THE BELOVED COMMUNITY

Philip Yancey praises The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social  Justice from the Civil Rights Movement to Today, the new book by Horizons director Charles Marsh: "Half a century ago an underground army rallied around a vision in order to change the moral landscape of America. Part historian, part raconteur, and part preacher, Charles Marsh calls us to keep alive that vision and to fulfill its promise. I found myself both moved to nostalgia and stirred to action as I read his gripping account.”

PURCHASING THE BOOK

The Beloved Community is published by Basic Books (www.perseusbooksgroup.com), known for “serious nonfiction by leading intellectuals, academics and journalists.” It is available in local bookstores and online.

BOOK REVIEWS

Finding and keeping faith, in 10 new religious titles

By Rich Barlow  |  Boston Globe, March 27, 2005

Books can save your life. Or so said Ashley Smith, who talked a fugitive in Atlanta into surrendering earlier this month by reading to him from a book of Christian inspiration.

With that added incentive, Easter is an apt time to survey recent or soon-to-be-published religion titles. These books seek variously to inspire, to give voice to long-silenced women, to upend conventional wisdom about Jesus, to plumb history for lessons about tolerance, and, sometimes, just to make us laugh.

1.  ''The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, From the Civil Rights Movement to Today," by Charles Marsh (Basic , $26). Martin Luther King Jr. didn't want to be a hero. He planned a comfortable and comforting life until history hijacked him into spearheading the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott. This counterintuitive portrait anchors University of Virginia scholar Marsh's argument that the civil rights movement was fundamentally a religious, not political, campaign to realize what King called the ''beloved community" of Christian compassion and justice. Marsh cites contemporary Christians following King's path of rejecting material pursuits to lead lives that seek to summon the beloved community.

For the other nine titles, go to: http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2005/03/27/finding_and_keeping_faith_in_10_new_religious_titles/

The Work of Faith
How the torch of racial reconciliation, once carried by Christian civil-rights workers, is now being held by faith-based organizations

An excerpt of an interview with Charles Marsh by Rob Moll, Christianity Today, Feb. 21, 2005

Charles Marsh:  The Christian life and the new being that we are in Jesus Christ are incomplete until we begin to live out our discipleship to Jesus in the fullness of our social selves. I think the individualism that is still a part of some white evangelicals has made our witness fairly narrow…

When I look around the United States and see what places are digging in and rekindling the vision of beloved community and doing the work of justice, mercy, and building community in distressed places, I see that being played out daily in this quiet, intentional way among Christian communities, often called faith-based communities.

To read the interview, go to:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/108/32.0.html

To read the review in the the January 04, 2005 edition of the Christian Science Monitor:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0104/p14s01-bogn.html

from PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY
A starred review indicates a book of outstanding quality.

THE BELOVED COMMUNITY:
How Faith Shapes Social Justice, from the Civil Rights Movement to Today
Charles Marsh . Basic Books, $26 (400p) ISBN 0-465-04415-8

In this ambitious, wide-ranging book, Marsh, a religion professor at the University of Virginia, argues that the Civil Rights movement was, at its core, a Christian attempt to forge a "beloved community" of believers who identify with the poor and dispossessed and seek justice on their behalf. As his alternative telling unfolds, he introduces readers to a Martin Luther King Jr. they may not recognize (one who looked forward to a life of privilege and comfort until he was forced into leadership of the Montgomery Bus Boycott), as well as lesser-known figures such as Koinonia farm founder Clarence Jordan and Voices of Calvary founder John Perkins. Both of these men, like many others featured in the book, came to activism by way of Christian faith and belie the popular notion of "the civil rights movement as a secular movement that used religion to its advantage." Marsh laces his narrative with powerful critiques of secularism--among both activists and academics--and of white evangelical Christians for shallow, ineffectual concern for the poor and for people of color. He ends on a positive note, however, citing example after example of contemporary Christians eschewing lives of middle-class comfort in favor of attempts to build the beloved community in the most troubled corners of America. (Jan.)

OTHER PRAISE FOR THE BELOVED COMMUNITY

"One of the most original books I've read in a long time...just as he did with God's Long Summer  Mr. Marsh has reminded us of what is required to keep America moving toward social justice...quite a powerful book."     

Bill Moyers, television journalist and author of A World of Ideas:

Conversations With Thoughtful Men and Women About American Life Today and the Ideas Shaping Our Future

"Race remains the moral challenge before the American people. In this extraordinary book, Charles Marsh provides the theological depiction we have desperately needed if Christians in America are to make the contribution their faith demands for redeeming our history. I believe this could easily become the most important book we have if we are to be a just people."

Stanley Hauerwas, author of With the Grain of the Universe and Performing the Faith

 "What a magnificent book! Charles Marsh writes eloquently about "lived theology" in the context of the civil rights movement and related social and religious endeavors which emphasized social justice, racial reconciliation and redemption. Read every word. You'll be enlightened, revived, and blessed."

" Charles Marsh is one of our best theologians, one of our best historians, one of our best storytellers. In this book -- his most expansive and ambitious one to date -- he places the Christian faith of the civil rights movement in a larger context: he shows us the faith that drove that movement, but also shows that its energy is still potent today, among places and people that we pay insufficient attention to. Most important, Marsh articulates a vision for renewal, a way that the larger community of faith can recover its passion for true social justice. This is a vital book by a major American thinker."

Alan Jacobs, author of Shaming the Devil and A Visit to Vanity Fair

"In this fascinating account of faith in action, Charles Marsh examines the necessity of hope, the seemingly contradictory truth that a vision of Christian transcendence animates lasting struggles for social change...The Beloved Community calls Christians back to a politics of empathy and social justice and activists back to the sustaining life of the faith. Marsh aims for nothing less here than the resurrection of the evangelical Christian left."

Grace Elizabeth Hale, author of Making Whiteness:
The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940

" Charles Marsh brings the eloquence of a memoirist, the skill of a historian, and the insight of a theologian to this remarkable study of Christian faith and the pursuit of social justice in America. The stories Marsh tells are thrilling, and inspiring, and sometimes sad. This book will want to make you stand up and shout; and kneel and pray; and then go out and do something remarkable."

Lauren F. Winner, author of Girl Meets God

"Half a century ago an underground army rallied around a vision in order to change the moral landscape of America. Part historian, part raconteur, and part preacher, Charles Marsh calls us to keep alive that vision and to fulfill its promise. I found myself both moved to nostalgia and stirred to action as I read his gripping account."

Philip Yancey, author of What's So Amazing About Grace