The Earth Cries Out

Fresh, different and exquisitely written, this is an exciting debut novel. One day we were in a dream world, where Julia was dead and the space where she once was became large and silent, and then we were in another country altogether — where stories and voices made their way into our house any way they could. They heaved under the floorboards, whispered in the windows. Creaked in the attic like a python grown too big on rats. And I collected them all to fill that silence Julia left. After the accidental death of Ruth's five-year-old sister, their father decides that atonement and healing are in order, and that taking on aid work in a mountain village in Irian Jaya is the way to find it. It is the late 1990s, a time of civil unrest and suppression in the Indonesian province now known as West Papua. The family drops into what seems the middle of nowhere, where they experience a vibrant landscape, an ever-changing and disorientating world, and — for Ruth — new voices. While her parents find it a struggle to save themselves, let alone anyone else, Ruth seeks redemption in bearing witness to and passing on the stories of those who have been silenced — even as she is haunted by questions about what it means to witness and who gets to survive.

Lupe Arellano figured a winter camping trip with Crime Scene Club would be a good way to bond with her friends and learn about environmental forensics. Little did she imagine that her wilderness trek would bring both unexpected romance and life-threatening peril. This ninth CSC book provides both factual information on chemistry and first-rate fiction, with bone-chilling outdoor suspense.

"The Earth Cries Out describes best practices in religious responses to the impending climate and sustainability emergency, and presents the next steps for faith communities in the years ahead"--

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.

Focusing on the threated Amazon of his native Brazil, Boff traces the economic and metaphysical ties that bind the fate of the rain forests with the fate of the indigenous peopls and the poor of the land. He shows how liberation theology must join with ecology in reclaiming the dignity of the earth and our sense of a common community, part of God's creation. To illustrate the possibilities, Boff turns to resrouces in Christian spirituality both ancient and modern, from the vision of St. Francis of Assisi to cosmic christology.

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.