Words Of Witness

A literary and political genealogy of the last half-century, Words of Witness explores black feminist autobiographical narratives--in particular by June Jordan, Edwidge Danticat, Melba Beals, Rosemary Bray, and Eisa Davis--in the context of activism and history since the landmark 1954 segregation case, Brown vs. the Board of Education.

Nicki Demere is an orphan and a pickpocket. She also happens to be the U.S. Marshals’ best bet to keep a family alive. . . . The marshals are looking for the perfect girl to join a mother, father, and son on the run from the nation’s most notorious criminals. After all, the bad guys are searching for a family with one kid, not two, and adding a streetwise girl who knows a little something about hiding things may be just what the marshals need. Nicki swears she can keep the Trevor family safe, but to do so she’ll have to dodge hitmen, cyberbullies, and the specter of standardized testing, all while maintaining her marshal-mandated B-minus average. As she barely balances the responsibilities of her new identity, Nicki learns that the biggest threats to her family’s security might not lurk on the road from New York to North Carolina, but rather in her own past. Jake Burt's debut middle-grade novel Greetings from Witness Protection! is as funny as it is poignant.

Newbery Medalist Karen Hesse emerses readers in a small Vermont town in 1924 with this haunting and harrowing tale. Leanora Sutter. Esther Hirsh. Merlin Van Tornhout. Johnny Reeves . . .These characters are among the unforgettable cast inhabiting a small Vermont town in 1924. A town that turns against its own when the Ku Klux Klan moves in. No one is safe, especially the two youngest, twelve-year-old Leanora, an African-American girl, and six-year-old Esther, who is Jewish.In this story of a community on the brink of disaster, told through the haunting and impassioned voices of its inhabitants, Newbery Award winner Karen Hesse takes readers into the hearts and minds of those who bear witness.

Karl Barth's lectures on the first chapter of the Gospel of John, delivered at Muenster in 1925-26 and at Bonn in 1933, came at an important time in his life, when he was turning his attention more fully to dogmatics. Theological interpretation was thus his primary concern, especially the relation between revelation and the witness to revelation, which helped to shape his formulation of the role of the written (and spoken) word vis-a-vis the incarnate Word. The text is divided into three sections - John 1:1-18, 19-34, 35-51, with the largest share of the book devoted to the first section. Each section begins with Barth's own translation, followed by verse-by -verse and phrase-by-phrase commentary on the Greek text. Although Barth's interpretation is decidedly theological, he does take up questions of philology and textual criticism more thoroughly than in his other works. Much has happened in Johannine scholarship since these lectures were first delivered, yet they remain valuable today - 100 years after Barth's birth - both for their insights into the gospel and into Karl Barth.

Examines the ethical and pedagogical stakes of representing the Holocaust in books, films, and museum exhibits.

These meditations take a verse from one of the lectionary texts not chosen for preaching for a given service and offer a devotional reflection on the verse, often using the context of the entire pericope as described in the lectionary. I try to make them worth the while of my readers, finding a fairly broad readership among the congregations I served through the years.

What was the early Church like? Contrary to popular belief, Rod Bennett shows there is a reliable way to know. Four ancient Christian writers - four witnesses to early Christianity - left us an extensive body of documentation on this vital subject, and this book brings their fascinating testimony to life for modern believers. With all the power and drama of a gripping novel, this book is a journey of discovery of ancient and beautiful truths through the lives of four great saints of the early ChurchClement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus of Lyons. "A treasure! The early Church and its teachings come to life in this story. Did the first Christians believe what you believe? Buy this book, read the words of the early Church Herself, and fall in love with the historic Church that Christ Himself founded." - David Currie, Author, Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic "Rod Bennett has immersed himself in the fascinating writings of four early Fathers of the Church and has made the discovery from reading them that sincere and attentive readers of them ought to make. The author's imaginative account of these four great Church Fathers is not only an excellent introduction to their work; it is a convincing rendering of what the early Church must really have been like. This is an important new contribution to Christian apologetics." - Kenneth Whitehead, Author, One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic

Margaret Avison, one of Canada's premier poets, is a highly sophisticated and self-conscious writer, both charming and intimidating at the same time. She calls to mind her more famous predecessors--the religious poets George Herbert, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and T. S. Eliot--as she vigorously engages both heart and intellect. "She has forged a way to write against the grain, some of the most humane, sweet and profound poetry of our time," write the judges of the 2003 Griffin Poetry Prize. Becoming a Christian in her mid-forties, her life and her vocation were transformed and her lyrics record that shift. In "Muse of Danger," she writes to Christian college students, "But in His strange and marvelous mercy, God nonetheless lets the believer take a necessary place as a living witness in behavior with family and classmate and stranger, in conversation, or in a poem." How she blends her twin passions of poetry and Christian faith becomes a story of a kind of perseverance. Readers who respond with understanding and empathy recognize both the distinctive mystery of poetic witness and the mystery inherent in Christ's saving work to which it points. Her enduring witness becomes an implicit call for us to persevere in what Avison identifies as the "mix of resurrection life and marred everyday living."