Blood Cries Out

Around the world communities that have suffered the trauma of unspeakable violence--in Liberia, Somalia, West Africa, Columbia, and elsewhere--are struggling to recover and reconcile, searching for ways not just to survive but to heal. In When Blood and Bones Cry Out, John Paul Lederach, a pioneer of peace-building, and his daughter, Angela Jill Lederach, show how communities can recover and reconnect through the power of making music, creating metaphors, and telling their extraordinary stories of suffering and survival. Instead of relying on more common linear explanations of healing and reconciliation, the Lederachs demonstrate how healing is circular, dynamic, and continuing, even in the midst of ongoing violence. They explore the concept of "social healing," a profoundly important intermediary step between active warfare and reconciliation. Social healing focuses on the lived experience of those who have suffered protracted violence and their need to give voice to that experience, both individually and collectively. Giving voice, speaking the unspeakable, in words and sounds that echo throughout traumatized communities, can have enormous healing power. Indeed, the Lederachs stress the remarkable effects of sound and vibration through tales of Tibetan singing bowls, Van Morrison's transcendent lyrics, the voices of mothers in West Africa, and their own personal journeys. And they include inspiring stories of transformation: a mass women's protest movement in Liberia that forces leaders to keep negotiating until a peace agreement is signed; elders in Somalia who walk between warring clans year after year to encourage dialogue; former child soldiers who run drum workshops and grow gardens in refugee camps; and rape victims in Sierra Leone who express their pain in poetry. With equal measures of insight and compassion, When Blood and Bones Cry Out offers a promising new approach to healing traumatized communities.

As both a clinical psychologist and an authority on comparative religion, James W. Jones is uniquely qualified to address the increasingly urgent issue of religious terrorism. Research on the psychology of violence shows that several factors work to make ordinary people turn "evil." Authoritarian religion or "fundamentalism," Jones shows, is a particularly rich source of such ideas and feelings, which he finds throughout the writings of Islamic jihadists. Jones notes that not every adherent of an authoritarian group will turn to violence, and he shows how theories of personality development can explain why certain individuals are easily recruited.

John McConnell Jr. was the famed founder and visionary of Earth Day. McConnell's vision was one of creating a day of remembrance, solitude, and action to restore the broken human relationship to the land. Little acknowledged are McConnell's religious convictions or background. McConnell grew up in a Pentecostal home. In fact, McConnell's parents were both founding charter members of the Assemblies of God in 1914. His own grandfather had an even greater connection to the origins of Pentecostalism by being a personal participant at the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles in 1906. Earth Day, thus, began with strong religious convictions. McConnell, seeing the ecological demise through his religious background, envisioned a day where Christians could "show the power of prayer, the validity of their charity, and their practical concern for Earth's life and people." In the spirit of McConnell, today's Pentecostal and Charismatic theology has something to say about the earth. Blood Cries Out is a unique contribution by Pentecostal and Charismatic theologians and practitioners to the global conversation concerning ecological degradation, climate change, and ecological justice.

John McConnell Jr. was the famed founder and visionary of Earth Day. McConnell's vision was one of creating a day of remembrance, solitude, and action to restore the broken human relationship to the land. Little acknowledged are McConnell's religious convictions or background. McConnell grew up in a Pentecostal home. In fact, McConnell's parents were both founding charter members of the Assemblies of God in 1914. His own grandfather had an even greater connection to the origins of Pentecostalism by being a personal participant at the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles in 1906. Earth Day, thus, began with strong religious convictions. McConnell, seeing the ecological demise through his religious background, envisioned a day where Christians could "show the power of prayer, the validity of their charity, and their practical concern for Earth's life and people." In the spirit of McConnell, today's Pentecostal and Charismatic theology has something to say about the earth. Blood Cries Out is a unique contribution by Pentecostal and Charismatic theologians and practitioners to the global conversation concerning ecological degradation, climate change, and ecological justice.

Today more than 200 million Christians around the world suffer imprisonment, abuse and even death because of their faith. Yet most Americans never hear their stories. In Their Blood Cries Out, Paul Marshall reveals the reality of this present-day persecution, revealing what we can do to help these brothers and sisters in Christ.

During the Allied bombing of Darmstadt in 1944, some Lutheran young women saw their city's destruction as an expression of God's wrath. In 1947, a small number formed the Ecumenical (now 'Evangelical') Sisterhood of Mary, one of the first post-war Protestant religious orders. They sensed God's call on them to embrace lives of radical repentance for the sins of the German people against God and against the Jews. Under Mother Basilea, born Klara Schlink, the sisters embraced an ideology of collective national guilt for the Holocaust.

More than forty years ago, Ollie Chandler was only eighteen years old when he was executed on October 18, 1963. In this memoir, Ollie's brother and author W.C. Chandler narrates Ollie's short life story that includes racial discrimination, a miscarriage of justice, and his untimely death. Ollie was one of the fourteen children of John and Leatha Chandler who lived in the rural community of Clyattville, Georgia. Life was not easy for a black family living in the south. And for Ollie, life was even more difficult. Mentally challenged, he wasn't able to finish school. But at age seventeen, Ollie was arrested for a murder he said he didn't commit. His Blood Cries Out for Justice tells the rest of Ollie's story from his time in jail to his trial by an all-white jury and his subsequent death. A moving tribute, His Blood Cries Out for Justice pays homage to this young life that was cut short. It reckons with history while also celebrating one family's deep love and that family's attempt to make sense of a tragedy.