Search results for ""Plough Publishing House""

Fascinating glimpses into the life of a woman banished to the margins or her society, these stories exude hard-earned spiritual and practical wisdom. Follow the remarkable odyssey of Maria Weiss, who spent eighteen long years in an isolated leper colony in Paraguay. Her vivid stories, as told to Maureen Burn, read like parables. They remind us that faith and solidarity often flourish where one least expects, and that there is always someone who is worse off than oneself: someone in need of your time, hands, and a listening ear.

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Food – how it’s grown, how it’s shared – makes us who we are. This issue traces the connections between farm and food, between humus and human. According to the first book of the Bible, tending the earth was humankind’s first task: “The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed” (Gen. 2:8). The desire to get one’s hands dirty raising one’s own food, then, doesn’t just come from modern romanticism, but is built into human nature. The title, “The Welcome Table,” comes from a spiritual first sung by enslaved African-Americans. The song refers to the Bible’s closing scene, the wedding feast of the Lamb described in the Book of Revelation, to which every race, tribe, and tongue are invited – a divine pledge of a day of freedom and freely shared plenty, of earth renewed and humanity restored. In the case of food, the symbol is the substance. Every meal, if shared generously and with radical hospitality, is already now a taste of the feast to come. Also in this issue: poetry by Luci Shaw; reviews of books by Julia Child, Robert Farrar Capon, Peter Mayle, Albert Woodfox, and Maria von Trapp; and art by Michael Naples, Sieger Köder, Carl Juste, André Chung, Ángel Bracho, Winslow Homer, Raymond Logan, Sybil Andrews, Cameron Davidson, and Jason Landsel. Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus’ message into practice and find common cause with others.

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A stunning photo essay paired with 100 stories of members gives a rare glimpse into the Bruderhof, a Christian community that has stood the test of time. Yes, it is possible to create a society where there are no rich or poor, where children and elderly are welcome, where no one lives in isolation. Meet 100 individuals from diverse backgrounds who ventured everything to build a life together where everyone belongs and each can contribute, pooling their income, possessions, talents, and energy. As the community marks its first 100 years, the people in this book tell why they have chosen this radical way of life and share insights gleaned along the way. Their stories represent a cross section of the Bruderhof as an international and intergenerational community. With photography by British photojournalist Danny Burrows, this book celebrates what is possible when people take a leap of faith. It will inspire anyone working to build a more just, peaceful, and sustainable future.

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With its loving portrayal of aging, caring for the elderly, and the keen nature of kids’ sensibilities, this is a must-purchase for all libraries serving children. --School Library Journal, Starred Review A quiet story and pleasant music combine for a calming, peaceful, and even uplifting performance. --Kirkus Reviews Did you hear the story about Max, the boy who kidnapped his grandfather from a nursing home? You didn’t see it on the news? Well, let me tell you about it. Max lives in a small town, much smaller than yours. His grandpa is losing his memory, but still remembers quite a bit. You can imagine how they hurried, Max and his grandpa, followed by old Miss Schneider, who insisted on coming along. Why were they in a hurry? Because everyone was after them. Max had skipped school to rescue his grandpa, and they were just starting out on what promised to be one of the best days of their entire lives. A touching story about dementia and the special relationship between grandparents and grandchildren, with full-color illustrations and a read-along CD audiobook featuring twelve classical pieces for children by Georges Bizet and Sergei Prokofiev.

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Personal letters and diaries provide an intimate view into the hearts and minds of a brother and sister who became martyrs in the anti-Nazi resistance during World War II.Idealistic, serious, and sensible, Hans and Sophie Scholl joined the Hitler Youth with youthful and romantic enthusiasm. But as Hitler’s grip throttled Germany and Nazi atrocities mounted, Hans and Sophie emerged from their adolescence with the conviction that at all costs they must raise their voices against the murderous Nazi regime.In May of 1942, with Germany still winning the war, an improbable little band of students at Munich University began distributing the leaflets of the White Rose. In the very city where the Nazis got their start, they demanded resistance to Germany’s war efforts and confronted their readers with what they had learned of Hitler’s “final solution”: “Here we see the most terrible crime committed against the dignity of humankind, a crime that has no counterpart in human history.” These broadsides were secretly drafted and printed in a Munich basement by Hans Scholl, by now a young medical student and military conscript, and a handful of young co-conspirators that included his twenty-one-year-old sister Sophie. The leaflets placed the Scholls and their friends in mortal danger, and it wasn’t long before they were captured and executed.As their letters and diaries reveal, the Scholls were not primarily motivated by political beliefs, but rather came to their convictions through personal spiritual search that eventually led them to sacrifice their lives for what they believed was right. Interwoven with commentary on the progress of Hitler’s campaign, the letters and diary entries range from veiled messages about the course of a war they wanted their country to lose, to descriptions of hikes and skiing trips and meditations on Goethe, Dostoyevsky, Rilke, and Verlaine; from entreaties to their parents for books and sweets hard to get in wartime, to deeply humbled and troubled entreaties to God for an understanding of the presence of such great evil in the world. There are alarms when Hans is taken into military custody, when their father is jailed, and when their friends are wounded on the eastern front. But throughout—even to the end, when the Scholls’ sense of peril is most oppressive—there appear in their writings spontaneous outbursts of joy and gratitude for the gifts of nature, music, poetry, and art. In the midst of evil and degradation, theirs is a celebration of the spiritual and the humane.Illustrated with photographs of Hans and Sophie Scholl and their friends and co-conspirators.

