God In The Ghetto

At long last, the reissue of the classic book by the late, great William ¿Bill¿ Augustus Jones. The original volume featured essays on urban ministry and sermons on social justice, and this new edition has been updated by the late author¿s younger daughter and expanded to add several never-before-published sermons from the preaching giant. The book also features new essays reflecting on the legacy and influence of Dr. Jones and his work, from notable leaders including James Forbes, Frederick Haynes, Otis Moss III, J. Alfred Smith Sr., Al Sharpton, Jacqueline Thompson, and more!

In recent years, as government agencies have encouraged faith-based organizations to help ensure social welfare, many black churches have received grants to provide services to their neighborhoods’ poorest residents. This collaboration, activist churches explain, is a way of enacting their faith and helping their neighborhoods. But as Michael Leo Owens demonstrates in God and Government in the Ghetto, this alliance also serves as a means for black clergy to reaffirm their political leadership and reposition moral authority in black civil society. Drawing on both survey data and fieldwork in New York City, Owens reveals that African American churches can use these newly forged connections with public agencies to influence policy and government responsiveness in a way that reaches beyond traditional electoral or protest politics. The churches and neighborhoods, Owens argues, can see a real benefit from that influence—but it may come at the expense of less involvement at the grassroots. Anyone with a stake in the changing strategies employed by churches as they fight for social justice will find God and Government in the Ghetto compelling reading.

How can Christianity touch the imagination of our contemporaries when ever fewer people in the West identify as religious? Timothy Radcliffe argues we must show how everything we believe is an invitation to live fully. God says: 'I put before you life and death: choose life'. Anyone who understands the beauty and messiness of human life – novelists, poets, filmmakers and so on – can be our allies, whether they believe or not. The challenge is not today's secularism but its banality. We accompany the disciples as they struggle to understand this strange man who heals, casts out demons and offers endless forgiveness. In the face of death, he teaches them what it means to be alive in God. Then he embraces all that afflicts and crushes humanity. Finally, Radcliffe explores what it means for us to be alive spiritually, physically, sacramentally, justly and prayerfully. The result is a compelling new understanding of the words of Jesus: 'I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.'

A spiritual/self help book that takes you on the journey of a lifetime for Anthony, a shy, but brilliant young man. He has his light darkened by the karma he had accumulated and seems to be lost, unfocused, with no direction in life. The burning desire to find out the meaning of his life sends him zigging and zagging on quests that ends in love that he never could have imagined. Come on this magnificent ride from state to state where he encounters success and defeat along with all the vices he could manage. Also take a trip with him to Korea on a spiritual pilgrimage where he learns in depth, the meaning of accepting and letting go. For the reader, there's never a dull moment, even during the meditation practices. After seeing the good, the bad, the weird, and the ugly you'll finish the book feeling like this rollercoaster ride was one that you'd want to take again because the twists and turns had a weird healing effect. Enjoy it and leave a comment. Thank you!😊

May God Avenge Their Blood: a Holocaust Memoir Triptych presents three memoirs by the Yiddish writer Rachmil Bryks (1912–1974). In "Those Who Didn't Survive," Bryks portrays inter-war life in his shtetl Skarżysko-Kamienna, Poland with great flair and rich anthropological detail, rendering a haunting collective portrait of an annihilated community. "The Fugitives" vividly charts the confusion and terror of the early days of World War II in the industrial city of Łódź and elsewhere. In the final memoir, "From Agony to Life," Bryks tells of his imprisonment in Auschwitz and other camps. Taken together, the triptych takes the reader on a wide-ranging journey from Hasidic life before the Holocaust to the chaos of the early days of war and then to the horrors of Nazi captivity. This translation by Yermiyahu Ahron Taub brings the extraordinary memoirs of an important Yiddish writer to English-language readers for the first time.

The slums of Kingston, Jamaica are among the most poor and violent on earth. But in the midst of crumbling buildings and shattered families, of addictions, hunger, and crime there is a sign of hope: Father Richard Ho Lung and his Missionaries of the Poor. Here on the streets of Kingston, Fr. Ho Lung and his brothers care tenderly for the poor, pray with them, and preach the Good News. In Diary of a Ghetto Priest, Father Ho Lung offers readers an extraordinary glimpse into his life's work. And he extends an invitation: Come see the exuberant, tragic lives of the poorest of the poor. Dare to experience their sorrows and their joys. Be willing to encounter the Lord in the most unexpected places. Your life may never be the same.

There are two stories here. One is the now legendary tale of a defiant Jew's refusal to abandon God, even in the face of the greatest suffering the world has known, a testament of faith that has taken on an unpredictable and fascinating life of its own and has often been thought to be a direct testament from the Holocaust. The parallel story is that of Zvi Kolitz, the true author, whose connection to Yosl Rakover has been obscured over the fifty years since its original appearance. German journalist Paul Badde tells how a young man came to write this classic response to evil, and then was nearly written out of its history. With brief commentaries by French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and Leon Wieseltier, author of Kaddish, this edition presents a religious classic and the very human story behind it.