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Walter Rauschenbusch is credited by many interpreters as the fountainhead of the social gospel in America. An American Baptist minister of German heritage, Rauschenbusch was the “prophet” of a movement that created a watershed in American religious thought. This three-volume set makes available the original texts of a seminal thinker in an authorized and critical edition. Volume II is oriented toward an ethical appreciation of the life and works of Walter Rauschenbusch. Ethicist David Gushee provides an in-depth analysis of Rauschenbusch’s ethics, tracing in particular the course of development of Christian ethics and Rauschenbusch's contribution.

The poems in DECEMBERS have been written, usually one a year, beginning in 1973 when the author moved from the South to New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, where he took a job teaching creative writing at Westminster College. They are written to accompany the Christmas cards he and his wife Jane write each year to keep in touch with friends from college, graduate school, and earlier jobs. These poems arise out of memory, both of the author and those of others. In them Perkins is much more interested in the images of the season, the sights, the sounds, the scents, the textures, and the tastes than he is in the abstractions: joy, love, warmth, gratitude, etc. He is more interested in what the season is than in what it means.

Bill Merritt grew up in Atlanta, Georgia during the turbulent years between the end of World War II and the Vietnam War. A joyously unreconstructed Southerner, he looks on with amazement as Atlanta changes from a sleepy Southern town into the City Too Busy to Hate. This was the time of Martin Luther King and Ivan Allen, but also the time of Lester Maddox, the Temple Bombing, great moral certainties, Elvis, Klan rallies, the Cuban Missile Crisis, a corrupt political system keeping some of America’s finest statesmen in office (some since the Teddy Roosevelt administration), and a man named Armstrong walking on the moon. Merritt’s family is eccentric and colorful, occasionally courageous, often self-centered. This is the story of the way the Civil Rights Revolution looked to Southerners: to decent people trying to honor their heritage while realizing the time had come to let go of parts of that heritage, and how difficult that letting go was made by the outsiders who most wanted change. This is the story the way Southerners remember it—and tell each other.

Robert L. Steed’s funniest collection of “Willard” columns here are enhanced by the illustrative skills of Jack Davis for all those who love Steed’s columns.

On February 13, 1930, amidst the turmoil of the Great Depression, Isaac "Nick" Bullington, circus advance man, advertising guru, and entrepreneur wanderlust from Indiana, opened a tiny, shotgun-style, hamburger, hot dog, and chili joint in Roanoke, Virginia. TEXAS TAVERN: FOUR GENERATIONS OF THE MILLIONAIRES CLUB explores these questions as it tells the story of one family and their faithful stewardship of place: their restaurant and their community. It celebrates the Tavern's famous food, and it reveals the Tavern's true heartbeat through the love stories of its customers.

In this anthology of Civil War memoirs, we get a clearer impression of some of the chaplains who served during that Great Conflict. Chaplains were among the most omnipresent observers on the battlefield, and some wrote extensively about their experiences. Eighty-seven of the 3,695 chaplains who served in both armies wrote regimental histories or published personal memoirs, not counting a multitude of letters and more than 300 official reports. Yet, there has never been an extensive collection of memoirs from chaplains of both the Confederate and Union armies presented together. In this groundbreaking work, many of the Confederate chaplains write that they opposed secession and submitted to it only when war was inevitable. Moreover, some of the ministers who became chaplains were active in ministry to black slaves. They spoke out against the neglect and abuse of those held in bondage both before and during the war. For example, Reverend John L. Girardeau formed a large mission church for slaves in Charleston, South Carolina, before the war; Reverend Isaac Tichenor criticized the abuses of the slave system before the Alabama Legislature in 1863; and Chaplain Charles Oliver preached to black laborers in the Army of Northern Virginia in 1864 with the thought that more needed to be done for them. While these efforts may appear trivial in the face of the enormity of the entire slave system, they do reflect that a social conscience was not completely lacking among the Southern chaplains. From the battlefield to the pulpit, Confederate chaplains were surprising and complex individuals. For the first time, explore this aspect of the great struggle in each chaplain’s own words.

In a world composed of almost seven billion people, about 2.2 billion of them claim to be Christian. And while Christianity is continuing to grow at a modest rate, other religions are growing at a faster pace. Some scholars predict that Islam will overtake Christianity as the world’s largest religion by the middle of the twenty-first century. Predictions aside, religions are competing for the world stage, and in the competition, Christians seem certain that God is on their side. Christians often think and behave as though God is a Christian. This book is written to ask if that assumption is true and to foster a more open conversation about other world religions. The world has grown too small and the stakes for mankind have grown too high for any of us to engage our faith as if our understanding of God represents the only way God’s presence may be known in the world.

Christianity: A Biblical, Historical, and Theological Guide for Students is specifically designed to be used as a textbook for a course called “Introduction to Christianity.” The text is the product of more than a decade of classroom work and will provide students with a general introduction to the Christian religion, giving particular emphasis to the biblical, historical, and theological traditions within Christianity. In addition to its primary purpose as a textbook, this book will prove useful to anyone who may be interested in Christianity, from non-Christian inquirers to lay persons in weekly Sunday-school classes.

Based on the 2017 A.V. Elliott Conference on Great Books and Ideas, this volume gathers ten scholarly essays on the great Athenian historian, Thucydides, and his influence on the founders of the American republic. Contributors explore Thucydides’ insights into the challenges of democratic governance, especially for a wealthy and powerful state, what they meant to the American Founders, and why they continue to be relevant today.

International Kierkegaard Commentary: Two Ages is the first major work on Soren Kierkegaard’s Two Ages in any language, based upon the first complete English translation. This commentary shows not only how Kierkegaard broke new ground in the philosophy of society, but also how his ideas have, to some extent, influenced subsequent social philosophy, and how his concepts compare with and contrast to those of others such as Heidegger, Nietzsche, Scheler, and Weber.