Waging Reconciliation


Book Description

On September 20, 2001, the planned date of the meeting of the Community of Bishops of the Episcopal Church, was radically altered by the events of the previous week. The planned topic was "God's Mission, God's Work in a Global Communion of Difference" which was to focus on reconciliation within the Anglican Communion. World events changed that. The essays of this book are the papers delivered at that meeting which evoked a perspective at once personal and yet global in a new way. In the chapel where the meeting was held there was a cross with Christ holding a hammer. The Presiding Bishop spoke of this cross as being about the concept described in the Hebrew phrase, tikkun-olam or "repair of the world." The ensuing bishops' pastoral letter to the church stated, "Let us therefore wage reconciliation. Let us offer our gifts for the carrying out of God's ongoing work of reconciliation, healing and making all things new. To this we pledge ourselves and call our church."




Waging Peace in Vietnam


Book Description

How American soldiers opposed and resisted the war in Vietnam While mainstream narratives of the Vietnam War all but marginalize anti-war activity of soldiers, opposition and resistance from within the three branches of the military made a real difference to the course of America’s engagement in Vietnam. By 1968, every major peace march in the United States was led by active duty GIs and Vietnam War veterans. By 1970, thousands of active duty soldiers and marines were marching in protest in US cities. Hundreds of soldiers and marines in Vietnam were refusing to fight; tens of thousands were deserting to Canada, France and Sweden. Eventually the US Armed Forces were no longer able to sustain large-scale offensive operations and ceased to be effective. Yet this history is largely unknown and has been glossed over in much of the written and visual remembrances produced in recent years. Waging Peace in Vietnam shows how the GI movement unfolded, from the numerous anti-war coffee houses springing up outside military bases, to the hundreds of GI newspapers giving an independent voice to active soldiers, to the stockade revolts and the strikes and near-mutinies on naval vessels and in the air force. The book presents first-hand accounts, oral histories, and a wealth of underground newspapers, posters, flyers, and photographs documenting the actions of GIs and veterans who took part in the resistance. In addition, the book features fourteen original essays by leading scholars and activists. Notable contributors include Vietnam War scholar and author, Christian Appy, and Mme Nguyen Thi Binh, who played a major role in the Paris Peace Accord. The book originates from the exhibition Waging Peace, which has been shown in Vietnam and the University of Notre Dame, and will be touring the eastern United States in conjunction with book launches in Boston, Amherst, and New York.




Whole and Reconciled


Book Description

The ministry of reconciliation is the new whole in holistic ministry. It must be if the Christian mission is to remain relevant in our increasingly fractured world. This book offers a fresh treatment of holistic ministry that takes the role of reconciliation seriously, rethinking the meaning of the gospel, the nature of the church, and the practice of mission in light of globalization, post-Christendom, and postcolonialism. It also includes theological and practical resources for effectively engaging in evangelism, compassion and justice, and reconciliation ministries. Includes a foreword by Ruth Padilla DeBorst and an afterword by Ronald J. Sider.




Christian-Muslim Relations in the Anglican and Lutheran Communions: Historical Encounters and Contemporary Projects


Book Description

Using vignettes of Muslim-Christian engagement within the Anglican and Lutheran communities from around the world, this book provides thoughtful Anglican and Lutheran responses to Muslim-Christian relationships from a variety of perspectives and contexts, lays the groundwork for ongoing faithful, sensitive, and sincere engagement.




Waging Reconciliation


Book Description

On September 20, 2001, the planned date of the meeting of the Community of Bishops of the Episcopal Church, was radically altered by the events of the previous week. The planned topic was "God's Mission, God's Work in a Global Communion of Difference" which was to focus on reconciliation within the Anglican Communion. World events changed that. The essays of this book are the papers delivered at that meeting which evoked a perspective at once personal and yet global in a new way. In the chapel where the meeting was held there was a cross with Christ holding a hammer. The Presiding Bishop spoke of this cross as being about the concept described in the Hebrew phrase, tikkun-olam or "repair of the world." The ensuing bishops' pastoral letter to the church stated, "Let us therefore wage reconciliation. Let us offer our gifts for the carrying out of God's ongoing work of reconciliation, healing and making all things new. To this we pledge ourselves and call our church."




I Have Called You Friends


Book Description

Throughout his nine-year term as Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Frank T. Griswold has taught about reconciliation: conversation, conversion, communion--all grounded in Jesus' meeting us in all our particularities and isolation and calling us into the ever greater friendship of the Holy Spirit. It seemed natural, then, that a book of essays in honor of the Presiding Bishop at the end of his term should take reconciliation as its theme. Each of the contributors-church leaders from all over the globe--focuses in his or her own way on reconciliation and our participation in what God has already accomplished through Christ. I Have Called You Friends is a proper and loving gift to man who has served as the overseer of the Episcopal Church, and as a teacher and a friend. But it is more than that. It is an enterprise in theological reflection on a vital topic for citizens of the twenty-first century.




The Living Church


Book Description




Waging a Good War


Book Description

#1 New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas E. Ricks offers a new take on the Civil Rights Movement, stressing its unexpected use of military strategy and its lessons for nonviolent resistance around the world. “Ricks does a tremendous job of putting the reader inside the hearts and souls of the young men and women who risked so much to change America . . . Riveting.” —Charles Kaiser, The Guardian In Waging a Good War, the bestselling author Thomas E. Ricks offers a fresh perspective on America’s greatest moral revolution—the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s—and its legacy today. While the Movement has become synonymous with Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ethos of nonviolence, Ricks, a Pulitzer Prize–winning war reporter, draws on his deep knowledge of tactics and strategy to advance a surprising but revelatory idea: the greatest victories for Black Americans of the past century were won not by idealism alone, but by paying attention to recruiting, training, discipline, and organization—the hallmarks of any successful military campaign. An engaging storyteller, Ricks deftly narrates the Movement’s triumphs and defeats. He follows King and other key figures from Montgomery to Memphis, demonstrating that Gandhian nonviolence was a philosophy of active, not passive, resistance—involving the bold and sustained confrontation of the Movement’s adversaries, both on the ground and in the court of public opinion. While bringing legends such as Fannie Lou Hamer and John Lewis into new focus, Ricks also highlights lesser-known figures who played critical roles in fashioning nonviolence into an effective tool—the activists James Lawson, James Bevel, Diane Nash, and Septima Clark foremost among them. He also offers a new understanding of the Movement’s later difficulties as internal disputes and white backlash intensified. Rich with fresh interpretations of familiar events and overlooked aspects of America’s civil rights struggle, Waging a Good War is an indispensable addition to the literature of racial justice and social change—and one that offers vital lessons for our own time.




Church, Identity, and Change


Book Description

Since colonial days, religious work in American has happened through denominations. At least since the start of the twentieth century, these religious bodies consisted of a fairly tight, intra-denominationally connected system of congregations, regional judicatories, and national offices. This system was the product of more than two centuries of consolidation among Americanbs historic immigrant and indigenous churches. The vast majority of these structures are still in place, retain some semblance of internal coherence, have considerable social and religious significance, and will be with us for the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, the stresses upon them today clearly indicate that they are entering an unsettled period of transition. The purpose of this book is to examine the national structures of eight diverse Protestant denominations as a part of that shift. The frame of this study is the relationship between the theological and organizational nature of national denominational structures as they adapt to the changing situation of the twenty-first century.




Chasing Down a Rumor


Book Description

Are the denominations really dying? Two experienced church "watchers" who have lived the question on a daily basis provide statistics, insights, and hope that the rumor is premature.