Uncommon Decency

Can Christians act like Christians even when they disagree? In these wild and diverse times, right and left battle over the airwaves, prolifers square off against prochoicers, gay liberationists confront champions of the traditional family, artists and legislators tangle, even Christians fight other Christians whose doctrines aren't "just so." Richard Mouw has been actively forging a model of Christian civil conversation with those we might disagree with—atheists, Muslims, gay activists and more. He is concerned that, too often, Christians have contributed more to the problem than to the solution. But he recognizes—from his dialogues with those from many perspectives—that it's not easy to hold to Christian convictions and treat sometimes vindictive opponents with civility and decency. Few if any people in the evangelical world have conversed as widely and sensitively as Mouw. So few can write more wisely or helpfully than Mouw does here about what Christians can appreciate about pluralism, the theological basis for civility, and how we can communicate with people who disagree with us on the issues that matter most.

The daughter of Clark Gable and Loretta Young exposes at last the secret that everyone in Hollywood knew but her--that her adoptive mother and Clark Gable were her biological parents.

The aim of this volume originally was to occupy my time during the start of and worst of the Pandemic of 2020. As I started, I realized that I could write. For me writing was like surgery without anesthesia. The subject of the volume was to allow others to perhaps learn from my self-induced pain and pain brought by others, Although the sentiments are true to my heart, the examples used and people referred to are not meant to be actual history but lessons and teachings. The aim was not to generate money from my endeavors. It was to give those now and forever life lessons. All net proceeds will be directed to charitable endeavors. I do hope that these pages which follow serve to satisfy this dream.

A vision and practical path of a new partnership of rich and poor to create a better world. An uncommon memoir, Michael Heyn’s cross-cultural journey through pervasive human adversity unexpectedly reveals a positive global vision of human decency and caring relevant as much to America as to Yemen. His journey passes through 50 years living and working across countries spanning from the United States to India, Pakistan, Ethiopia, South Pacific Islands, Nepal, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Thailand, Kosovo, Bangladesh, South Sudan, Vietnam, and Yemen. His story stretches from an unsettling childhood to a lifetime in support of the struggle for justice, opportunity and change of those left on the far sides of an ever expanding divide between rich and poor. From living as a Peace Corps Volunteer in a remote Peruvian mountain village to innumerable confrontations with prejudice, abuse, deprivation, conflict and war over a long career in service of the United Nations, Heyn shares what he learned from those caught up on either side of the chasm. A unique insight into and historical understanding of both alienation and aspiration that cut through all human cultures and relations, Heyn envisions a break from the past isolation of greed and selfishness on the one hand and a stark hopelessness on the other. This is a voyage of accumulating discovery that exposes what must change if people are to cross over the divide to come together for their common good, no matter how antithetical this may seem. It is a belief in the basic decency of people both rich and poor as the magic to realise such change. Heyn sets out a practical path to achieve this goal to be actively pursued and managed by those bridging the divide. In the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, it is an exhilarating path that will benefit all engaged and instill reform of our societies’ values and governing systems. It is the vision of an immense new power of rich and poor to realise an altered way of life and a better world. In Search of Decency is a gripping memoir that provides cross cultural and political analysis, and views on international development. “My hope is to inspire people, rich and poor, young and old, corporate leaders and agents of change, that the world can be a more just and decent place, and that their commitment to join together is the power to make this happen,” says author Michael Heyn.

An intellectual and applied Christian engagement with what it really means to flourish as human beings in relationship to God and one another.

We rely on two different conceptions of morality. On the one hand, we think of morality as a correct action guide. Morality is accessed by taking up a critical, reflective point of view where our concern is with identifying the moral rules that would be the focus of the requiring activities of persons in a hypothetical social world whose participants were capable of accessing the justifications for everyone's endorsing just this set of rules. On the other hand, in doing virtually anything connected with morality--making demands, offering excuses, justifying choices, expressing moral attitudes, getting uptake on our resentments, and the like-we rely on social practices of morality and shared moral understandings that make our moral activities and attitudes intelligible to others. This second conception of morality, unlike the first, is not shaped by the aim of getting it right or the contrast between correct and merely supposed moral requirements. It is shaped by the moral aim of practicing morality with others within an actual, not merely hypothetical, scheme of social cooperation. If practices based on misguided moral norms seem not to be genuine morality under the first conception, merely hypothetical practices seem not to be the genuine article under the second conception. The premise of this book, which collects together nine previously published essay and a new introduction, is that both conceptions are indispensable. But exactly how is the moral theorist to go about working simultaneously with two such different conceptions of morality? The book's project is not to construct an overarching methodology for handling the two conceptions of morality. Instead, it is to provide case studies of that work being done.

From a prison cell, in which he has been held on suspicion of breaking the Official Secrets Act, Charles Thoroughgood awaits not only his bail, but also the reappearance of the woman whom all the major roads in his life have led back to. After his years in the army and then with MI6, Charles has begun a new chapter in his life with the Secret Intelligence Agency, shadowing the movements of a suspected double agent. Charles knows that he has nothing to hide, and as he casts his mind over the course of recent events, he begins to suspect a more sinister motivation, both personally and politically, behind his incarceration…

This definitive biography of Henry (Hank) Aaron—one of baseball's immortal figures—is a revelatory portrait of a complicated, private man who through sports became an enduring American icon. “Beautifully written and culturally important.” —The Washington Post “The epic baseball tale of the second half of the 20th century.” —Atlanta Journal Constitution After his retirement in 1976, Aaron’s reputation only grew in magnitude. But his influence extended beyond statistics. Based on meticulous research and extensive interviews The Last Hero reveals how Aaron navigated the upheavals of his time—fighting against racism while at the same time benefiting from racial progress—and how he achieved his goal of continuing Jackie Robinson’s mission to obtain full equality for African Americans, both in baseball and society, while he lived uncomfortably in the public eye.