The Good News About Conflict

Conflict over homosexuality in Christian churches is only intensifying. We can do better. We have to do better. The stakes are too high to do otherwise. Conflicts are difficult and ugly, but the good news reaches even here. It is possible to have healthy conflict, to disagree and struggle together in ways that make us better and that make the church stronger. By looking deeply into the nature of religious conflict, we can cultivate practices and values that will mature our abilities as peacemakers, and strengthen our faith and our churches.

Can a pirate and a prince learn to share? In the fort in the woods, a prince is preparing his castle for a lively feast for the royal kingdom. Unbeknownst to him, a pirate uses the same fort as her ship, planning to venture out to the open seas in search of treasure. But when a treasure map appears on the prince’s party invitations, and the pirate finds that her sword has turned into a scepter, they realize there is an intruder in the castle—no, ship! Soon, a battle over the fort between the adversaries ensues, leading to a humorous showdown. When they make amends, their amazing imaginations come up with a new adventure...together. Kids will revel in the spirited and imaginative battle and be thrilled by the turn of events. Dynamic and charismatic illustrations bring this witty tale and its celebration of sharing and teamwork to life.

"In the tradition of bestselling explainers like The Tipping Point, [this] book [is] based on cutting edge science that breaks down the idea of extreme conflict--the kind that paralyzes people and places--and then shows how to escape it"--

NATIONAL BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED for the 2021 Lionel Gelber Prize Thoughtful and brilliant insights into the very nature of war--from the ancient Greeks to modern times--from world-renowned historian Margaret MacMillan. War--its imprint in our lives and our memories--is all around us, from the metaphors we use to the names on our maps. As books, movies, and television series show, we are drawn to the history and depiction of war. Yet we nevertheless like to think of war as an aberration, as the breakdown of the normal state of peace. This is comforting but wrong. War is woven into the fabric of human civilization. In this sweeping new book, international bestselling author and historian Margaret MacMillan analyzes the tangled history of war and society and our complicated feelings towards it and towards those who fight. It explores the ways in which changes in society have affected the nature of war and how in turn wars have changed the societies that fight them, including the ways in which women have been both participants in and the objects of war. MacMillan's new book contains many revelations, such as war has often been good for science and innovation and in the 20th century it did much for the position of women in many societies. But throughout, it forces the reader to reflect on the ways in which war is so intertwined with society, and the myriad reasons we fight.

Today we hear renewed calls for a dialogue between science and religion: why has the old question of the relations between science and religion now returned to the public domain and what is at stake in this debate? To answer these questions, historian and sociologist of science Yves Gingras retraces the long history of the troubled relationship between science and religion, from the condemnation of Galileo for heresy in 1633 until his rehabilitation by John Paul II in 1992. He reconstructs the process of the gradual separation of science from theology and religion, showing how God and natural theology became marginalized in the scientific field in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In contrast to the dominant trend among historians of science, Gingras argues that science and religion are social institutions that give rise to incompatible ways of knowing, rooted in different methodologies and forms of knowledge, and that there never was, and cannot be, a genuine dialogue between them. Wide-ranging and authoritative, this new book on one of the fundamental questions of Western thought will be of great interest to students and scholars of the history of science and of religion as well as to general readers who are intrigued by the new and much-publicized conversations about the alleged links between science and religion.

Churches thrive on communication; they are stifled by conflict. Renowned Christian educator Kenneth O. Gangel joins his colleague Samuel L. Canine to bring good news to the church - communication skills can be learned and conflict can be managed. The church need no longer hide conflict nor excuse itself for poor communication, but can instead acknowledge where it has problems and seek transformation. The authors offer scriptural strategies for overcoming conflict and for building trust in relationships - even relationships among deacons or between deacons and pastors. Drawing from recent studies in the social sciences, Gangel and Canine show the church how to manage strife and foster dialogue so that the church can flourish. Chapter titles include Learning To Listen, Power in Conflict Management, Negotiation and Bargaining in Conflict Management, Organizational Causes of Conflict, Coalitions in Conflict Management, Managing Conflict Destructively or Constructively, Stress: Cause And Cure, and The Workaholic Syndrome. This book is a valuable resource for training church leaders. It is also an important resource for those who are already pastors, for whom the issues are daily realities and not just academic theory. Through its use in churches and seminaries, the book is designed to lead God's church through its conflicts to renewed vigor in ministry and growth.

From intimate relationships to global politics, Sarah Schulman observes a continuum: that inflated accusations of harm are used to avoid accountability. Illuminating the difference between Conflict and Abuse, Schulman directly addresses our contemporary culture of scapegoating. This deep, brave, and bold work reveals how punishment replaces personal and collective self-criticism, and shows why difference is so often used to justify cruelty and shunning. Rooting the problem of escalation in negative group relationships, Schulman illuminates the ways cliques, communities, families, and religious, racial, and national groups bond through the refusal to change their self-concept. She illustrates how Supremacy behavior and Traumatized behavior resemble each other, through a shared inability to tolerate difference. This important and sure to be controversial book illuminates such contemporary and historical issues of personal, racial, and geo-political difference as tools of escalation towards injustice, exclusion, and punishment, whether the objects of dehumanization are other individuals in our families or communities, people with HIV, African Americans, or Palestinians. Conflict Is Not Abuse is a searing rejection of the cultural phenomenon of blame, cruelty, and scapegoating, and how those in positions of power exacerbate and manipulate fear of the "other" to achieve their goals. Sarah Schulman is a novelist, nonfiction writer, playwright, screenwriter, journalist and AIDS historian, and the author of eighteen books. A Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellow, Sarah is a Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at the City University of New York, College of Staten Island. Her novels published by Arsenal include Rat Bohemia, Empathy, After Delores, and The Mere Future. She lives in New York. This publication meets the EPUB Accessibility requirements and it also meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG-AA). It is screen-reader friendly and is accessible to persons with disabilities. A Simple book with few images, which is defined with accessible structural markup. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order and semantic structure.

The Great Lakes region of Africa is characterized by protest politics, partial democratization, political illegitimacy and unstable economic growth. Many of the countries that are members of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) which are: Burundi, Angola, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Zambia, have experienced political violence and bloodshed at one time or another. While a few states have been advancing electoral democracy, environmental protection and peaceful state building, the overall intensity of violence in the region has led to civil wars, invasion, genocide, dictatorships, political instability, and underdevelopment. Efforts to establish sustainable peace, meaningful socio-economic development and participatory democracy have not been quite successful. Using various methodologies and paradigms, this book interrogates the complexity of the causes of these conflicts; and examines their impact and implications for socio-economic development of the region. The non-consensual actions related to these conflicts and imperatives of power struggles supported by the agents of savage capitalism have paralysed efforts toward progress. The book therefore recommends new policy frameworks within regionalist lenses and neo-realist politics to bring about sustainable peace in the region.