Many people expect faith to be inflexible and unchanging. It is relevant because it always has been, at least to them. To admit change is to bring on the end of faith and all of its benefits. Others believe that a relevant faith is by nature shallow and unrooted. Author and educator Drew Smith disagrees. He believes that it is both possible and necessary to reframe faith in such a way that it is relevant to our present society. At the same time, this reframed faith is still a historic fait...

A David and Goliath conservation story set on Lake Michigan.Saving Arcadia: A Story of Conservation and Community in the Great Lakes is a suspenseful and intimate land conservation adventure story set in the Great Lakes heartland. The story spans more than forty years, following the fate of a magnificent sand dune on Lake Michigan and the people who care about it. Author and narrator Heather Shumaker shares the remarkable untold stories behind protecting l...

Get Your Research in Order!Stop struggling to manage all your genealogy facts, files, and data--make a plan of attack to maximize your progress. Organize Your Genealogy will show you how to use tried-and-true methods and the latest tech tools and genealogy software to organize your research plan, workspace, and family-history finds. In this book, you'll learn how to organize your time and resources, including how to set goals and objectives, determine work...

"Rich in history, lore, recipes, fascinating images—in short, a delicious book from start to finish" (Sandy Ingber, Grand Central Oyster Bar).Tracing the oyster's role in cooking, art, literature, and politics from the dawn of time to present day, this unique book reveals how oysters have sustained communities financially and ecologically, and have loomed surprisingly large in legend and history. Using the oyster as the central theme, Smith has organized the book a...

When you lose yourself, where do you begin to find your way back?Tending Fire, Carrying Water is Drew Smith’s raw account of the years he almost disappeared — and the long, demanding climb back through addiction, residential rehab, and the daily work of learning how to live in the real world again. It follows not just the injury, but the repair; not only the fire that burned through his life, but the steadying discipline that helped him rise from it.

Analyzing the extensive data gathered by the Public Influences of African American Churches project, which surveyed nearly two thousand churches across the country, Long March Ahead assesses the public policy activism of black churches since the civil rights movement. Social scientists and clergy consider the churches’ work on a range of policy matters over the past four decades: affirmative action, welfare reform, health care, women’s rights, education, and anti-apartheid activis...

New Day Begun presents the findings of the first major research project on black churches’ civic involvement since C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya’s landmark study The Black Church in the African American Experience. Since the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the scale and scope of African American churches’ civic involvement have changed significantly: the number of African American clergy serving in elective and appointive offi...

A professional genealogist reveals how to get past brick walls in research and unearth hard-to-find ancestors Advanced Genealogy Research Techniques uses up-to-date and highly organized methods and techniques to show you how to find the elusive details to round out your genealogy research. You’ll get past the brick walls that have stumped you and see how to move beyond basic types of genealogy resources. The book covers a variety of software programs and specialized geneal...

Essays on the civil rights movement outside the South and since the 1960s.It has become popular to confine discussion of the American civil rights movement to the mid-twentieth-century South. From Every Mountainside contains essays that refuse to bracket the quest for civil rights in this manner, treating the subject as an enduring topic yet to be worked out in American politics and society. Individual essays point to the multiple directions the quest for ...

Christian ministries often struggle to account for urbanization's growing force, complexities, and reachâ€"and to formulate theologically and sociologically appropriate responses. Urban Ministry Reconsidered features a collection of original essays by leading scholars and practitioners that explores current issues and challenges in urban communities.Together these articles consider how cultural and structural frameworks have led to new conceptualizations and configurations of urban...

Religion, Culture and Spirituality in Africa and the African Diaspora explores the ways in which religious ideas and beliefs continue to play a crucial role in the lives of people of African descent. The chapters in this volume use historical and contemporary examples to show how people of African descent develop and engage with spiritual rituals, organizations and practices to make sense of their lives, challenge injustices and creatively express their spiritual imaginings.

Contributions by William Ackah, Allan Boesak, Ebony Joy Fitchue, Leah Gaskin Fitchue, Walter Earl Fluker, Forrest E. Harris Sr., Nico Koopman, AnneMarie Mingo, Reggie Nel, Chabo Freddy Pilusa, Anthony G. Reddie, Boitumelo Senokoane, Rothney S. Tshaka, Luci Vaden, Vuyani Vellem, and Cobus van WyngaardAfter the 2008 election and 2012 reelection of Barack Obama as US president and the 1994 election of Nelson Mandela as the first of several blacks to serve as South Africa's president, ...