Set in the context of the Church Year, The Close is an enthralling account of one young woman's spiritual journey. It is both a personal meditation on faith, in the spirit of Kathleen Norris's Cloister Walk, and a fascinating behind-the-scenes story of a graduate student's first year, in the mode of Scott Turow's One L. Raised in a liberal, interfaith home, Breyer, responding to an inner call to a spiritual vocation, began her training at New York's General Theological Seminary in 1997. She describes her intense immersion in daily prayer, the rigors and rewards of the academic program, and the challenging tension between secular and spiritual that marks her training, including working as a chaplain at Bellevue Hospital. She probes the day-to-day meanings of such profound issues as exaltation, enlightenment, and redemption, illuminating the unique experience of a young person of faith preparing to live and hoping to thrive in a secular modern world.

A young woman recalls her first year as a seminary student, describing her deep devotion to daily prayer and the tension between spiritual and secular worlds. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.

In the 2004 election, 80 percent of those who claimed "moral values" was the most important issue affecting their vote cast their ballots for Bush, as did 63 percent of frequent churchgoers. Since then, the Religious Right has continued to cement an association between "Christian" and "moral" values and conservative policies. Getting On Message challenges this association from the very heart of the Christian tradition. These readable and incisive essays use biblical framing to discern the personal and social ethics that truly embody Christian values in the contemporary world. Marilynne Robinson discusses the link between personal holiness and a generous spirit. Garret Keizer looks at the growing wealth/class divide from a Christian perspective. Rev. Heidi Neumark examines hospitality as a core Christian value. Rev. Chloe Breyer explores a justice criterion for women's decisions on abortion. Rev. Bill Sinkford asks what really constitutes a God-approved marriage and family. Getting On Message is a book for clergy, for politically active people of faith, and for progressive organizers and strategists who want to learn how to talk to religious believers about the values they share.

Contributors: Ann Barham, Chloe Bryer, Ian T. Douglas What Can One Person Do? confronts a poverty-stricken world, and with clarity of purpose offers practical steps to create lasting change. Global poverty can be reduced through a series of achievable objectives: the eight Millennium Development goals agreed to by the international community at the Millennium Summit in 2000. World leaders and faith communities have adopted the MDGs, as well as the ideas found within this book--for the authors demonstrate that as shared vision grows and as these goals are accomplished, human communities shall indeed flourish.

No.1. Mortality among Negroes in cities. 1896.--no. 2. Social and physical condition of Negroes in cities. 1897.--no. 3. Some efforts of American Negroes for their own social betterment. 1898.--no. 5. The college-bred Negro. 1900.--no. 5. 2d ed. The college-bred Negro. 1902.--no. 6. The Negro common school. 1901.--no. 7. The Negro artisan. 1902.--no. 8. The Negro church, 1903.--no. 9. Some notes on Negro crime, particularly in Georgia. 1904.--no. 10. A select bibliography of the Negro American. 1905.--no. 11. The health and physique of the Negro American. 1906.--no. 13. The Negro American family. 1908,

This methods book will guide the reader through the process of conducting and producing an autoethnographic study through the understanding of self, other, and culture. Readers will be encouraged to follow hands-on, though not prescriptive, steps in data collection, analysis, and interpretation with self-reflective prewriting exercises and self-narrative writing exercises to produce their own autoethnographic work. Chang offers a variety of techniques for gathering data on the self—from diaries to culture grams to interviews with others—and shows how to transform this information into a study that looks for the connection with others present in a diverse world. She shows how the autoethnographic process promotes self-reflection, understanding of multicultural others, qualitative inquiry, and narrative writing. Samples of published autoethnographies provide exemplars for the novice researcher to follow.