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This collection, born of obvious passion and graced with superb writing, is a welcome even necessary addition to the glutted holiday bookshelves. -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)Though Christians the world over make yearly preparations for Lent, there’s a conspicuous lack of good books for that other great spiritual season: Advent. All the same, this four-week period leading up to Christmas is making a comeback as growing numbers reject shopping-mall frenzy and examine the deeper meaning of the season.Ecumenical in scope, these fifty devotions invite the reader to contemplate the great themes of Christmas and the significance that the coming of Jesus has for each of us – not only during Advent, but every day. Whether dipped into at leisure or used on a daily basis, Watch for the Light gives the phrase “holiday preparations” new depth and meaning.Includes contributions by these and other writers: C. S. Lewis, Madeleine L’Engle, Thomas Merton, and Philip Yancey Dorothy Day, Henri Nouwen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero, and Edith Stein Martin Luther, Meister Eckhart, Eberhard Arnold, and Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt T. S. Eliot, John Donne, and Sylvia Plath Karl Barth, Will Willimon, Jürgen Moltmann, and J. B. Phillips Kathleen Norris, Brennan Manning, and Evelyn Underhill Annie Dillard, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Gerard Manley Hopkins Romano Guardini, St. John Chrysostom, and Giovanni Papini Jane Kenyon, Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster, Isaac Penington, and Alfred Delp

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In Why Forgive? Arnold lets the untidy experiences of ordinary people speak for themselves--people who have earned the right to talk about forgiving. Some of these stories deal with violent crime, betrayal, abuse, hate, gang warfare, and genocide. Others address everyday hurts: the wounds caused by backbiting, gossip, conflicts in the home, and tensions in the workplace. The book also tackles what can be the biggest challenge: forgiving ourselves. These people, who have overcome the cancer of bitterness and hatred, can help you unleash the healing power of forgiveness in your own life. Why Forgive? these stories and decide for yourself.

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Behind a gruesome ISIS beheading video lies the untold story of the men in orange and the faith community that formed these unlikely modern-day saints and heroes.In a carefully choreographed propaganda video released in February 2015, ISIS militants behead twenty-one orange-clad Christian men on a Libyan beach.In the West, daily reports of new atrocities may have displaced the memory of this particularly vile event. But not in the world from which the murdered came. All but one were young Coptic Christian migrant workers from Egypt. Acclaimed literary writer Martin Mosebach traveled to the Egyptian village of El-Aour to meet their families and better understand the faith and culture that shaped such conviction.He finds himself welcomed into simple concrete homes through which swallows dart. Portraits of Jesus and Mary hang on the walls along with roughhewn shrines to now-famous loved ones. Mosebach is amazed time and again as, surrounded by children and goats, the bereaved replay the cruel propaganda video on an iPad. There is never any talk of revenge, but only the pride of having a martyr in the family, a saint in heaven. “The 21” appear on icons crowned like kings, celebrated even as their community grieves. A skeptical Westerner, Mosebach finds himself a stranger in this world in which everything is the reflection or fulfillment of biblical events, and facing persecution with courage is part of daily life.In twenty-one symbolic chapters, each preceded by a picture, Mosebach offers a travelogue of his encounter with a foreign culture and a church that has preserved the faith and liturgy of early Christianity – the “Church of the Martyrs.” As a religious minority in Muslim Egypt, the Copts find themselves caught in a clash of civilizations. This book, then, is also an account of the spiritual life of an Arab country stretched between extremism and pluralism, between a rich biblical past and the shopping centers of New Cairo.

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"The stories come from all over the world and represent many genres, such as parables, animal fables, historical fiction, fairy tales, and Christian fantasy. Definitely read these stories at Easter, but keep the book close and pull it out whenever you and your family need a reminder of the great Easter themes of transformation, reconciliation and the triumph of life over death."—National Catholic RegisterEveryone who believes Easter is about more than bunnies and eggs will be grateful for this new collection of short stories that shed light on the deeper meaning of the season. Selected for their spiritual value and literary quality, these classic tales capture the spirit of Easter in a way that will captivate readers of all ages. Parents and grandparents will find that children love to hear these stories read aloud, year after year.Easter Stories includes time-honored favorites from world-famous storytellers such as C.S. Lewis, Leo Tolstoy, Selma Lagerlof, Oscar Wilde, Elizabeth Goudge, Maxim Gorky, Ruth Sawyer, and Walter Wangerin – as well as many you’ve never heard before. Illustrated with original woodcuts.

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Like the Hebrew prophets before him, the great American rabbi and civil rights leader reveals God’s concern for this world and each of us. Abraham Joshua Heschel, descended from a long line of Orthodox rabbis, fled Europe to escape the Nazis. He made the insights of traditional Jewish spirituality come alive for American Jews while speaking out boldly against war and racial injustice. Heschel brought the fervor of the Hebrew prophets to his role as a public intellectual. He challenged the sensibilities of the modern West, which views science and human reason as sufficient. Only by rediscovering wonder and awe before mysteries that transcend knowledge can we hope to find God again. This God, Heschel says, is not distant but passionately concerned about our lives and human affairs, and asks something of us in return. This little book, which brings together Heschel’s key insights on a range of topics, will reinvigorate readers of any faith who hunger for wonder and thirst for justice. Plough Spiritual Guides briefly introduce the writings of great spiritual voices of the past to new readers.

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Simone Weil, the great mystic and philosopher for our age, shows where anyone can find God.Why is it that Simone Weil, with her short, troubled life and confounding insights into faith and doubt, continues to speak to today’s spiritual seekers? Was it her social radicalism, which led her to renounce privilege? Her ambivalence toward institutional religion? Her combination of philosophical rigor with the ardor of a mystic?Albert Camus called Simone Weil “the only great spirit of our time.” André Gide found her “the most truly spiritual writer of this century.” Her intense life and profound writings have influenced people as diverse as T. S. Eliot, Charles De Gaulle, Pope Paul VI, and Adrienne Rich.The body of work she left—most of it published posthumously—is the fruit of an anguished but ultimately luminous spiritual journey.After her untimely death at age thirty-four, Simone Weil quickly achieved legendary status among a whole generation of thinkers. Her radical idealism offered a corrective to consumer culture. But more importantly, she pointed the way, especially for those outside institutional religion, to encounter the love of God – in love to neighbor, love of beauty, and even in suffering.

