Why has Christianity been around for a mere 2,000 years when Earth life has abounded for 3.8 billion years and even humans for nearly 300,000 years? What was God doing all this time? And what if humans are not the center of God’s universe? In Amending the Christian Story, Ron Rude asserts that current versions of the Christian faith are inadequate, and more than this, are fueling humanity’s assault on Earth’s biosphere. Through the window of nature’s natural sciences—especially astronomy, geology, evolutionary biology, paleoanthropology—Rude provides a fuller and more expansive view of God’s story of life and God’s story of Jesus. Can humans continue the lived-out assumption that we are separate from, superior to, the reason for, and the rulers of everything? With new perspectives into ancient stories and current narratives, Rude compels us to urgently shift Christianity’s claim and conduct in order to unite with God’s more sustainable and just world.

Now in its fourth edition and completely updated, this is the most comprehensive book on constitutional amendments and proposed amendments available. Although only 27 amendments have ever been added to the U.S. Constitution, the last one having been ratified in 1992, throughout American history, members of Congress have introduced more than 11,000 amendments, and countless individuals outside of Congress have advanced their own proposals to revise the Constitution—the wellspring of America's legal, political, and cultural foundations. At a time when calls for a new constitutional convention are on the rise, it is essential for students of political science and history as well as American citizens to understand proposed alternatives. This updated edition of the established standard for high school and college libraries as well as public and law libraries serves as the go-to reference for learning about existing constitutional amendments, proposed amendments, and the issues related to them. An alphabetically arranged two-volume set, it contains more than 500 entries that discuss amendments that have been proposed in Congress from 1789 to the present. It also discusses prominent proposals for extensive constitutional changes introduced outside Congress as well as discussions of major amending issues.

Long before the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln recognized the challenge American slavery posed to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence. A constitutional amendment would be the ideal solution to ending slavery, yet the idea of such an amendment conflicted with several of Lincoln’s long-held positions. In this study, Christian G. Samito examines how Lincoln’s opposition to amending the United States Constitution shaped his political views before he became president, and how constitutional arguments overcame Lincoln’s objections, turning him into a supporter of the Thirteenth Amendment by 1864. For most of his political career, Samito shows, Lincoln opposed changing the Constitution, even to overturn Supreme Court rulings with which he disagreed. Well into his presidency, he argued that emancipation should take place only on the state level because the federal government had no jurisdiction to control slavery in the states. Between January 1863 and mid-1864, however, Lincoln came to support a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery because it worked within the constitutional structure and preserved key components of American constitutionalism in the face of Radical Republican schemes. Samito relates how Lincoln made the amendment an issue in his 1864 reelection campaign, chronicles lobbying efforts and the final vote in the House on the amendment resolution, and interrogates various charges of corruption and back-room deals. He also considers the Thirteenth Amendment in the context of the Hampton Roads conference, Lincoln’s own thoughts on the meaning of the amendment, and the impact of Lincoln’s assassination on the reading of the amendment. Samito provides the authoritative historical treatment of a story so compelling it was recently dramatized in the movie Lincoln. Closing with a lively discussion that applies the Thirteenth Amendment to current events, this concise yet comprehensive volume demonstrates how the constitutional change Lincoln helped bring about continues to be relevant today.

This book offers the most extensive exploration of divine temporality to date. It focuses on five main questions. First, what is time? Second, how is God responsible for the existence of time? Third, what does it mean to say that God is temporal? Fourth, what kind of structure might God give to a time series? Fifth, what are the implications for theological doctrines such as the Trinity, creation, providence, and life after death? The author offers a deep, critical engagement with the Christian tradition but also goes beyond to build analytic bridges to Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, and Jainist philosophical theology. The book provides an up-to-date discussion of issues within analytic metaphysics, philosophy of time, and philosophy of religion and draws on the resources of contemporary systematic, historical, and biblical theology.

John Bingham was the architect of the rebirth of the United States following the Civil War. A leading antislavery lawyer and congressman from Ohio, Bingham wrote the most important part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees fundamental rights and equality to all Americans. He was also at the center of two of the greatest trials in history, giving the closing argument in the military prosecution of John Wilkes Booth’s co-conspirators for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and in the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. And more than any other man, Bingham played the key role in shaping the Union’s policy towards the occupied ex-Confederate States, with consequences that still haunt our politics. American Founding Son provides the most complete portrait yet of this remarkable statesman. Drawing on his personal letters and speeches, the book traces Bingham’s life from his humble roots in Pennsylvania through his career as a leader of the Republican Party. Gerard N. Magliocca argues that Bingham and his congressional colleagues transformed the Constitution that the Founding Fathers created, and did so with the same ingenuity that their forbears used to create a more perfect union in the 1780s. In this book, Magliocca restores Bingham to his rightful place as one of our great leaders. Gerard N. Magliocca is the Samuel R. Rosen Professor at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. He is the author of three books on constitutional law, and his work on Andrew Jackson was the subject of an hour-long program on C-Span’s Book TV.

Do you want to be close to God? The answer to a question like this is wrapped up in knowing what God is like, understanding the reasons for why God acts as he does, and learning how to promote God's goals for creation. In this short book, readers will explore issues about the nature of God, consider why God would create anything at all, and why God would create this particular universe. Through a mixture of devotional insight and philosophical analysis, one will come to a better understanding of the majesty of God.

The earliest of the four Gospels, the book portrays Jesus as an enigmatic figure, struggling with enemies, his inner and external demons, and with his devoted but disconcerted disciples. Unlike other gospels, his parables are obscure, to be explained secretly to his followers. With an introduction by Nick Cave