Reconsider The Lilies

Christian environmentalism's dominant traditions have for too long avoided decolonial thought's critical gaze. Reconsider the Lilies introduces readers to the ways environmental issues are shaped by dynamics of racism and colonialism and orients readers to Christian approaches to environmentalism. By recounting the history of environmental justice, Thompson shows how even well-intentioned Christian environmentalism incorporates racist and colonialist assumptions. Challenging Christian environmentalism's colonial roots requires incorporating the insights of decolonial thought toward a more pluralist, pragmatic approach to environmentalism, one that learns from communities struggling against environmental injustice in the face of ecological collapse. Reconsider the Lilies focuses on different conceptions of justice and structural sin and offers a constructive cosmic Christology that traces Christ's presence in the concrete relationships that exist among all living things. But for this Christ-centered conception of ecological community to be decolonial, it must focus less on doctrine and ideology, and more on incarnation and embodiment. It must welcome a broad range of knowledge and expression. Environmental theology can be decolonized. Ecological communities can be restored through healing broken relationships and power disparities by equalizing access to ecological power.

This book is not about so-called alternative medicine. It is about standard, orthodox medicine that had many good treatments for cancer up until the early 20th century. For reasons of power and control of the population, it was decided around 1910 that only radiation and surgery would be the approved treatments (and chemo was later added in the 1950s). Maxwell shows how physicians who tried to use the older methods were threatened with loss of their medical license or were more harshly punished. These include Emanuel Revici, Virginia Livingston, and Robert Lincoln. She also argues that Edward Jenner engaged on fraud re smallpox vaccination.

When Jesus offers his body as a promise to his disciples, he initiates a liturgical framework that is driven by irony and betrayal. Through these deconstructive elements, however, the promise invites the disciples into an intimate space where they anticipate the fulfilment of what is to come. The Last Supper, symbol of unfinished life and sacrifice, becomes the common thread between John Donne and Emily Dickinson, whose poetics acquire liturgical - and therefore eschatological - features, and body and text become the same. By tracing the displacing and yet co-ordinating theme of the body as a textual presence, Liturgical Liaisons opens into new readings of Donne and Dickinson in a way that enriches how these figures are understood as poets. The result is a risky and rewarding understanding of how these two gurus challenged accepted theological norms of their day.

My Sweet Dream / My Living Nightmare: Adobe Walls

Christian women who make God and family a priority in their life will love Chicken Soup for the Christian Woman's Soul, an affirming collection of stories that share the miracles that are possible when their hearts are open to God.

Narrative criticism is a relatively recent development that applies literary methods to the study of Scripture. James Resseguie suggests that this approach to reading the Bible treats the text as a self-contained unit and avoids complications raised by other critical methods of interpretation. Resseguie begins with an introductory chapter that surveys the methods of narrative criticism and how they can be used to discover important nuances of meaning through what he describes as a "close reading" of the text. He then devotes chapters to the principal rhetorical devices: setting, point of view, character, rhetoric, plot, and reader. Readers will find here an accessible introduction to the subject of narrative criticism and a richly rewarding approach to reading the Bible.

Picking up where the first book in the Fort Bridger series leaves off, Consider the Lilies finds Hannah's wagon train twenty days from Fort Bridger as she deals with her children's and her own grief over her husband's death. In Fort Bridger, the Solomons make many friends. Yet there is one man, embittered by the Civil War, who hates Hannah because her husband fought on the Union side of the war, and because she is a strong woman who still plans to run the general store. In a fit of temper, this man, Alex Patterson, sets a fire that destroys Hannah's store, and seemingly her future. But just when Hannah is about to give up, she is reminded to cling to God's promises that he will provide. Soon she sees God's hand upon her life. As a result, Hannah is able to recover...and even lead Alex Patterson to Christ through her example of forgiveness.