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A concise introduction to the thought and vision of Eberhard Arnold, the founder of the Bruderhof community. Eberhard Arnold was one of the most remarkable Christian figures of the twentieth century. In the years after World War I he abandoned his career ambitions to live by the radical teachings of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. With his family and a small circle of friends he founded the Bruderhof, an international pacifist community rooted in the Anabaptist tradition, which soon brought him into conflict with the Nazi state.Whether you’ve never read Eberhard Arnold before, or have already been profoundly affected by one of his books, this introductory selection from many of his important works will give insight into of his thought on a wide range of topics, including justice, peacemaking, work, economic sharing, communal living, human nature, family, the Holy Spirit, the Bible, and the church. A biographical introduction by his grandson Johann Christ

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From the creator of Corduroy, a newly restored classic picture book that celebrates a child’s bond with the natural world.Every summer Ty’s family came to camp in their trailer at the same beautiful spot on the white sand dunes by the ocean. And every year, as long as Ty could remember, the same old pelican had welcomed them. This year, as soon as the trailer was parked, Ty pulled on his shiny red wading boots and ran with his fishing pole to look for his friend.“Be sure not to lose those new boots of yours,” his father said. And Ty didn’t - not really. But by the time the tide had quietly crept in and as gently flowed out again, some surprising things had happened and both he and the pelican had made unexpected catches. What could they have been to make both boy and bird so happy when each swapped his catch with the other?Pictures full of space and light and the shining colors of sky and sand and sea help to te

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In times that feel apocalyptic, where do we place our hope? It's an apocalyptic moment. The grim effects of climate change have left many people in despair. Young people often cite climate fears as a reason they are not having children. Then there’s the threat of nuclear war, again in the cards, which could make climate worries a moot point. The paradoxical answer ancient Judaism gave to such despair was a promise: the promise of doomsday, the “Day of the Lord” when God will visit his people and establish lasting justice and peace. Judgment, according to the Hebrew prophets, will be followed by renewal – for the faithful, and perhaps even for the entire cosmos. Over the centuries since, this hopeful vision of apocalypse has carried many others through moments of crisis and catastrophe. Might it do the same for us?On this theme: creation is transformed and made new.That’s what the “end of the age” meant to Jesus and his early - Peter J. Leithart says when old worlds die, we need something sturdier than the myth of progress. - Brandon McGinley says you can’t protect your kids from tragedy. - Cardinal Peter Turkson points to the spiritual roots of the climate crisis. - David Bentley Hart says disruption, not dogma, is Christianity’s grounds for hope. - Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz reminds us that the Book of Revelation ends well. - Lyman Stone argues that those who claim that having children threatens the environment are wrong. - Eleanor Parker recounts how, amid Viking terror, one Anglo-Saxon bishop held a kingdom together. - Shira Telushkin describes how artist Wassily Kandinsky forged a path from the material to the spiritual. - Anika T. Prather learned to let her children grieve during the pandemic.Also in the issue: - Ukrainian pastor Ivan Rusyn describes ministering in wartime Bucha and Kyiv. - Mindy Belz reports on farmers who held out in Syria despite ISIS. - New poems by winners of the 2022 Rhina Espaillat Poetry Award - A profile of newly sainted Charles de Foucauld - Reviews of Elena Ferrante’s In the Margins, Abigail Favale’s The Genesis of Gender, and Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility - Readers’ forum, comics, and morePlough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to apply their faith to the challenges we face. Each issue includes in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art.

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Communal music has the power to shape a soul and a society.In many places today, a culture of singing and making music remains robust, despite pressure from the commercial music industry. Or it was until the Covid pandemic hit and we glimpsed what a world without communal music-making could be like. According to Plato, virtuous music is vital for building a virtuous community. Jewish and Christian traditions take this insight even further: good communal music shapes and builds up the people of God. So how can we choose good music and avoid the bad? The sheer ubiquity of music available for consumption – its presence as a near-constant soundtrack to our daily lives – poses a hazard. Digital music on tap is a temptation to chronic distraction of the soul, to a habit of superficiality and non-attention. Fortunately, the remedy is straightforward: spend less time consuming prepackaged tunes and more time making music. This will be doubly rewarding if done with others – singing with one’s family, singing in church, playing in a string quartet, starting a regular jam session. If personal media players tend to cut us off from the physical presence of others, sharing in good music together breaks the spell of isolation and disembodiment. It builds friendship and community.On this theme:- Maureen Swinger’s amateur choir sings Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion.- Stephen Michael Newby says Black spirituals aren’t just for Black people. - Mary Townsend finds Dolly Parton magnificent, but would Aristotle? - Phil Christman finds catharsis in the YouTube comments of eighties songs. - Ben Crosby says congregational singing should be unabashedly weird to visitors.- Joseph Julián González draws on ancient Nahua poets in his music.- Christopher Tin explains why he weaves so many historical influences into his music. - Seven musicians talk about making your own music in schools, churches, prisons, backyards, or children’s bedrooms: Nathan Schram, Esther Keiderling, Norann Voll, Chaka Watch Ngwenya, Eileen Maendel, Adora Wong, and Brittany Petruzzi.Also in the issue: Exclusive excerpts from forthcoming books by Eugene Vodolazkin and Esther Maria Magnis- Thoughts on music from Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, Hildegard of Bingen, Martin Luther, and Eberhard Arnold- Catholics and Anabaptists unite to commemorate the Radical Reformation- New poems by Jacqueline Saphra- A profile of Argentinian singer Mercedes Sosa.- Reviews of Kate Clifford Larson’s Walk with Me, Rowan Williams’s Shakeshafte, and Sam Quinones’s The Least of UsPlough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to apply their faith to the challenges we face. Each issue includes in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art.

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With or Without Me is a book for everyone – believer or unbeliever, Christian or atheist– who refuses to surrender to the idea that there are easy answers to the big questions in life.Doubt about God’s goodness in the face of grief is natural. With or Without Me is one woman’s unsparing and eloquent memoir about the inadequacy of religion and philosophy to answer her emotional pain. Yet Esther Maria Magnis’s rejection of God is merely the beginning of a tortuous journey back to faith – one punctuated by personal losses retold with bluntness and immediacy. Magnis knows believing in God is anything but easy. Because he allows people to suffer. Because he’s invisible. And silent. “A must read for anyone who has ever pondered the meaning of life” – Lydia S. Dugdale, Author of The Lost Art of Dying

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Bad days are one thing – everyone has them now and then. But what about the darker clouds that settle over a life for weeks or even months at a time? What about separation and divorce, prolonged illness and hospitalization? What about the loss of a friend or a parent, the absence of a child or a spouse? For the friend or family member who just isn’t coping, no matter what you say, the sturdy simplicity of this little volume offers something most well-meaning sympathy cards forget: a gentle insistence that there is still a God who watches over all, and a stubborn faith that the worst trials of life’s “difficult hours” will one day be overshadowed by his comfort and peace. In reminding us of the power conferred by hope, Now Is Eternity is a source of daily strength.

