While many white Baptists from Middle Georgia marched off to war others stayed behind and voiced their thoughts from pulpits, in associational meetings, and in the pages of newspapers and journals. While historians have often portrayed white southern Baptists, with few exceptions, as firmly supportive of the Confederacy, the experience of Middle Georgia Baptists is much more dynamic. Far from being monolithic, Baptists at the local church and associational level responded in a myriad of ways to the Confederacy.

Owen Deathstalker has a prophecy to fulfill. Just as the espers foretold, Owen tumbled an empire and witnessed the end of everything he believed in...all that’s left to do is die. But Owen has a few more scores he’d like to settle before his borrowed time is up. The Empire is besieged by nanotechnology plagues and AI invasions, while mysterious and horrific beings, known as “the Recreated,” descend from the Darkvoid. But right now, Owen’s only concern is rescuing Hazel d‘Ark from the vicious Blood Runners who abducted her. He’s already lost so much to become the leader and warrior he never wanted to be; he’ll be damned if he loses Hazel too. So one more time, Owen Deathstalker will step up and be the hero--for Hazel, and then for Humanity. One more time, he’ll call upon the gifts of the Deathstalker Clan to fulfill his destiny and face death. All while knowing that every “one more time” could be his last. Deathstalker: Destiny is the fifth book in New York Times bestselling author Simon R. Green’s beloved space opera series. Don't miss the next chapter of the Deathstalker universe in Deathstalker: Legacy.

The 1998 attaThe 1998 attacks against US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam attest to al-Qaeda's durable presence in Africa, yet Islamist-inspired radical organisations in the continent have gained much attention of late, the result of their campaigns of insurgent and terrorist violence directed against the state in Algeria, Somalia, Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Uganda, Djibouti and Kenya. These groups include Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Harakat Al Shabaab, Boko Haram, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, and Ansar Dine. This book explains why the Idea of Jihad is alive and well in sub-Saharan Africa, even after more than thirty years of Western and global efforts to curtail it, and how most important organisations are formed by the interaction between the often under-estimated local and global dynamics. Stig Jarle Hansen has been researching African radical violent Islamism for more than fifteen years and is well placed to explain how and why such groups emerged, whether they manifest any specific traits compared with other violent Islamists, and what is likely to be their impact beyond the African continent. He also discusses the response of African and Western governments to this phenomenon cks against US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam attest to al-Qaeda's durable presence in Africa, yet Islamist-inspired radical organizations in the continent have gained much attention of late, the result of their campaigns of insurgent and terrorist violence directed against the state in Algeria, Somalia, Nigeria, Mali and Kenya. These groups include Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Harakat Al Shabaab, Boko Haram, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa and Ansar Dine. Evidence has emerged to suggest that beyond shared political objectives they are also collaborating in terms of finance, propaganda, arms transfers and training, while Western governments believe some of them maintain links with Al-Qaeda "central." Stig Jarle Hansen has been researching African radical violent Islamism for more than ten years and is well placed to explain how and why such groups emerged, whether they manifest any specific traits compared with other violent Islamists, and what is likely to be their impact beyond the African continent. He also discusses the response of African and Western governments to this phenomenon.

In Christians, the State, and War: An Ancient Tradition for the Modern World, Gordon Heath argues that the pre-Constantinian Christian testimony regarding the state’s just use of violence was remarkably uniform and that it was arguably a catholic, or universal, tradition. More specifically, that tradition had five interrelated and intertwined constitutive areas of consensus that can best be understood as parts of one collective tradition. Heath further argues that those five related areas of an early church tradition shaped all subsequent theological developments on views of the state, its use of violence, and the conditions of Christian participation in said violence. Whereas the sorry and sordid instances in the church’s history related to violence were times when the church drifted from those convictions of consensus, the cases when Christians had a more stellar record of responding to the horrors of the world were times when they lived up to them. Consequently, the way forward today is for Christians to forgo beginning with the just war-pacifist debate, and, instead, to begin by letting their views on war and peace be shaped by that ancient tradition.

The Puritans called Baptists "the troublers of churches in all places" and hounded them out of Massachusetts Bay Colony. Four hundred years later, Baptists are the second-largest religious group in America, and their influence matches their numbers. They have built strong institutions, from megachurches to publishing houses to charities to mission organizations, and have firmly established themselves in the mainstream of American culture. Yet the historical legacy of outsider status lingers, and the inherently fractured nature of their faith makes Baptists ever wary of threats from within as well as without. In Baptists in America, Thomas S. Kidd and Barry Hankins explore the long-running tensions between church, state, and culture that Baptists have shaped and navigated. Despite the moment of unity that their early persecution provided, their history has been marked by internal battles and schisms that were microcosms of national events, from the conflict over slavery that divided North from South to the conservative revolution of the 1970s and 80s. Baptists have made an indelible impact on American religious and cultural history, from their early insistence that America should have no established church to their place in the modern-day culture wars, where they frequently advocate greater religious involvement in politics. Yet the more mainstream they have become, the more they have been pressured to conform to the mainstream, a paradox that defines--and is essential to understanding--the Baptist experience in America. Kidd and Hankins, both practicing Baptists, weave the threads of Baptist history alongside those of American history. Baptists in America is a remarkable story of how one religious denomination was transformed from persecuted minority into a leading actor on the national stage, with profound implications for American society and culture.