Sermons of Neal Phillips

Sermons of Neal Phillips

Author: Dwayne Phillips

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2001-08-24

Total Pages: 422

ISBN-13: 0595197744

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Neal Phillips preached the Gospel for forty years. This book contains 82 of the sermons he preached during the 1980s. A member of the Good Tidings Quartet, Neal Phillips preached in churches in Louisiana, California, Texas, Tennessee, Florida, Kentucky, and other places.


Sitting on a Keg of Dynamite

Sitting on a Keg of Dynamite

Author: John Neal Phillips

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2022-09-08

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 0806191465

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

On April 16, 1947, the French vessel SS Grandcamp, carrying ammonium nitrate fertilizer, exploded in the port of Texas City, just north of Galveston, Texas. Nearly 600 people died instantly and property damage reached catastrophic proportions. The Texas City disaster remains, to date, the worst industrial accident in U.S. history. Among those killed was William Roach, a Roman Catholic priest known affectionately as Father Bill. Sitting on a Keg of Dynamite, by historian John Neal Phillips, tells the remarkable story of Father Bill’s life and premature death against the backdrop of the rapid growth—and near destruction—of an American industrial city. Through extensive archival research and oral interviews, Phillips pieces together previously unknown details of Father Bill’s story to present a well-rounded portrait of the man who is today revered as a hero. Born in Philadelphia, Roach attended seminary in Arkansas before he went on to serve as parish priest for St. Mary of the Miraculous Medal in Texas City. Restless, energetic, and beloved for his humor, tolerance, and empathy, Father Bill was an outspoken advocate for poor and working-class citizens, fair wages, and workplace safety. One evening, as Phillips vividly recounts, Roach sat on the church steps, looking out at the strange orange-yellow light created by hydrocarbon gas flares emerging from nearby oil refineries. “I feel like I’m sitting on a keg of dynamite,” he told parishioners who were passing by. His premonition proved prophetic. When a fire erupted onboard the Grandcamp, Father Bill hurried to the docks to lend assistance. It was then that the ship detonated. There is still much to be learned from the Texas City disaster—and from the legacy of Father Bill, an early crusader for social justice in America. Descendants of the disaster victims received financial reparations, and yet, as Phillips cautions, safety and environmental regulations barely exist in Texas today, particularly when it comes to the petrochemical industry. Sitting on a Keg of Dynamite serves as a cautionary tale for Texans—and all Americans—as environmental accidents continue to threaten our safety.


The Overshadowed Preacher

The Overshadowed Preacher

Author: Jerusha Matsen Neal

Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

Published: 2020-10-08

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 1467459976

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Overshadowed Preacher breaks open one of the most important, unexamined affirmations of preaching: the presence of the living Christ in the sermon. Jerusha Matsen Neal argues that Mary’s conceiving, bearing, and naming of Jesus in Luke’s nativity account is a potent description of this mystery. Mary’s example calls preachers to leave behind the false shadows haunting Christian pulpits and be “overshadowed” by the Spirit of God. Neal asks gospel proclaimers to own both the limits and the promise of their humanness as God’s Spirit-filled servants rather than disappear behind a “pulpit prince” ideal. It is a preacher’s fully embodied witness, lived out through Spirit-filled acts of hospitality, dependence, and discernment, that bears the marks of a fully embodied Christ. This affirmation honors the particularity of preachers in a globally diverse context—challenging a status quo that has historically privileged masculinity and whiteness. It also offers hope to ordinary souls who find themselves daunted by the impossibility of the preaching task. Nothing, in the angel’s words, is impossible with God.


My Life with Bonnie and Clyde

My Life with Bonnie and Clyde

Author: Blanche Caldwell Barrow

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2012-10-08

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 0806186755

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Bonnie and Clyde were responsible for multiple murders and countless robberies. But they did not act alone. In 1933, during their infamous run from the law, Bonnie and Clyde were joined by Clyde’s brother Buck Barrow and his wife Blanche. Of these four accomplices, only one—Blanche Caldwell Barrow—lived beyond early adulthood and only Blanche left behind a written account of their escapades. Edited by outlaw expert John Neal Phillips, Blanche’s previously unknown memoir is here available for the first time. Blanche wrote her memoir between 1933 and 1939, while serving time at the Missouri State Penitentiary. Following her death, Blanche’s good friend and the executor of her will, Esther L. Weiser, found the memoir wrapped in a large unused Christmas card. Later she entrusted it to Phillips, who had interviewed Blanche several times before her death. Drawing from these interviews, and from extensive research into Depression-era outlaw history, Phillips supplements the memoir with helpful notes and with biographical information about Blanche and her accomplices.


Running With Bonnie and Clyde

Running With Bonnie and Clyde

Author: John Neal Phillips

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2014-04-14

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 0806186860

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

One of the most sought-after criminals of the Depression era, Ralph Fults began his career of crime at the improbable age of fourteen. At nineteen he met Clyde Barrow in a Texas prison, and the two men together founded what would later be known as the Barrow gang. Running with Bonnie and Clyde is the story of Fults's experiences in the Texas criminal underworld between the years 1925 and 1935 and the gripping account of his involvement with the Barrow gang, particularly its notorious duo, Bonnie and Clyde. Fults's "ten fast years" were both dramatic and violent. As an adolescent he escaped numerous juvenile institutions and jails, was shot by an Oklahoma police officer, and was brutalized by prison guards. With Clyde, following their fateful meeting in 1930, he robbed a bank to finance a prison raid. After the ambush of Bonnie and Clyde, in 1934, he joined forces with Raymond Hamilton; together the two robbed more banks and eluded countless posses before Hamilton's capture and 1935 execution. One of the few survivors among numerous associates who ended up shot, stabbed, beaten to death, or executed, Fults was later able to reform himself, believing that the only reason he was spared was to reveal the darkest aspects of his past-and in so doing expose the circumstances that propel youth into crime. Author John Neal Phillips tells Fults's story in vivid and at times raw detail, recounting bank robberies, killings, and prison escapes, friendships, love affairs, and marriages. Dialogues based on actual conversations amongst the participants enhance the narrative's authenticity. Whereas in books and mms, Fults, Parker, Barrow, and Hamilton have been romanticized or depicted as one-dimensional, depraved characters, Running with Bonnie and Clyde shows them as real people, products of social, political, and economic forces that directed them into a life of crime and bound them to it for eternity. Although basing his account primarily on Fults's testimony, Phillips substantiates that viewpoint with references to scores of eyewitness interviews, police files and court documents, and contemporary news accounts. An important contribution to criminal and social history, Running with Bonnie and Clyde will be fascinating reading for scholars and general readers alike.