When a rising rock guitarist named Phil Keaggy left the mainstream in the early 1970s to make music expressing his newfound faith, he ended up recording one of the most inspired contemporary Christian albums ever made. This book explores the background, influences, gifting, and spiritual connection that enabled a self-taught 21-year-old musician to weave such a sublime sonic tapestry. Phil's own recollections follow each in-depth track analysis."Phil Keaggy's What A Day sh...

In North America, Africa, and across the globe, many societies are deeply divided along racial, ethnic, political, or religious lines as a result of violent/oppressive histories. Bridging such divides requires symbolic action that transcends, reframes, redeems, and repairs—often drawing upon resources of faith. Speaking to Reconciliation showcases this tradition through speeches by Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Elie Wiesel, Desmond Tutu, Barack Obama, Thich Nhat Hanh, J...

In this enlightening and insightful monograph, John B. Hatch analyzes various public discourses that have attempted to address the racialized legacy of slavery, from West Africa to the United States, and in doing so, proposes a rhetorical theory of reconciliation. Recognizing the impact both of religious traditions and modern social values on the dialogue of reconciliation, Hatch examines these influences in tandem with contemporary critical race theory.Hatch explores the social-ps...

Amending our Pasts and Futures: Observing Media and Place as Means to Memory is an edited volume presenting original research from established and emerging scholars of public and collective memory. Contributors focus on topics including the memory of race and slavery, wars of oppression, and regional and ethnic identities to interrogate how we as collectives remember, commemorate, discuss, forget, and question what is historically revealed, appropriated, silenced, or concealed fro...

The Rhetoric of Official Apologies: Critical Essays focuses on the many challenges associated with performing a speech act on behalf of a collective and the concomitant issues of rhetorically tackling the multiple political, social, and philosophical issues at stake when a collective issues an official apology to a group of victims. Contributors address questions of whether collective remorse is possible or credible, how official apologies can be evaluated, who can issue apologies on behal...

John Harrison Surratt, Jr., was a courier for the Confederate Secret Service and the only one of John Wilkes Booth's co-conspirators in the Lincoln assassination plot to escape hanging by the U.S. government. Fleeing vengeful authorities in the wake of the assassination, Surratt traveled through three continents and served in the Papal Zouaves before being arrested in Egypt. His 1867 trial was a sensation, ending in a hung jury. Upon his release, he sought a quiet life away from the spotli...

Philosophy of Communication Ethics is a unique and timely contribution to the study of communication ethics. This series of essays articulates unequivocally the intimate connection between philosophy of communication and communication ethics. This scholarly volume assumes that there is a multiplicity of communication ethics. What distinguishes one communication ethic from another is the philosophy of communication in which a particular ethic is grounded. Philosophy of communication is the ...

As religiously grounded moral arguments have become ever more influential factors in the national debate-particularly reinforced by recent presidential elections and the creation of the faith-based initiative office in the White House-journalists' ignorance about theological convictions has often worked to distort the public discourse on important policy issues. Pope John Paul II's pronouncements on stem-cell research, the constitutional controversies regarding faith-based initiatives, the...

When the film Clue came out in 1985, audiences were baffled. A movie based on a board game, with three different endings, and you had to pick which one to go see? Bad reviews compounded the problem, and instead of choosing one ending, most people stayed away entirely. Clue, outgrossed at the box office by films that had been released months earlier, quickly faded away. When it unceremoniously premiered on Showtime a year after its theatrical debut, there was no sign it wa...

Immigration to America is an issue that often sparks intense emotional reactions-from passion and compassion to anger and even rage. Often missing from the dialogue, however, is discussion of the strengths of immigrant newcomers-the abilities and positive characteristics they bring as individuals and families to our country, and how these contribute to the agency, growth, and vitality of America. This book was intended to move the discussion of immigration, generally speaking, and of immig...

Well-Being as a Multidimensional Concept highlights the ways that culture and community influence concepts of wellness, the experience of well-being, and health outcomes. This book includes both theoretical conceptualizations and practice-based explorations from a multidisciplinary group of contributors, including distinguished, widely celebrated senior experts as well as emerging voices in the fields of health promotion, health research, clinical practice, community engagement, a...

In an era like ours, when the Christian scriptures are so often used as an excuse to harm others and destroy the environment in the name of God, wilderness explorer and preservationist John Muir (1838–1914) gives us a completely fresh perspective. Like those who perform the ancient monastic practice of lectio divina, Muir usually discovered insights within scriptural passages of which the original authors most likely were not aware. Rocks and Waters Are Words of God: Reflections on John Mu...