Prophet Of Justice

Missio Alliance Essential Reading List Hearts Minds Bookstore's Best Books RELEVANT's Top 10 Books Englewood Review of Books Best Books When Soong-Chan Rah planted an urban church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, his first full sermon series was a six-week exposition of the book of Lamentations. Preaching on an obscure, depressing Old Testament book was probably not the most seeker-sensitive way to launch a church. But it shaped their community with a radically countercultural perspective. The American church avoids lament. But lament is a missing, essential component of Christian faith. Lament recognizes struggles and suffering, that the world is not as it ought to be. Lament challenges the status quo and cries out for justice against existing injustices. Soong-Chan Rah's prophetic exposition of the book of Lamentations provides a biblical and theological lens for examining the church's relationship with a suffering world. It critiques our success-centered triumphalism and calls us to repent of our hubris. And it opens up new ways to encounter the other. Hear the prophet's lament as the necessary corrective for Christianity's future. A Resonate exposition of the book of Lamentations.

American Christians today, says Michael Barram, have a signifi­cant blind spot when it comes to economic matters in the Bible. In this book Barram reads biblical texts related to matters of money, wealth, and poverty through a missional lens, showing how they function to transform our economic reasoning. Barram searches for insight into God’s purposes for economic justice by exploring what it might look like to think and act in life-giving ways in the face of contemporary economic orthodoxies. The Bible repeatedly tells us how to treat the poor and marginalized, Barram says, and faithful Christians cannot but reflect carefully and concretely on such concerns. Written in an accessible style, this biblically rooted study reflects years of research and teaching on social and economic justice in the Bible and will prove useful for lay readers, preachers, teachers, students, and scholars.

Although Sojourner Truth was born into bondage and oppression, in liberation she emerged as a leader in the most radical causes of her era. She travelled the country as an outspoken and riveting presence, battling for the abolition of slavery and for women’s suffrage. While her role in these movements has been well-documented, biographers have frequently overlooked the influence of religion in Truth’s life. A participant in a number of the most significant religious movements of her day, including the Methodist Perfectionists, the Kingdom of Matthias, the Utopians, and the Spiritualists, Truth drew her notions of justice from religion. Sojourner Truth: Prophet of Social Justice provides a concise biography of this important figure, integrating her religious life in ways that shed light on Truth’s work and the religious movements of her day. Accompanied by primary source documents including political records, speech transcripts, and selections from her autobiography, Richman's biography provides a rich and accessible narrative of Truth's life and legacy.

A "powerful text" (Tavis Smiley) about how religion drove the fight for social justice in modern America American Prophets sheds critical new light on the lives and thought of seven major prophetic figures in twentieth-century America whose social activism was motivated by a deeply felt compassion for those suffering injustice. In this compelling and provocative book, acclaimed religious scholar Albert Raboteau tells the remarkable stories of Abraham Joshua Heschel, A. J. Muste, Dorothy Day, Howard Thurman, Thomas Merton, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Fannie Lou Hamer—inspired individuals who succeeded in conveying their vision to the broader public through writing, speaking, demonstrating, and organizing. Raboteau traces how their paths crossed and their lives intertwined, creating a network of committed activists who significantly changed the attitudes of several generations of Americans about contentious political issues such as war, racism, and poverty. Raboteau examines the influences that shaped their ideas and the surprising connections that linked them together. He discusses their theological and ethical positions, and describes the rhetorical and strategic methods these exemplars of modern prophecy used to persuade their fellow citizens to share their commitment to social change. A momentous scholarly achievement as well as a moving testimony to the human spirit, American Prophets represents a major contribution to the history of religion in American politics. This book is essential reading for anyone who is concerned about social justice, or who wants to know what prophetic thought and action can mean in today's world.

Who was William Stringfellow? Like most prophets, he was brilliant. But he was also, like most prophets, difficult, irascible, suspicious, contentious--and full of courage. He was a lawyer, a social activist, and a dedicated communicant of the Episcopal Church. He graduated from Harvard Law School in the 1950s but put aside the promise of a lucrative career and went to work in East Harlem, one of New York City's poorest neighborhoods. At the height of the Vietnam War, he took the Reverend Daniel Berrigan into his home and was indicted for harboring a fugitive. In the 1970s, while the Episcopal Church was struggling with such issues as the ordination of women and the funding of programs for minorities, he accused the ecclesiastical hierarchy of arrogance, duplicity, and lack of leadership. Everything William Stringfellow said and did was grounded in his profound belief in the Incarnation and the Eschaton. He knew Jesus Christ to be the Word of God, who is in all things and who challenges the powers and principalities of this world, calling people and institutions to repentance and newness of life. In Prophet of Justice, Prophet of Life editor Robert Boak Slocum has gathered a diverse group of clergy, legal scholars, and seminary faculty to produce this stimulating and provocative series of essays on the life and work of William Stringfellow.