The Power Of Unearned Suffering

This book explores the roots and relevance of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s approach to black suffering. King’s conviction that “unearned suffering is redemptive” reflects a nearly 250-year-old tradition in the black church going back to the earliest Negro spirituals. From the bellies of slave ships, the foot of the lynching tree, and the back of segregated buses, black Christians have always maintained the hope that God could “make a way out of no way” and somehow bring good from the evils inflicted on them. As a product of the black church tradition, King inherited this widespread belief, developed it using Protestant liberal concepts, and deployed it throughout the Civil Rights Movement of the 50’s and 60’s as a central pillar of the whole non-violent movement. Recently, critics have maintained that King’s doctrine of redemptive suffering creates a martyr mentality which makes victims passive in the face of their suffering; this book argues against that critique. King’s concept offers real answers to important challenges, and it offers practical hope and guidance for how beleaguered black citizens can faithfully engage their suffering today.

In this four volume series, Hijacked!: How Dr. King's Dream Became a Nightmare, author Clarence Washington Sr. dissects Dr. Martin Luther King's dream and explores how our failure to adhere to its principles has allowed the dream to be hijacked and turned to a nightmare—and it’s time to wake up. In the first volume of the Hijacked! collection, The Dream, the author clarifies the principles for social justice and freedom for all Americans that Dr. King delineated in his monumental speech. God gave Dr. Martin Luther King a road map for America to follow in his "I Have a Dream" speech and his numerous other orations and writings. In order to apply the principles of the dream effectively and make it a reality, one must understand: the goals and methods of the dream; the methods employed in the hijack of the dream; the devastating nightmarish consequences produced by the hijack; and the revival, government reformation strategy, and reformation of other institutions that must be executed to accomplish the recovery from the nightmarish times in which we are living. For the full dissection of Dr. King's dream and how our failure to adhere to its principles has led to a nightmare, explore the other volumes in Hijacked!: How Dr. King's Dream Became a Nightmare. Other volumes in this series focus on the hijack itself, the nightmare, and how we can recover.

It has been nearly fifty years since Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Appraisals of King's contributions began almost immediately and continue to this day. The author explores a great many of King's chief ideas and socio-ethical practices: his concept of a moral universe, his doctrine of human dignity, his belief that not all suffering is redemptive, his brand of personalism, his contribution to the development of social ethics, the inclusion of young people in the movement, sexism as a contradiction to his personalism, the problem of black-on-black violence, and others. The book reveals both the strengths and the limitations in King's theological socio-ethical project, and shows him to have relentlessly applied personalist ideas to organized nonviolent resistance campaigns in order to change the world. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Drawing on cultural studies scholar Kuan-Hsing Chen's threefold notion of decolonization, deimperialization, and de-cold-war, this book provides analyses of the interrelated issues concerning the relationship between Christianity and the United States' imperialist militarism in the Asia Pacific. Contributors explore the effects of US imperialist militarism on the formation of Asian and Asian American collective subjectivity and inter/intra subjectivity. The book investigates the ways in which Christianity (broadly defined), in its own complexity, has been complicit in maintaining and reinforcing US imperialist military agendas in both national and international contexts. Conversely, the volume also discusses the various sites and instances where Christianity has managed to serve as a force of resistance against US imperialist militarism.

An inspirational guide to the key junctures in life that, if navigated with faith and discernment, pave the way for us to become our most courageous selves, by the bishop of the famed Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C. The decisive moments in life are those pivot points when we’re called on to push past our fears and act with strength. With How We Learn to Be Brave, Bishop Mariann Budde teaches us to respond with clarity and grace even in the toughest times. Being brave is not a singular occurrence; it’s a journey that we can choose to undertake every day. Here, Bishop Budde explores the full range of decisive moments, from the most visible and dramatic (the decision to go), to the internal and personal (the decision to stay), to brave choices made with an eye toward the future (the decision to start), those born of suffering (the decision to accept that which we did not choose), and those that come unexpectedly (the decision to step up to the plate). Drawing on examples ranging from Harry Potter to the Gospel According to Luke, she seamlessly weaves together personal experiences with stories from scripture, history, and pop culture to underscore both the universality of these moments and the particular call each one of us must heed when they arrive. With Bishop Budde’s wisdom, readers will learn to live and to respond according to their true beliefs and in ways that align with their best selves. How We Learn to Be Brave will provide much-needed fortitude and insight to anyone searching for answers in uncertain times.

This book draws together leaders in science, the health sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences to investigate the role of religion, its meaning and relevance, for their area of specialization. It provides a much-needed fresh perspective on the way in which religion operates within the modern, neo-liberal world. The book approaches the topic by way of a critical engagement between religion, broadly defined, and the individual disciplines in which each of the contributors is expert. Rather than simply taking the dogmatic position that religion offers something to every possible discipline, each of the chapters in this collection addresses the question: is there something that religion can offer to the discipline in question? That is the value of the book – it takes a truly critical stance on the place of religion in contemporary society.

"Myth has played an important and ongoing role in the development of Saskatchewan's political economy. First, during the time of the National Policy, Saskatchewan was portrayed to immigrants as a promised land. This period served as the psychological and economic foundation for the provice. When belief in Saskatchewan as a promised land was shattered by the Great Depression and Dirty Thirties, the myth was reconstituted through the inspiration of the social gospel. It was then politically reinvigorated in the meaning of medicare and has been expressed in recent decades through the competing visions for economic development. Through all these eras, no matter what the tides of politics, there remained one constant--the singular, collective idea that Saskatchewan was a special place with unrealized potential. The challenge for the public dialogue of Saskatchewan, as the province enters its second century, is to not replay the mistakes of the past. Saskatchewan people must recognize the role that myth has played, and must continue to play, in the life of the province. But, at the same time, they must differentiate it from reality by understanding the power of myth as a force for progress and its potential to create false expectations."--pub. desc.

Learning from Black voices means listening to more than snippets. It means attending to Black stories. Reading Black Books helps Christians hear and learn from enduring Black voices and stories as captured in classic African American literature. Pastor and teacher Claude Atcho offers a theological approach to 10 seminal texts of 20th-century African American literature. Each chapter takes up a theological category for inquiry through a close literary reading and theological reflection on a primary literary text, from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Richard Wright's Native Son to Zora Neale Hurston's Moses, Man of the Mountain and James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain. The book includes end-of-chapter discussion questions. Reading Black Books helps readers of all backgrounds learn from the contours of Christian faith formed and forged by Black stories, and it spurs continued conversations about racial justice in the church. It demonstrates that reading about Black experience as shown in the literature of great African American writers can guide us toward sharper theological thinking and more faithful living.