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Batchelder Honor Winner, 2020 ALA Youth Media AwardsHonorable Mention, 2019 Freeman Awards (National Consortium for Teaching about Asia)Korea’s demilitarized zone (DMZ) has become an amazing accidental nature preserve that gives hope for a brighter future for a divided land.This unique picture book invites young readers into the natural beauty of the DMZ, where salmon, spotted seals, and mountain goats freely follow the seasons and raise their families in this 2.5-mile-wide, 150-mile-long corridor where no human may tread. But the vivid seasonal flora and fauna are framed by ever-present rusty razor wire, warning signs, and locked gates—and regularly interrupted by military exercises that continue decades after a 1953 ceasefire in the Korean War established the DMZ.Creator Uk-Bae Lee’s lively paintings juxtapose these realities, planting in children the dream of a peaceful world without war and barriers, where separated families meet again and live together happily in harmony with their environment. Lee shows the DMZ through the eyes of a grandfather who returns each year to look out over his beloved former lands, waiting for the day when he can return. In a surprise foldout panorama at the end of the book the grandfather, tired of waiting, dreams of taking his grandson by the hand, flinging back the locked gates, and walking again on the land he loves to find his long-lost friends.When Spring Comes to the DMZ helps introduce children to the unfinished history of the Korean Peninsula playing out on the nightly news, and may well spark discussions about other walls, from Texas to Gaza.

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Arnold guides readers toward leading Christ-like lives amid the stress and strain of modern life. Perhaps the hardest thing about following Christ is translating our good intentions into deeds. Christ calls us, and we yearn to answer him, but time and again we lose resolve. Is discipleship really possible today? Many of the selections in this book offer answers to specific needs or problems. Others grapple with broader themes such as world suffering, salvation, and the coming of the kingdom of God. All of them pulsate with conviction and compassion, giving fresh hope to those who find themselves lonely or disheartened in the daily search to follow Christ. J. Heinrich Arnold served for many years as elder of the Bruderhof, a Christian communal movement. Discipleship contains writings, letters, and talks from his forty years of service as pastor, marriage counselor, educator, and parent.

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Your job is not your vocation. Everyone hungers for work that has meaning and purpose. But what gives work meaning? Vocation, or “calling,” is the answer Protestant Christianity offers: each person is called by God to serve the common good in a particular line of work. Your vocation, evidently, might be almost anything: as a nurse, a wilderness guide, a calligrapher, a missionary, an activist, a venture capitalist, a politician, an executioner… Yet, as Will Willimon writes in this issue, the New Testament knows only one form of vocation: discipleship. And discipleship is far more likely to mean leaving father and mother, houses and land, than it is to mean embracing one’s identity as a fisherman or tax collector. This issue of Plough focuses on people who lived their lives with that sense of vocation. Such a life demands self-sacrifice and a willingness to recognize one’s own supposed strengths as weaknesses, as it did for the Canadian philosopher Jean Vanier. It involves a lifelong commitment to a flesh-and-blood church, as Coptic Archbishop Angaelos describes. It may even require a readiness to give up one’s life, as it did for Annalena Tonelli, an Italian humanitarian who pioneered the treatment of tuberculosis in the Horn of Africa. But as these stories also testify, it brings a gladness deeper than any self-chosen path. Also in this issue: - Scott Beauchamp on mercenaries - Nathan Schneider on cryptocurrencies - Stephanie Saldaña on Syrian refugee art - Peter Biles on loneliness at college - Phil Christman on Bible translation - Michael Brendan Dougherty on fatherhood - Insights on vocation from C. S. Lewis, Thérèse of Lisieux, Mother Teresa, Eberhard Arnold, Dorothy Sayers, Jean Vanier, and Gerard Manley Hopkins - poetry by Devon Balwit and Carl Sandburg - reviews of books by Robert Alter, Edwidge Danticat, Matthew D. Hockenos, Amy Waldman, and Jeremy Courtney - art and photography by Pola Rader, Dean Mitchell, Mark Freear, Timothy Jones, Paweł Filipczak, Mary Pal, Harley Manifold, Sami Lalu Jahola, Marc Chagall, and Russell Bain. Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus’ message into practice and find common cause with others.

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The future of humanity is urban. It might seem a bad move for a magazine named after a farm tool to bring out an issue on cities. Especially if that magazine is published by an Anabaptist community that originated in a back-to-the-land movement and still has the whiff of hayfield and woodlot to it. Why not stick to what you’re good at? Why jump lanes? Because the future of humanity, pretty clearly, is urban. Urbanization is arguably the biggest change of habitat our species has ever undergone. For anyone who cares about the common good of humanity, then, cities need to matter. The modern city is an electrifying concentration of creativity, energy, and cultural dynamism. It’s also still the “cauldron of unholy loves” that Saint Augustine discovered in Carthage one and a half millennia ago. It’s the place where the cruelties of mammon, the hubris of power, and the perversions of lust manifest themselves most crassly. But cities have also given birth to culture and community and to remarkable movements of revival and renewal. In this issue, visit: - Belfast with Jenny McCartney - New York City with James Macklin - Medellín with Adriano Cirino - Pittsburgh with Brandon McGinley - Guatemala City with José Corpas - Philadelphia with Clare Coffey - Chicago with John Thornton Jr. - Paris with Jason Landsel You’ll also find: - Insights on cities from Jane Jacobs, Eberhard Arnold, Augustine, and Philip Britts - reviews of books by Jonathan Foiles, Bethany McKinney Fox, J. Malcolm Garcia, Tatiana Schlossberg, Tim Gautreaux, Philip Bess, and Frederic Morton - art by Gail Brodholt, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Ben Ibebe, Brian Peterson, Chota, Raphael, Gertrude Hermes, Valentino Belloni, Tony Taj, and Aristarkh Lentulov Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus’ message into practice and find common cause with others.

