God, Sex and Slavery


Book Description

A romance about the eternal flame of love. That finds a way in chaos. A spiritual journey of God's true nature and his ultimate design.




God and Sex


Book Description

An examination of sex and the Bible by one of the leading biblical scholars in the United States. For several decades, Michael Coogan's introductory course on the Old Testament has been a perennial favorite among students at Harvard University. In God and Sex, Coogan examines one of the most controversial aspects of the Hebrew Scripture: What the Old Testament really says about sex, and how contemporary understanding of those writings is frequently misunderstood or misrepresented. In the engaging and witty voice generations of students have appreciated, Coogan explores the language and social world of the Bible, showing how much innuendo and euphemism is at play, and illuminating the sexuality of biblical figures as well as God. By doing so, Coogan reveals the immense gap between popular use of Scripture and its original context. God and Sex is certain to provoke, entertain, and enlighten readers.




One Blood


Book Description

Dr. Perkins’ final manifesto on race, faith, and reconciliation We are living in historic times. Not since the civil rights movement of the 60s has our country been this vigorously engaged in the reconciliation conversation. There is a great opportunity right now for culture to change, to be a more perfect union. However, it cannot be done without the church, because the faith of the people is more powerful than any law government can enact. The church is the heart and moral compass of a nation. To turn a country away from God, you must sideline the church. To turn a nation to God, the church must turn first. Racism won't end in America until the church is reconciled first. Then—and only then—can it spiritually and morally lead the way. Dr. John M. Perkins is a leading civil rights activist today. He grew up in a Mississippi sharecropping family, was an early pioneer of the civil rights movement, and has dedicated his life to the cause of racial equality. In this, his crowning work, Dr. Perkins speaks honestly to the church about reconciliation, discipleship, and justice... and what it really takes to live out biblical reconciliation. He offers a call to repentance to both the white church and the black church. He explains how band-aid approaches of the past won't do. And while applauding these starter efforts, he holds that true reconciliation won't happen until we get more intentional and relational. True friendships must happen, and on every level. This will take the whole church, not just the pastors and staff. The racial reconciliation of our churches and nation won't be done with big campaigns or through mass media. It will come one loving, sacrificial relationship at a time. The gospel and all that it encompasses has always traveled best relationally. We have much to learn from each other and each have unique poverties that can only be filled by one another. The way forward is to become "wounded healers" who bandage each other up as we discover what the family of God really looks like. Real relationships, sacrificial love between actual people, is the way forward. Nothing less will do.




Slavery and Islam


Book Description

What happens when authorities you venerate condone something you know is wrong? Every major religion and philosophy once condoned or approved of slavery, but in modern times nothing is seen as more evil. Americans confront this crisis of authority when they erect statues of Founding Fathers who slept with their slaves. And Muslims faced it when ISIS revived sex slavery, justifying it with verses from the Quran and the practice of Muhammad. Exploring the moral and ultimately theological problem of slavery, Jonathan A.C. Brown traces how the Christian, Jewish and Islamic traditions have tried to reconcile modern moral certainties with the infallibility of God’s message. He lays out how Islam viewed slavery in theory, and the reality of how it was practiced across Islamic civilization. Finally, Brown carefully examines arguments put forward by Muslims for the abolition of slavery.




The Negro Bible - The Slave Bible


Book Description

The Slave Bible was published in 1807. It was commissioned on behalf of the Society for the Conversion of Negro Slaves in England. The Bible was to be used by missionaries and slave owners to teach slaves about the Christian faith and to evangelize slaves. The Bible was used to teach some slaves to read, but the goal first and foremost was to tend to the spiritual needs of the slaves in the way the missionaries and slave owners saw fit.




