Bradby's efforts as an activist and "race leaderby examining the role the minister played in high-profile events, such as the organizing of Detroit's NAACP chapter, the Ossian Sweet trial of the mid-1920s, the Scottsboro Boys trials in the 1930s, and the controversial rise of the United Auto Workers in Detroit in the 1940s.
"Serving the Word is an exciting and unprecedented look at literalism as a modern belief system, and analyzes its place in two seemingly contrasting fields; Christianity and law. In a work that moves from welathy Angelenos embracing starkly literal readings of the bible to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia insisting on the narrowest interpretation of legal texts. Makes a persuasive claim that the attraction to literal certainty that we associate with fringe fanaticism is in fact deeply embedded in American culture". -- Jacket.
Turn the Pulpit Loose features the lives and words of eighteen women evangelists including Sojourner Truth and Evangeline Booth, and lesser-known figures such as Jarena Lee (an African Methodist from the early 1800s) and Uldine Utley (a child evangelist in the early 1900s) who helped to shape American religious life from the nation’s infancy to the present. Highlighting substantial primary sources – sermons, articles, diaries, letters, speeches, and autobiographies – Priscilla Pope-Levison weaves together fascinating narratives of each woman’s life: her conversion and calling to preach, her primary evangelistic method, and her reflections about women in general. This anthology, complete with photographs of each evangelist, is an indispensable resource for a wide range of academic fields, including religion, history, women's studies, and literature.
What is it like to be a preacher or rabbi who no longer believes in God? In this expanded and updated edition of their groundbreaking study, Daniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola comprehensively and sensitively expose an inconvenient truth that religious institutions face in the new transparency of the information age—the phenomenon of clergy who no longer believe what they publicly preach. In confidential interviews, clergy from across the ministerial spectrum—from liberal to literal—reveal how their lives of religious service and study have led them to a truth inimical to their professed beliefs and profession. Although their personal stories are as varied as the denominations they once represented, or continue to represent—whether Catholic, Baptist, Episcopalian, Methodist, Mormon, Pentecostal, or any of numerous others—they give voice not only to their own struggles but also to those who similarly suffer in tender and lonely silence. As this study poignantly and vividly reveals, their common journey has far-reaching implications not only for their families, their congregations, and their communities—but also for the very future of religion.
Condoleezza Rice, one of the most powerful and controversial women in the world, has until now remained a mystery behind an elegant, cool veneer. New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller peels back the layers and presents a revelatory portrait of the first black female secretary of state and President George W. Bush’s national security adviser on September 11, 2001. Drawing on extensive interviews with Rice and more than 150 others, including colleagues, family members, government officials, and critics, the book relates in more intimate detail than ever before the personal voyage of a young black woman out of the segregated American South, and offers dramatic new information about the events and personalities of the Bush administration. In the process, with great insight, Bumiller tells the sweeping story of a tumultuous half-century in the nation’s history.
President Theodore Roosevelt left his mark on every facet of American life, including, quite colorfully, its language. Here, in a single volume, are not only his best "Teddyisms"—"hyphenated America," "muckraker," "the square deal," "the lunatic fringe," "good to the last drop," and many others—and lost words, but also the best of Roosevelt's most memorable quotations, which serve to illuminate every area of our culture: Americans; boxing; citizenship; conservation; courage; death; democracy; extremists; family values; football; government; heroism; history; hunting; leadership; liberty; patriotism; power; religion; war and peace; winning; women's rights; and much more.
Fourth-generation fundamentalist Carlton Pearson, a Christian megastar and host, takes a courageous and controversial stand on religion that proposes a hell-less Christianity and a gospel of inclusion that calls for an end to local and worldwide conflicts and divisions along religious lines. In The Gospel of Inclusion, Bishop Carlton Pearson explores the exclusionary doctrines in mainstream religion and concludes that, according to the evidence of the Bible and irrefutable logic, they cannot be true. Bishop Pearson argues that the controlling dogmas of religion are the source of much of the world's ills and that we should turn our backs on proselytizing and holy wars and focus on the real good news: that we are all bound for glory, everybody is saved, and if we believe God loves all mankind, then we have no choice but to have the same attitude ourselves. Bishop Pearson tells the story of how he had gone from a powerful religious figure, once preaching to an audience of over 6,000 people, to watching everything he had built crumble around him due to a scandal. Why? He didn't steal money nor did he have inappropriate sexual relationships. Following a revelation from God, he began to preach that a loving God would not condemn most of the human race to hell because they are not Christian. He preaches that God belongs to no religion. The Gospel of Inclusion is the inspiring journey of one man's quest to preach a new truth.
Pulitzer Prize–winning author and presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s dynamic history of Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft and the first decade of the Progressive era, that tumultuous time when the nation was coming unseamed and reform was in the air. Winner of the Carnegie Medal. Doris Kearns Goodwin’s The Bully Pulpit is a dynamic history of the first decade of the Progressive era, that tumultuous time when the nation was coming unseamed and reform was in the air. The story is told through the intense friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft—a close relationship that strengthens both men before it ruptures in 1912, when they engage in a brutal fight for the presidential nomination that divides their wives, their children, and their closest friends, while crippling the progressive wing of the Republican Party, causing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to be elected, and changing the country’s history. The Bully Pulpit is also the story of the muckraking press, which arouses the spirit of reform that helps Roosevelt push the government to shed its laissez-faire attitude toward robber barons, corrupt politicians, and corporate exploiters of our natural resources. The muckrakers are portrayed through the greatest group of journalists ever assembled at one magazine—Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens, and William Allen White—teamed under the mercurial genius of publisher S.S. McClure. Goodwin’s narrative is founded upon a wealth of primary materials. The correspondence of more than four hundred letters between Roosevelt and Taft begins in their early thirties and ends only months before Roosevelt’s death. Edith Roosevelt and Nellie Taft kept diaries. The muckrakers wrote hundreds of letters to one another, kept journals, and wrote their memoirs. The letters of Captain Archie Butt, who served as a personal aide to both Roosevelt and Taft, provide an intimate view of both men. The Bully Pulpit, like Goodwin’s brilliant chronicles of the Civil War and World War II, exquisitely demonstrates her distinctive ability to combine scholarly rigor with accessibility. It is a major work of history—an examination of leadership in a rare moment of activism and reform that brought the country closer to its founding ideals.