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A trusted guide into the inner realm where our spirits find strength to master life and live for God. It is hard to exaggerate the significance of Innerland, either for Eberhard Arnold or his readers. It absorbed his energies off and on for most of his adult life--from World War I, when he published the first chapter under the title War: A Call to Inwardness, to 1935, the last year of his life. Packed in metal boxes and buried at night for safekeeping from the Nazis, who raided the author’s study a year before his death (and again a year after it), Innerland was not openly critical of Hitler’s regime. Nevertheless, it attacked the spirits that animated German society: its murderous strains of racism and bigotry, its heady nationalistic fervor, its mindless mass hysteria, and its vulgar materialism. In this sense Innerland stands as starkly opposed to the zeitgeist of our own day as to that of the author’s. At a glance, the focus of Innerland seems to be the cultivation of the spiritual life as an end in itself. Nothing could be more misleading. In fact, to Eberhard Arnold the very thought of encouraging the sort of selfish solitude whereby people seek their own private peace by shutting out the noise and rush of public life around them is anathema. He writes in The Inner Life:“These are times of distress. We cannot retreat, willfully blind to the overwhelming urgency of the tasks pressing on society. We cannot look for inner detachment in an inner and outer isolation...The only justification for withdrawing into the inner self to escape today's confusing, hectic whirl would be that fruitfulness is enriched by it. It is a question of gaining within, through unity with eternal powers, a strength of character ready to be tested in the stream of the world.” Innerland, then, calls us not to passivity, but to action. It invites us to discover the abundance of a life lived for God. It opens our eyes to the possibilities of that “inner land of the invisible where our spirit can find the roots of its strength and thus enable us to press on to the mastery of life we are called to by God.” Only there, says Eberhard Arnold, can our life be placed under the illuminating light of the eternal and seen for what it is. Only there will we find the clarity of vision we need to win the daily battle that is life, and the inner anchor without which we will lose our moorings.

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What we want for schools reveals what we value as a society. “What’s the point of school?” Parents have a stock set of responses, but the question remains unsettled, even two centuries after the Prussians invented compulsory education. The Prussian idea of what a school is for – to mold the populace to serve the state – seems unacceptable today. In vogue, instead, are slogans like “acquiring marketable skills” and “realizing your full potential.” These ideas powerfully shape our culture. Ultimately, they boil down to pursuing one supreme value: individual success in a competitive world. Schools are a mirror of our society as a whole; what we want for schools makes plain what and whom we value in our common life. In the Christian tradition, the life of discipleship is also a school. In this educational community, under the instruction of our one Teacher, we learn not to seek empowerment, but to find strength in weakness; not to out-achieve others, but to serve them; not to pursue our passion, but to obey a call. Also in this issue: poetry by Christian Wiman; reviews of new books by Robert Macfarlane, Jackie Morris, Francisco Cantú, Leif Enger, Carol Anderson, Stephanie Land, and Susan Wise Bauer; and art by Margaret McWethy, Albrecht Dürer, Raphael, Gérard David, Jackie Morris, Gustaf Tenggren, Sergey Dushkin, Anja Percival, Dmitry Samofalov, Christoph Wetzel, Sherrie York, Cathleen Rehfield, Paweł Kuczyński, and Jason Landsel. Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus’ message into practice and find common cause with others.

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Gold Medal, 2022 Independent Publisher Book Awards, IPPYPersonal friendships with Somali Muslims overcome the prejudices and expand the faith of a typical American Evangelical Christian living in the Horn of Africa.When Rachel Pieh Jones moved from Minnesota to rural Somalia with her husband and twin toddlers eighteen years ago, she was secure in a faith that defined who was right and who was wrong, who was saved and who needed saving. She had been taught that Islam was evil, full of lies and darkness, and that the world would be better without it.Luckily, locals show compassion for this blundering outsider who can’t keep her headscarf on or her toddlers from tripping over AK-47s. After the murder of several foreigners forces them to evacuate, the Joneses resettle in nearby Djibouti.Jones recounts, often entertainingly, the personal encounters and growing friendships that gradually dismantle her unspoken fears and prejudices and deepen her appreciation for Islam. Unexpectedly, along the way she also gains a far richer understanding of her own Christian faith. Grouping her stories around the five pillars of Islam – creed, prayer, fasting, giving, and pilgrimage – Jones shows how her Muslim friends’ devotion to these pillars leads her to rediscover ancient Christian practices her own religious tradition has lost or neglected.Jones brings the reader along as she reexamines her assumptions about faith and God through the lens of Islam and Somali culture. Are God and Allah the same? What happens when one’s ideas about God and the Bible crumble and the only people around are Muslims? What happens is that she discovers that Jesus is more generous, daring, and loving than she ever imagined.

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Daily biblical reflections to encourage anyone facing sickness or an uncertain future.These sixty short daily reflections, each based on a verse from the Bible, will guide a believer facing serious sickness—and his or her family—to a rock-solid faith and trust in the will of God. With confidence in the healing power of God and the possibility of miracles, the Blumhardts, a father-son team of pastors renowned for their healing ministry, point us away from our troubles and toward a Creator who is supremely wise and good and wants the best for each of us.In a world where medical advances seem to promise a cure for everything, it’s tempting to believe that we can live free of pain. But we know that even the best medicine cannot extend life forever or solve the riddles of physical and emotional illness. How, then, to respond to the inevitability of suffering? And how to help those who live in fear of disease to conquer their daily worry about their diagnosis? What better place to turn than to these words of comfort and hope drawn from the Word of God?As Rick Warren writes in his foreword, “the Blumhardts remind us that physical healing is not God’s greatest answer to prayer. …Whatever circumstance you are facing right now, this book of daily readings will help you focus on a closer relationship with Jesus, our one true spiritual healer.”

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Think Mother Jones meets Mother Teresa, in Mogadishu. Amid a volatile mix of disease, war, and religious fundamentalism in the Horn of Africa, what difference could one woman make? Annalena Tonelli left behind career, family, and homeland anyway, moving to a remote Muslim village in northern Kenya to live among its outcasts – desert nomads dying of tuberculosis, history’s deadliest disease. “I am nobody,” she always insisted. Yet by the time she was killed for her work three decades later she had not only developed an effective cure for tuberculosis among nomadic peoples but also exposed a massacre, established homes and schools for the deaf, advocated against female genital mutilation, and secured treatment for ostracized AIDS patients. Months after winning the Nansen Refugee Award from the UN in 2003, Annalena Tonelli was assassinated at one of the tuberculosis hospitals she founded. Rachel Pieh Jones, an American writer, was living a few doors down, having moved to Somaliland with her husband and two children just months before. Annalena’s death would alter the course of her life. No one who encounters Annalena in these pages will leave unchanged. Her confounding, larger-than-life example challenges our assumptions about aid and development, Christian–Muslim relations, and what it means to put one’s faith into practice. Brought vividly back to life through Jones’s meticulous reporting and her own letters, Annalena presents us with a new measure of success and commitment. But she also leaves us a gift: the secret to overcoming the fear that pervades our society and our hearts – fear of disease and death, fear of terrorism and war, fear of others, and fear of failure.