The Slave Across the Street


Book Description

While more and more people each day become aware of the dangerous world of human trafficking, many people in the U.S. believe this is something that happens to foreign women men and children not something that happens to their own children and neighbors. They couldn't be more wrong. In this powerful true story. Theresa Flores shares how her life as an All American, 15-years-old teenager was enslaved into the dangerous world of sex trafficking-all while living at home with unsuspecting parents in an upper-middle class suburb of Detroit. Her story peels the cover off of this horrific criminal activity and gives dedicated activists as well as casual bystanders a glimpse into the underbelly of human trafficking Even more importantly, Theres's story and expertise as a counselor and licensed social worker help identify red flags that could prevent her plight from becoming the fate of an unsuspecting teenager. She discusses how she healed the wounds of sexual servitude and offers advice to parents and professionals through prevention tips, education and significant information on human trafficking in modern day America. With insights and perspectives from a doctor, a friend and her own brother, Theres's memoir provides a well-rounded portrait of the dark world of human trafficking and serves as a reminder of the most important clement to overcoming slavery: hope. Book jacket.




Female Sexual Slavery


Book Description

Examines the nature and extent of female sexual slavery, exploring the psychological foundations of male dominance and surveys the by-products of a patriarchal society--pimps, procurers, rapists, enforced marriages, and polygamous arrangements.




Slaves, Women & Homosexuals


Book Description

This volume by William J. Webb explores the hermeneutical maze that accompanies any treatment of these three controversial topics and takes a new step toward breaking down walls within the evangelical community related to them.




An Imperfect God


Book Description

An Imperfect God is a major new biography of Washington, and the first to explore his engagement with American slavery When George Washington wrote his will, he made the startling decision to set his slaves free; earlier he had said that holding slaves was his "only unavoidable subject of regret." In this groundbreaking work, Henry Wiencek explores the founding father's engagement with slavery at every stage of his life--as a Virginia planter, soldier, politician, president and statesman. Washington was born and raised among blacks and mixed-race people; he and his wife had blood ties to the slave community. Yet as a young man he bought and sold slaves without scruple, even raffled off children to collect debts (an incident ignored by earlier biographers). Then, on the Revolutionary battlefields where he commanded both black and white troops, Washington's attitudes began to change. He and the other framers enshrined slavery in the Constitution, but, Wiencek shows, even before he became president Washington had begun to see the system's evil. Wiencek's revelatory narrative, based on a meticulous examination of private papers, court records, and the voluminous Washington archives, documents for the first time the moral transformation culminating in Washington's determination to emancipate his slaves. He acted too late to keep the new republic from perpetuating slavery, but his repentance was genuine. And it was perhaps related to the possibility--as the oral history of Mount Vernon's slave descendants has long asserted--that a slave named West Ford was the son of George and a woman named Venus; Wiencek has new evidence that this could indeed have been true. George Washington's heroic stature as Father of Our Country is not diminished in this superb, nuanced portrait: now we see Washington in full as a man of his time and ahead of his time.




Slavery as Salvation


Book Description

Early Christians frequently used metaphors about slavery, calling themselves slaves of God and Christ and referring to their leaders as slave representatives of Christ. Most biblical scholars have insisted that this language would have been distasteful to potential converts in the Greco-Roman world, and they have wondered why early Christians such as Paul used the image of slavery to portray salvation. In this book Dale B. Martin addresses the issue by examining the social history and rhetorical and theological conventions of the times. The first half of the book draws on a variety of historical sources – inscriptions, novels, speeches, dream-handbooks, and agricultural manuals – to portray the complexity of slavery in the early Roman empire. Concentrating on middle-level, managerial slaves, Martin shows how slavery sometimes functioned as a means of upward social mobility and as a form of status-by-association for those slaves who were agents of members of the upper class. For this reason, say Martin, “slavery of Christ,” brought the Christian convert a degree of symbolic status and lent the Christian leader a certain kind of derived authority. The second half of the book traces the Greco-Roman use of political rhetoric that spoke about populist leaders as “enslaved” to their followers, especially to members of the lower class. This provides the context for Paul’s claim, in 1 Corinthians 9, that he has enslaved himself to “all” – that is, to those very people he is supposed to lead as an apostle. Martin thus interprets this statement to mean that Paul identifies himself with the interests of persons with lower status in the Corinthian church, calling on those with higher status to imitate his self-debasement in order to further the interests of those below them on the social scale.