dustinjbyrd Christianity, Gender, Memoir, Personal Growth, Religion

New Video & Podcast: The Stone Sphere, by Suzanne E. Greco

New Video: The Stone Sphere

New Podcast: The Stone Sphere

At the crossroads of personal rupture and global reckoning, this book chronicles one woman’s journey from the silence of child/clergy sexual abuse to speaking at the United Nations. In prose both raw and luminous, the author traces her battle escaping an abusive marriage after her public disclosure of childhood abuse, and her unlikely ascent through Harvard Divinity School to a doctoral candidate at the University of Edinburgh. Woven through these pages are the voices that steadied her—David F. Holland, her brother, God, and ancestors—and the convictions that drive her: that religious institutions must be held to account, that parish archives belong to the people they record, and that healing is a right, not a privilege. Moving between the LDS and Italian Catholic hierarchies, she exposes systems that prize reputation over moral ethics, even as she insists on staying in the “trenches” to help remake them. Part memoir, part manifesto, this book invites readers into a spiritual commons where transcendence is shared, not gated; where genealogies mend broken stories; and where the long-suppressed testimonies of survivors bend the moral arc toward justice. It is, ultimately, a call to listen, believe, and act. For more information on Suzie E. Greco and her story, visit her website: The Stone Sphere.

dustinjbyrd Christianity, Gender, Memoir, Personal Growth, Religion

Suzanne E. Greco’s The Stone Sphere on YouTube

Suzie E. Greco, the author of The Stone Sphere (2025), has a new YouTube channel dedicated to her amazing book as well as her advocacy work. Her work attempts to break the silence of intergenerational cycles of abuse within religious contexts.

Copies of The Stone Sphere can be purchased on the Ekpyrosis Press website, Amazon (US), and Lulu (US & International).

For more information on Suzie E. Greco and her book, see her website: The Stone Sphere.

dustinjbyrd Critical Theory, Islam, Islamic Philosophy, Liberation Theology, Political Philosophy, Religion, Uncategorized

Praise for Ali Harfouch’s “Against the World: Towards an Islamic Liberation Philosophy”

Prominent X (formerly Twitter) user, Islamicize (@islamicize) wrote a fantastic endorsement of Ali Harfouch’s book, “Against the World: Towards an Islamic Liberation Philosophy,” saying it is

“The Most comprehensive blueprint I’ve seen for an ideologically grounded and politically resolute action plan for Muslims is laid out by @asharfouch in his book, “Against the World: Towards an Islamic Liberation Philosophy.” Harfouch’s solution to the ummah’s crisis rests on reclaiming tawḥīd as the axis of liberation, a truth that does not merely exist in the abstract but dismantles the idols of self, capital, and state that dominate modern life. For him, tawḥīd is both a cosmic orientation and a political rallying point, grounding the ummah in an order that cannot be reduced to Western secular forms. By affirming God’s Oneness, Muslims also negate the legitimacy of worldly sovereignties that seek to rule in His place. This re-centering allows the ummah to rediscover its alterity, its radical difference from the hegemonic world order, and to stand once again as a community shaped not by dependency or mimicry but by divine sovereignty. In this light, being “against the world” is not nihilism, but a positive refusal to accept the world’s false idols as ultimate, and a turning toward a horizon defined by God alone.

From this orientation, Harfouch calls for a tajdīd, a renewal of consciousness that can birth what he names a second Islamic insurrection. This insurrection is not simply political rebellion, but a civilizational uprising rooted in spiritual self-affirmation. It means reviving an ummah that does not see itself as a derivative of the modern state system but as a witness to a higher sovereignty, one that envisions society, economy, and politics through the light of tawḥīd. In this way, the ummah’s liberation is not just survival within the cracks of the global order but the construction of an entirely different horizon, a future that begins with rejecting imposed idols and affirming the transcendent unity that Islam has always offered.”

Get your copy of Ali Harfouch’s book today from Ekpyrosis Press: Against the World.

dustinjbyrd Authoritarianism, Catholicism, Christianity, Critical Theory, Donald Trump, Fascism, Gender, Islam, Islamic Philosophy, Liberation Theology, Political Philosophy, Political Theology, Popes, Religion, Right-Wing Ideology, Russia, Uncategorized, World War II

SUMMER SALE: 20% off!

From now until September 1st, you get 20% off your entire order when you purchase through the Ekpyrosis Press website. Just use the code SUMMER20 when you check out! That’s a whole lot of knowledge for cheap!

CODE: SUMMER20

dustinjbyrd Authoritarianism, Critical Theory, Donald Trump, Fascism, Political Philosophy, Religion, Right-Wing Ideology, Russia

The Authoritarian Threat to Democracy, with Rudolf J. Siebert

Ekpyrosis Press’ Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Dustin J. Byrd, sat down with the critical theorist of religion and society, Rudolf J. Siebert, to discuss the ongoing threat to democracy by authoritarian movements and leaders. The discourse was also sponsored by the Institute for Critical Social Theory.