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A Westerner’s travels among the persecuted and displaced Christian remnant in Iraq and Syria teach him much about faith under fire. Gold Medal Winner, 2018 IPPY Book of the Year Award Silver Medal Winner, 2018 Benjamin Franklin Award Finalist, 2018 ECPA Christian Book Award Inside Syria and Iraq, and even along the refugee trail, they’re a religious minority persecuted for their Christian faith. Outside the Middle East, they’re suspect because of their nationality. A small remnant of Christians is on the run from the Islamic State. If they are wiped out, or scattered to the corners of the earth, the language that Jesus spoke may be lost forever – along with the witness of a church that has modeled Jesus’ way of nonviolence and enemy-love for two millennia. The kidnapping, enslavement, torture, and murder of Christians by the Islamic State, or ISIS, have been detailed by journalists, as have the jihadists' deliberate efforts to destroy the cultural heritage of a region that is the cradle of Christianity. But some stories run deep, and without a better understanding of the religious and historical roots of the present conflict, history will keep repeating itself century after century. Andreas Knapp, a priest who works with refugees in Germany, travelled to camps for displaced people in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq to collect stories of survivors – and to seek answers to troubling questions about the link between religion and violence. He found Christians who today still speak Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, the language of Jesus. The uprooted remnant of ancient churches, they doggedly continue to practice their faith despite the odds. Their devastating eyewitness reports make it clear why millions are fleeing the Middle East. Yet, remarkably, though these last Christians hold little hope of ever returning to their homes, they also harbor no thirst for revenge. Could it be that they – along with the Christians of the West, whose interest will determine their fate – hold the key to breaking the cycle of violence in the region? Includes sixteen pages of color photographs.

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In this thrilling graphic novel, Nelson Mandela’s fight against racism is about to spiral into an all-out race war. Unless he can win over his archenemy, the white supremacist General Viljoen, the democratic struggle for equality and justice in South Africa will end in “the peace of graveyards.” “Intense.”--Booklist “A riveting read.”--Morgan Freeman “Fascinating.”--Library Journal, starred review As the first post-apartheid elections approach in 1994, with South African blacks poised to take power, the nation’s whites fear reprisal. White nationalist militias claiming 50,000 well-armed former soldiers stand ready to fight to the death to defend their cause. They need someone who can lead and unite them. That man is General Constand Viljoen, former chief of apartheid South Africa’s military. Mandela knows that he can’t avert a bloodbath on his own. He will have to count on his archenemy. Throughout those historic months, the two men meet in secret. Can they trust each other? Can they keep their followers and radical fringe elements from acts of violence? The mettle of these two men will determine the future of a nation. The drama of this contest and the history that pivoted on it comes vividly to life in visual form. Veteran British journalist John Carlin teams up with Catalan artist Oriol Malet to create a historically and artistically rich graphic novel with obvious relevance to today’s polarized politics.

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How can we live well with tech, without it becoming our master? These days, the heady promises of Silicon Valley seem suspect: the internet didn’t bring all of humanity together; neither did smartphones or social media. We have long since stopped associating tech with utopian visions of global harmony, instead blaming it for distraction, polarization, addictions to porn and gambling, the trivialization of culture, loss of privacy and work-life balance, and fears that automation may push millions out of a job. Advances in artificial intelligence seem poised to bring us to the next technological watershed. It’s a good time to ask how we can learn to live well with tech, and how we might push back against technologies that shape humans in anti-human ways. On this theme: Find out why computers can’t do math and humans can. When parenting from prison, a little tech can make a big diff

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Our writers celebrate the work of repair – of objects, relationships, communities, and landscapes – and reckon with its limits. Consumers campaign for a “right to repair” in protest of products’ wasteful “planned obsolescence.” Repair cafés spring up, in which old-timers teach greenhorns to mend clothes and appliances. But much more than our possession stand in need of repair. For some, the Jewish phrase tikkun olam – to repair the world – may have become little more than a secular social justice mandate, not unlike the Christian cliché “God has no hands but ours.” Yet while we wait on God to repair the cosmos, there are indeed countless ways one can participate in this work, whether one is a mother, a handyman, a farmer, an artist, an teacher, or a pastor. The work may not be glamorous, but it calls forth our creativity and holds its own rewards. On this theme: - A handyman settles for humble work and doesn’t wish more for his children. - A mother mends her daughters’ clothes into extravagant works of arts. - A pastor in a declining denomination asks where to start repairing the church. - A farmer says a restored landscape will be more than it was before. - Yazidi, Rohingya, and Uyghur survivors of sexual violence find ways to reclaim their dignity. - Painter Makoto Fujimura says artists don’t fight culture wars, they make culture. - Prisoners and staff say prisons don’t rehabilitate, but education in prison just might. - A schoolteacher says education requires family, school, and community. - A church that prays in the language of Jesus, scattered by war, lives on in new places. Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to apply their faith to the challenges we face. Each issue includes in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art.

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Monks devious and devout – and an age-defying royal pair – chronicle the history of their fictional island in this witty critique of Western civilization and history itself.Eugene Vodolazkin, internationally acclaimed novelist and scholar of medieval literature, returns with a satirical parable about European and Russian history, the myth of progress, and the futility of war.This ingenious novel, described by critics as a coda to his bestselling Laurus, is presented as a chronicle of an island from medieval to modern times. The island is not on the map, but it is real beyond doubt. It cannot be found in history books, yet the events are painfully recognizable. The monastic chroniclers dutifully narrate events they witness: quests for power, betrayals, civil wars, pandemics, droughts, invasions, innovations, and revolutions. The entries mostly seem objective, but at least one monk simultaneously drafts and hides a “true” history, to be discovered centuries later. And why has someone snipped out a key prophesy about the island’s fate?These chronicles receive commentary today from an elderly couple who are the island’s former rulers. Prince Parfeny and Princess Ksenia are truly extraordinary: they are now 347 years old. Eyewitnesses to much of their island’s turbulent history, they offer sharp-eyed observations on the changing flow of time and their people’s persistent delusions. Why is the royal couple still alive? Is there a chance that an old prophecy comes to pass and two righteous persons save the island from catastrophe?In the tradition of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, Julian Barnes’s A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, and Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, Vodolazkin is at his best recasting history, in all its hubris and horror, by finding the humor in its absurdity. For readers with an appetite for more than a dry, rational, scientific view of what motivates, divides, and unites people, A History of the Island conjures a world still suffused with mystical powers.

