated and toxic sexism, and archaic dogmas force her to choose between leaving the Church or trying to make it better. Pursuing graduate school in theology at Georgetown and a trip to India help form her resolve: She will stop at nothing to take the Church out of the Middle Ages and deliver women from their abject status. Macrina McGrath joins and soon after heads the excommunicated Womanpriest movement and, with the help of the Archbishop of Boston, begins an ascent she never imagined. But her love for Ezra, a Jewish physicist and colleague at Amherst where they teach, is getting in the way.

This book presents a correspondence between two friends who disagree about how to answer the question, “What does it mean to be a Christian?” Crosby argues that Christians understand themselves as hearing a definitive word of revelation spoken by God and intended for all human beings. But Betty sees Christianity as one of several options, usually the preferred way for those born in the faith, but no more unique or special than Hinduism or Buddhism. It is a debate over the kind of initiative the Christian God takes, or does not take, toward human beings. Throughout the debate Crosby alleges that Betty’s God is a very finite god, an all-too-human god, and for that very reason is something different from the God venerated by Christians, while Betty maintains that his theism remains within the Christian orbit and is a much needed corrective to a religion with exclusivist tendencies. The debate between the two friends is presented here in the form of a correspondence they conducted over a period of two years (and did not originally intend for publication). It has undergone very little editing and revision; the authors have wanted to preserve the spontaneous give and take of their exchange. Together they have produced a work of philosophical dialogue that is unusually fruitful in its ability to clarify some fundamental issues of religion.

It is 2090 and the world is on the verge of domination by the Caliphate. The future hangs in the balance as the religion of peace struggles against violent opposition. Islamist fanatics covering the globe are killing, burning, and bombing in an extravagant display of well-coordinated force designed to terrorize humanity out of its “godless slumber.” But two brilliant Muslim women are determined to save their religion from its counterfeit, supported by the non-Muslim religion professor they both love. Their weapons aren’t guns and bombs, but ideas and inspired brave leadership. As they race to show the world a new way to be Muslim and strive to return tolerance and understanding to the human race, their breathtaking adventure takes the reader from New York City to Europe, Japan, India, and Sudan. The bizarre massacres devised by the Caliphate keep steady pressure on these complex and courageous women, as do the multi-million-dollar fatwas on their lives… Can the war for the very soul of Islam be won?

Seventh grader Ben Conover sees people no one else can see. When he confides in his best friend, it's not long before smart phones start lighting up with text messages as the air cackles with gossip and he becomes known in school as the 'Ghost Boy'. Home has become a battle ground between his Mum's acceptance and his Dad's disapproval. Ben desperately seeks his father's approval, and wants to be like a regular twelve-year-old. But he doesn't want to break free from his spirit friend, Abby, who shows up when he is in danger or about to do something wrong. She somehow guides him and he has grown very fond of her. Will Ben's father accept his son's psychic gifts? Can he persuade his father that spirits are real and not just hallucinations? And who exactly is Abby? A Middle Grade story about a boy who sees spirits.

Heaven and hell - are they real places, or are they fantasies invented to inspire good behavior and overcome our fear of dying? In this book Stafford Betty, a university professor and international expert on afterlife research, answers these questions. He allows deceased human beings speaking through authentic mediums to describe their actual worlds. And what they tell us would revolutionize the world's religions if they would listen. Our brothers and sisters in the afterlife are not "resting," as Christian theology often asserts. They live in a world of infinite possibility, and their wills are as free over there as they are here. They are busy beings, and some are climbing toward higher realms while others languish. Suffering in the afterworld, not just joy, can be intense; it exists to awaken souls to their errors so they will enter into the happiness of those higher spheres, where corruption can't enter. Professor Betty explores those heavens, those places where love reigns unchecked - as well as those unhappy places where it doesn't. The religions we've fashioned here on earth could all use an upgrade. They are moons that derive their light from the central sun. This book is about that sun.

Kiran is a gifted but self-absorbed college professor who grew up on ritzy Marine Drive in Mumbi. Now working at a leading California university as a professional philosopher, he lives in a sham of a marriage to Lisa, an American, but this comes to an abrupt end on a visit home to India when he dies in a plane crash. As Kiran watches annihilation gallop toward him, and then death - suddenly he discovers he's still very much alive-more alive than ever. But now he must face his karma... He relives the events of his selfish life not as he experienced them, but as his victims did-his students, his fellow workers, above all the women who loved him. Eventually he seeks out Shalini, who committed suicide after he rejected her in favor of her rival, Lisa. Kiran, facing heavy odds, is assigned the task of rescuing Shalini from her self-made hell in the Shadowlands. Will he succeed - and if he does, what then? He cannot stay where he is. He must move ahead into diviner worlds, or "repeat the grade." ... And what about Shalini? Where will her passion for Kiran take her next?

What happens to us when we die? Many think of heaven as an unimaginable state of bliss. As for hell, it's far out of proportion to any sin we might have committed and makes a travesty of God. But what if the afterlife was something very different? The key to such knowledge is mediumship. Three decades of research have taught the author, a world expert in the field of death and afterlife studies, who the most reliable voices are. These accounts are far better developed and more plausible than anything found in the world's scriptures or theologies. Taken at face value, they represent the vivid experience of spirits, or ex-humans, eager to tell about their amazing world, and ours in a few short years. We hunger for a reliable revelation telling us that life here and now is meaningful and good, that each of us has an important part to play in its proper unfolding, that we are accountable for all we do, and that the godless materialism all around us is a pathological mistake. The world ahead, unlike ours, is fascinating and fair. Authentic mediums may be the closest thing to the voice of God that our planet has.