“Faith after Ferguson should be a source of comfort and inspiration on the long road ahead.”–Foreword Reviews Leah Gunning Francis (Ferguson and Faith, 2015) revisits the clergy and activists from the front lines of the Ferguson, MO, Black Lives Matter protests, to hear what they’ve learned in the struggle for justice and healing five years later. Weaving the personal accounts of more than a dozen activists and clergy with her own experiences, Francis offers profound new insights on faith-filled living in response to social injustice as well as lessons for organizing and mobilizing people to effect real change. Learn from the courageous and resilient leaders on the front lines for justice and discover new ways of leading in the movement for racial justice.

The shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, reignited a long-smoldering movement for justice, with many St. Louis-area clergy stepping up to support the emerging young leaders of today's Civil Rights Movement. Seminary professor Leah Gunning Francis was among the activists, and her interviews with more than two dozen faith leaders and with the new movement's organizers take us behind the scenes of the continuing protests. Ferguson and Faith demonstrates that being called to lead a faithful life can take us to places we never expected to go, with people who never expected us to join hands with them. Ferguson and Faith: Sparking Leadership and Awakening Community is the first book from the partnership of the Forum for Theological Exploration (FTE) and Chalice Press.

Can it ever get better? This is the question Benjamin Watson is asking. In a country aflame with the fallout from the racial divide—in which Ferguson, Charleston, and the Confederate flag dominate the national news, daily seeming to rip the wounds open ever wider—is there hope for honest and healing conversation? For finally coming to understand each other on issues that are ultimately about so much more than black and white? An NFL tight end for the New Orleans Saints and a widely read and followed commentator on social media, Watson has taken the Internet by storm with his remarkable insights about some of the most sensitive and charged topics of our day. Now, in Under Our Skin, Watson draws from his own life, his family legacy, and his role as a husband and father to sensitively and honestly examine both sides of the race debate and appeal to the power and possibility of faith as a step toward healing.

By the end of the Civil War, Champ Ferguson had become a notorious criminal whose likeness covered the front pages of Harper’s Weekly, Leslie’s Illustrated, and other newspapers across the country. His crime? Using the war as an excuse to steal, plunder, and murder Union civilians and soldiers. Cumberland Blood: Champ Ferguson’s Civil War offers insights into Ferguson's lawless brutality and a lesser-known aspect of the Civil War, the bitter guerrilla conflict in the Appalachian highlands, extending from the Carolinas through Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia. This compelling volume delves into the violent story of Champ Ferguson, who acted independently of the Confederate army in a personal war that eventually garnered the censure of Confederate officials. Author Thomas D. Mays traces Ferguson's life in the Cumberland highlands of southern Kentucky, where—even before the Civil War began—he had a reputation as a vicious killer. Ferguson, a rising slave owner, sided with the Confederacy while many of his neighbors and family members took up arms for the Union. For Ferguson and others in the highlands, the war would not be decided on the distant fields of Shiloh or Gettysburg: it would be local—and personal. Cumberland Blood describes how Unionists drove Ferguson from his home in Kentucky into Tennessee, where he banded together with other like-minded Southerners to drive the Unionists from the region. Northern sympathizers responded, and a full-scale guerrilla war erupted along the border in 1862. Mays notes that Ferguson's status in the army was never clear, and he skillfully details how raiders picked up Ferguson's gang to work as guides and scouts. In 1864, Ferguson and his gang were incorporated into the Confederate army, but the rogue soldier continued operating as an outlaw, murdering captured Union prisoners after the Battle of Saltville, Virginia. Cumberland Blood, enhanced by twenty-one illustrations, is an illuminating assessment of one of the Civil War's most ruthless men. Ferguson's arrest, trial, and execution after the war captured the attention of the nation in 1865, but his story has been largely forgotten. Cumberland Blood: Champ Ferguson's Civil War returns the story of Ferguson's private civil war to its place in history.

Paul, a highly educated, first-century Jewish rabbi teaches, “There is one baptism.” What does he mean by these words? Why was John the Baptist, a Jewish prophet of the inter-Testament period, baptizing people before Jesus had even a single follower-before the word “Christian” came into existence? Who is Elijah and will he return? “Is baptism only a Christian water ritual? Why be baptized? Who should be baptized? Should Christians be rebaptized? Are baptism and salvation connected? What is the role of the Holy Spirit in baptism? These and other questions invite readers to explore the meaning, significance and power of baptism for their own lives.This book presents Jesus’ view of baptism through the lens of his own Jewish understanding, challenging traditional views of baptism on many fronts. It traces the development of baptismal theology through both Testaments to the present, examining the ways theology has muddled the meaning of baptism and the Trinity. One Baptism: The Power of Water and the Spirit, refreshes the soul, ignites the spirit, and offers the church a powerful path to unity through a biblical renewal of the meaning and practice of baptism.

How does Scripture read Scripture, and can the church follow that lead? Scripture or tradition? The things of God or the things of men? It’s easy, especially in the long shadow of the Reformation, to pit Scripture against tradition as enemies. After all, the goal of orienting one’s faith to the Bible alone can be so alluring. But the Bible itself suggests there is a fundamental unity between Scripture and the tradition it embodies. Rightly appreciating this unity can set the stage for more faithful and robust engagement with Scripture. Today’s polarized world needs thoughtful Christians who can reasonably consider their faith in light of what the Bible actually says. Scripture First examines where tradition comes from and how you can avoid trivial proof texting. Discover how the Old and New Testament can serve as a living and active resource for Christian life, and how God continues to leads his people as they engage his Word.

Theologizing in Black is a creative and rigorous comparative study on black theological musings and liberative intellectual contemplations engaging the theological ethics and anthropology of both continental African theologians (Tanzania, Kenya, Democratic Republic of the Congo) and black theologians in the African Diaspora (Haiti, Trinidad, Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, United States). Using the pluralist approach to religion promoted by the philosopher of religion and theologian John Hick, the book is also an attempt to bridge an important gap in the comparative study of religion, Africana Studies, and Liberation theology, both in Africa and its diaspora. The book provides an analytical framework and intellectual critique of white Christian theologians who deliberately disengage with and exclude black and Africana theologians in their theological writings and conversations. From this vantage point, Africana critical theology is said to be a theology of contestation as it seeks to deconstruct white supremacy in the theological enterprise. This book not only articulates a rhetoric of protest about the misrepresentation and underrepresentation of the humanity of African and black people in white theological imagination; it also enunciates a positive image of black humanity and congruently promulgates a constructive representation of blackness. The paramount goal of Africana theological anthropology and ethics is the preservation of life and promotion of human dignity and the sheer acknowledgement that the African people and people of African descent are bearers of the image of God.