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In a culture that prizes keeping one’s options open, making commitments offers something more valuable. The consumerism and instant gratification of “liquid modernity” feed a general reluctance to make commitments, a refusal to be pinned down for the long term. Consider the decline of three forms of commitment that involve giving up options: marriage, military service, and monastic life. Yet increasing numbers of people question whether unprecedented freedom might be leading to less flourishing, not more. They are dissatisfied with an atomized way of life that offers endless choices of goods, services, and experiences but undermines ties of solidarity and mutuality. They yearn for more heroic virtues, more sacrificial commitments, more comprehensive visions of the individual and common good. It turns out that the American Founders were right: the Creator did endow us with an unalienable right of liberty. But he has endowed us with something else as well, a gift that is equally unalienable: desire for unreserved commitment of all we have and are. Our liberty is given us so that we in turn can freely dedicate ourselves to something greater. Ultimately, to take a leap of commitment, even without knowing where one will land, is the way to a happiness worth everything. On this theme: - Lydia S. Dugdale asks what happened to the Hippocratic Oath in modern medicine. - Caitrin Keiper looks at competing vows in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. - Kelsey Osgood, an Orthodox Jew, asks why lifestyle discipline is admired in sports but not religion. - Wendell Berry says being on the side of love does not allow one to have enemies. - Phil Christman spoofs the New York Times Vows column. - Andreas Knapp tells why he chose poverty. - Norann Voll recounts the places a vow of obedience took her. - Carino Hodder says chastity is for everyone, not just nuns. - Dori Moody revisits her grandparents’ broken but faithful marriage. - Randall Gauger, a Bruderhof pastor, finds that lifelong vows make faithfulness possible. - King-Ho Leung looks at vows, oaths, promises, and covenants in the Bible. Also in the issue: - A young Black pastor reads Clarence Jordan today. - Activists discuss the pro-life movement after Roe and Dobbs. - Children learn from King Arthur, Robin Hood, and the occasional cowboy. - Original poetry by Ned Balbo - Reviews of Montgomery and Biklé’s What Your Food Ate, Mohsin Hamid’s The Last White Man, and Bonnie Kristian’s Untrustworthy - A profile of Sadhu Sundar Singh Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to apply their faith to the challenges we face. Each issue includes in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art.

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How did violence become OK? And is there any way back? At some point between George Floyd’s killing on May 25 and the invasion of the US Capitol on January 6, America’s consensus against political violence crumbled. Before 2020, almost everyone agreed that it should be out of bounds. Now, many are ready to justify such violence – at least when it is their side breaking windows or battling police officers. Something significant seems to have slipped. Is there any way back? As Christians, we need to consider what guilt we bear, with the rise of a decidedly unchristian “Christian nationalism” that historically has deep roots in American Christian culture. But shouldn’t we also be asking ourselves what a truly Christian stance might look like, one that reflects Jesus’ blessings on the peacemakers, the merciful, and the meek? Oscar Romero, when accused of preaching revolutionary violence, responded: “We have never preached violence, except the violence of love, which left Christ nailed to a cross.” If we take Jesus’ example and his call to nonviolence at face value, we’re left with all kinds of interesting questions: What about policing? What about the military? What about participating in government? This issue of Plough addresses some of these questions and explores what a life lived according to love rather than violence might look like. In this issue: - Anthony M. Barr revisits James Baldwin’s advice about undoing racism. - Gracy Olmstead describes welcoming the baby she did not expect during a pandemic. - Patrick Tomassi debates nonviolence with Portland’s anarchists and Proud Boys. - Scott Beauchamp advises on what not to ask war veterans. - Rachel Pieh Jones reveals what Muslims have taught her about prayer. - Eberhard Arnold argues that Christian nonviolence is more than pacifism. - Stanley Hauerwas presents a vision of church you’ve never seen in practice. - Andrea Grosso Ciponte graphically portrays the White Rose student resistance to Nazism. - Zito Madu illuminates rap’s role in escaping the violence of poverty. - Springs Toledo recounts his boxing match with an undefeated professional. You’ll also find: - An interview with poet Rhina P. Espaillat - New poems by Catherine Tufariello - Profiles of Anabaptist leader Felix Manz and community founder Lore Weber - Reviews of Marly Youmans’s Charis in the World of Wonders, Judith D. Schwartz’s The Reindeer Chronicles, Chris Lombardi’s I Ain’t Marching Anymore, and Martín Espada’s Floaters Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus’ message into practice and find common cause with others.

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It won’t take you long to see why Jane Tyson Clement’s short stories have become perennial favorites for adults and children alike. Written with a measured beauty that recalls Tolstoy and Tolkien, these tales are rich in allegorical symbolism and evocation of mood. They are infused throughout with the thrill of expectancy, a sense that something new is on the way, and a certainty that God is seeking us, just as we seek him. In an age where cleverness often counts more than substance, Clement’s stories offer a break from all the noise.

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Where can we find peace of heart and mind--with ourselves, with others, and with God? Arnold says most people are looking in the wrong direction. In a culture that bombards us with feel-good-about-yourself spirituality, Seeking Peace is sure to satisfy a deep hunger. There is a peace greater than self-fulfilment, a peace greater than nations no longer at war. But it will demand a relentless pursuit kept up only by hope and courage, vision and commitment. Seeking Peace explores many facets of humankind's ageless search for peace. It plumbs a wealth of spiritual traditions and draws on the wisdom of some exceptional (and some very ordinary) people who have found peace in surprising places. Independent Publisher Book Award winner Foreword Magazine Book of the Year

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A Hundred Days of Carnage, Twenty-Five Years of Rebirth In the space of a hundred days, a million Tutsi in Rwanda were slaughtered by their Hutu neighbors. At the height of the genocide, as men with bloody machetes ransacked her home, Denise Uwimana gave birth to her third son. With the unlikely help of Hutu Good Samaritans, she and her children survived. Her husband and other family members were not as lucky. If this were only a memoir of those chilling days and the long, hard road to personal healing and freedom from her past, it would be remarkable enough. But Uwimana didn’t stop there. Leaving a secure job in business, she devoted the rest of her life to restoring her country by empowering other genocide widows to band together, tell their stories, find healing, and rebuild their lives. The stories she has uncovered through her work and recounted here illustrate the complex and unfinished work of truth-telling, recovery, and reconciliation that may be Rwanda’s lasting legacy. Rising above their nation’s past, Rwanda’s genocide survivors are teaching the world the secret to healing the wound of war and ethnic conflict. Includes 16 pages of color photographs.

