The first biographical account of the life of James Gillespie Birney in more than fifty years, this fabulously insightful history illuminates and elevates an all-but-forgotten figure whose political career contributed mightily to the American political fabric. Birney was a southern-born politician at the heart of the antislavery movement, with two southern-born sons who were major generals involved in key Union Army activities, including the leadership of the black troops. The interaction of the Birneys with historical figures (Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Henry Clay) highlights the significance of the family’s activities in politics and war. D. Laurence Rogers offers a unique historiography of the abolition movement, the Civil War, and Reconstruction through the experiences of one family navigating momentous developments from the founding of the Republic until the late 19th century.

John Temple Bristow’s What Paul Really Said About Women challenges the traditional understanding of St. Paul's epistles and sexism in the modern church. Attempting to reconcile the Apostle Paul’s scripture about women being submissive to men in Ephesians 5 with his words in Galatians 3 that there is no male or female and everyone is “one in Christ Jesus”, John Temple Bristow uncovered differences between Paul’s original Greek Ephesians writings and the English version translation that indicates a deliberate alteration of the text’s meaning in favor of men. Provocative and revelatory, Bristow’s book explores not only What Paul Really Said About Women, but the history and culture of the church that misinterpreted his message. “A convincing case for equality of the sexes based on the very passages that are all too often used as proof texts to uphold male dominance and female subordination. . . . For any person who reveres scripture but who struggles with traditional interpretations of passages concerning women and who fears that a desire for equality between the sexes is a violation of biblical principles, this book is a must.” —Letha Dawson Scanzoni, co-author of All We’re Meant to Be “Bristow acquits Paul of misogyny and restores him to his rightful stature as a great architect of human liberation. Even more importantly, Bristow urges contemporary churches . . . to follow the radically egalitarian vision of the apostle Paul.” —Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, author of Women, Men, and the Bible “Cuts through much misguided rhetoric to display the actual enhancement of women’s status in early Christian culture.” —Timothy L. Smith, author of Called Unto Holiness

This version of the New Testament affirms efforts to use sexually balanced language and images in Church liturgy, publications, education, and preaching.

What the apostle Paul has to say is transformative and utterly inspiring. But too often he is clouded in complicated explanations and murky misunderstandings. Paul Distilled gets to the essence of Paul, and uncovers what is at the heart of his thinking and why he's had such an impact on the world since the first century until today. Drawing on many years of teaching and study of Paul's writings, Gary Burnett explains the driving forces behind the apostle's thinking from the letters he wrote to groups of Jesus-followers dotted around the Roman empire, addressing the real issues they faced, and shows why this matters today. A study guide with each chapter will enable church groups to get to grips with the life-changing potential of understanding Paul better.

Charles Dew’s Apostles of Disunion has established itself as a modern classic and an indispensable account of the Southern states’ secession from the Union. Addressing topics still hotly debated among historians and the public at large more than a century and a half after the Civil War, the book offers a compelling and clearly substantiated argument that slavery and race were at the heart of our great national crisis. The fifteen years since the original publication of Apostles of Disunion have seen an intensification of debates surrounding the Confederate flag and Civil War monuments. In a powerful new afterword to this anniversary edition, Dew situates the book in relation to these recent controversies and factors in the role of vast financial interests tied to the internal slave trade in pushing Virginia and other upper South states toward secession and war.