AbbreviationsIntroduction: With God on Our Side: Faiths in Conflict3Ch. 1"I'm on My Way, Praise God": Mrs. Hamer's Fight for Freedom10Ch. 2High Priest of the Anti-Civil Rights Movement: The Calling of Sam Bowers49Ch. 3Douglas Hudgins: Theologian of the Closed Society82Ch. 4Inside Agitator: Ed King's Church Visits116Ch. 5Cleveland Sellers and the River of No Return152Conclusion: Clearburning: Fragments of a Reconciling Faith192Afterword195Notes205Acknowledgments255Selected Bibliography259Interviews267Index269
Marsh celebrates the importance of Christian faith in founding the civil rights movement, [exploring] as well the devastating dichotomy of hate and prejudice. -- Andrew Young Mississippi Freedom Summer tested my commitment and my faith... To this day, I wonder how those who opposed us reconciled their faith with their hatred and their anger or even their inaction. [Marsh] admirably attempts to explore this unfathomable paradox. -- John Lewis, Member of Congress, 5th District, Georgia This wonderfully narrated book offers truths about the civil rights struggle of the 1960s often overlooked-the intensely moral and spiritual side of an effort that had an enormous impact on our secular life. -- Robert Coles
Charles Marsh is professor of religious studies and director of the Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School, he is the author of "Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Last Days" and, most recently, T"he Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, from the Civil Rights Movement to Today".
Winner of the 1998 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion, University of Louisville and the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary Co-Winner of the 1998 Towson University Prize for Literature "Original and uncommonly thoughtful... This is a comprehensive, imaginative, fair-minded and perceptive book, a significant contribution to our understanding of those men and women who fought those terrible wars in what seems so long ago but was, in fact, only yesterday."--Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World "With vivid description and chilling analysis, Marsh evokes the violence and oppression in the South of the civil-rights era... Many will find the results haunting... Marsh's work speaks directly to the development of our own moral lives."--Randy Frame, Christianity Today "Marsh's slice of history is imperative reading for understanding the religious foundations of social movements."--Publishers Weekly "Through Marsh's heartfelt and incisive chronicle, the turmoil and acrimony that were abundant in the U.S. more than three decades ago lend a revealing perspective to numerous current situations of racial and ethnic discord."--Nachman Spiegel, Jerusalem Post "A work of humane engagement and dispassionate scholarship."--John White, The Times Higher Education Supplement "The history and internal politics of the Civil Rights Movement and of the groups defending white-controlled segregation come alive in these detail-filled narratives..."--Choice "Marsh describes the faulty logic and errant principles of most of the actors ... with compassion and remarkable restraint... He presents a fresh and inspiring story of faith in action and, perhaps, a view of God's hand in human history."--Gary Dorsey, Christian Century
Winner of the 1998 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion, University of Louisville and the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary Co-Winner of the 1998 Towson University Prize for Literature "Original and uncommonly thoughtful... This is a comprehensive, imaginative, fair-minded and perceptive book, a significant contribution to our understanding of those men and women who fought those terrible wars in what seems so long ago but was, in fact, only yesterday."--Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World "With vivid description and chilling analysis, Marsh evokes the violence and oppression in the South of the civil-rights era... Many will find the results haunting... Marsh's work speaks directly to the development of our own moral lives."--Randy Frame, Christianity Today "Marsh's slice of history is imperative reading for understanding the religious foundations of social movements."--Publishers Weekly "Through Marsh's heartfelt and incisive chronicle, the turmoil and acrimony that were abundant in the U.S. more than three decades ago lend a revealing perspective to numerous current situations of racial and ethnic discord."--Nachman Spiegel, Jerusalem Post "A work of humane engagement and dispassionate scholarship."--John White, The Times Higher Education Supplement "The history and internal politics of the Civil Rights Movement and of the groups defending white-controlled segregation come alive in these detail-filled narratives..."--Choice "Marsh describes the faulty logic and errant principles of most of the actors ... with compassion and remarkable restraint... He presents a fresh and inspiring story of faith in action and, perhaps, a view of God's hand in human history."--Gary Dorsey, Christian Century
Theology professor Marsh (Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer: The Promise of His Theology, Oxford Univ., 1994) argues that both the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and its Southern adversaries derived their power from religious ideas. Recounting the stories of five active participants‘some militant, some nonviolent, but each with an eloquent apologia for either racial segregation or integration‘he relates their ideological commitments to their religious beliefs. The history and internal politics of the Civil Rights Movement and of the groups defending white-controlled segregation come alive in these detail-filled narratives, but ironically Marsh's finely wrought discussion of theology in each story is the weakest part of the book; it is sometimes hard to follow, and it often obscures rather than illuminates the historic struggles Marsh so effectively describes. Even if readers may not understand the cohesion of the religious beliefs depicted here, they will be left with an indelible impression of five committed individuals (including Fannie Lou Hamer) who knew what they believed in, acted on their beliefs, and made history.‘Jack Forman, Mesa Coll. Lib., San Diego
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