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Johann Christoph Arnold, admired by such prominent spiritual and inspirational leaders as Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Cardinal Dolan, Pete Seeger, and many more, offers answers to the question: Why shouldn't growing older be rewarding? Arnold, whose books have helped over a million readers through life's challenges, shows us the spiritual riches that age has to offer. Now in his seventies, Arnold finds himself personally facing the challenges of aging with grace. With a foreword by Cardinal Sean O'Malley, Rich in Years covers the significant topics facing the aging, the elderly, and their family and caregivers: accepting changes, combatting loneliness, and continuing on with purpose and hope. Going beyond mere inspiration, Arnold does not shy away from such difficult topics as coping with dementia, the prospect of dying, and enduring with dignity. Through faith and a true spirituality, he says, we can find acceptance and serenity. Johann Christoph Arnold knows, from decades of pastoral experience, what older people and their caregivers can do to make the most of the journey of aging. In this book, he shares stories of people who, in growing older, have found both peace and purpose. Praising Rich in Years, Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, writes, In simple language, Arnold gives hope-filled insights into the trials of aging for people of all ages. Pastor Arnold's book challenges those rich in years to also remain rich in faith.

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People will see themselves in these stories about real men and women overcoming adversity with prayer. Cries from the Heart answers a specific spiritual hunger millions share – a longing for a personal connection to the divine. In times of crisis, all of us reach for someone, or something, greater than ourselves. Some call it prayer. Others just do it. For many, it’s often like talking to a wall. People are looking for assurance that someone hears them when they cry out in their despair, loneliness, or frustration. The last thing they need is another book telling them how to pray or what to say, holding out religion like a good-luck charm. So instead of theorizing or preaching, Johann Christoph Arnold tells stories about real men and women dealing with adversity. Their difficulties – which range from extreme to quite ordinary and universal – resonate with readers, offering a challenge, but also comfort and encouragement. People will see themselves in these glimpses of anguish, triumph, and peace.

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Raising a child has never been more challenging. If you ever doubt yourself or wonder if it is worth the heartache, read this little book. If you worry that your family will not weather life’s storms or if you fear losing your children to the prevailing culture, read it again. Why Children Matter offers biblical wisdom and commonsense advice on how to hold a family together and raise children with character. Johann Christoph Arnold, a father, grandfather and pastor, has written eleven books, including three on parenting and children’s education. As the fabric of family and society is torn apart, this book offers up concrete steps to encourage parents faced with difficult child-rearing decisions.

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There’s a saying that each child is a thought in the mind of God. But even if we believe this, and approach the children entrusted to us with the reverence that such a belief ought to instill, we may often feel helpless – whether in the face of a two-year-old’s tantrum or a teenager’s silence. In this little book, two fathers (themselves a father and son) share their thoughts on the essence of bringing up children. What’s more, the authors are the Blumhardts, whose huge contribution to 20th century theology, especially Karl Barth, is now being more widely recognized.

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Though most of Jane Tyson Clement’s poems remained hidden in private notebooks during her lifetime, the few that traveled beyond her hands were widely admired and drew critical acclaim. Now, with this first comprehensive anthology of her work, the public can at last discover this gifted poet and give her the audience she deserves. Evoking comparisons to such better-known contemporaries as Jane Kenyon, Wendell Berry, and Denise Levertov, Clement is direct and understated. Even when technically sophisticated, her poetry speaks with a familiar voice and draws on accessible images from the natural world. Still, these are no mere “nature poems.” In exploring the varied emotions of life – of love, longing, and loss; memory, sacrifice, and desire; struggle and frustration, joy and resolve – they reveal the tireless seeking of a generous and honest heart and beckon the reader down new avenues of seeing and hearing.

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An account of the Bruderhof community’s faith and the scriptural basis for its members’ beliefs and practices. From the New Testament onward, Christians have testified to their faith through the written word. In that tradition, the Bruderhof, an international, intentional Christian community movement, published Foundations of Our Faith and Calling in 2012. It is a public account of the community’s faith and practice and describes tenets and orders common to all Bruderhof communities. All members took part in drafting, revising, and eventually unanimously approving the text.

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A pastor’s frank advice for Christians who want to bring the gospel to their neighbors. Gold Medal Winner, 2016 Illumination Book Award in ministry/mission, Independent Publishers How can Christians represent the love of Christ to their neighbors (let alone people in foreign countries) in an age when Christianity has earned a bad name from centuries of intolerance and cultural imperialism? Is it enough to love and serve them? Can you win their trust without becoming one of them? Can you be a missional Christian without a church? This provocative book, based on a recently uncovered collection of 100-year-old letters from a famous pastor to his nephew, a missionary in China, will upend pretty much everyone’s assumptions about what it means to give witness to Christ. Blumhardt challenges us to find something of God in every person, to befriend people and lead them to faith without expecting them to become like us, and to discover where Christ is already at work in the world. This is truly good news: No one on the planet is outside the love of God. At a time when Christian mission has too often been reduced to social work or proselytism, this book invites us to reclaim the heart of Jesus’ great commission, quietly but confidently incarnating the love of Christ and trusting him to do the rest.

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A lavishly illustrated, biblically faithful yet nuanced, and fun reimagining of one of the greatest stories of all time.Digging deeper than the Sunday school tale of cuddly animals on Noah’s ark, the story follows the biblical text and illumines Noah’s relationship with God, his wife, family, nature, and humanity. Ludy’s world-class artwork lets people see, as though for the first time, the beauty within this story - revealing a clearer picture of the nature and character of God and his relationship to humankind. It’s immersive and epic in scale and scope. The wordless format invites conversation and storytelling, key building blocks of literacy. And as with Ludy’s previous books, this story will appeal to adults and children alike, and his signature mouse Squeakers appears hidden on every page.

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In these firsthand accounts of the early church, the spirit of Pentecost burns with prophetic force through the fog enveloping the modern church. A clear and vibrant faith lives on in these writings, providing a guide for Christians today. Its stark simplicity and revolutionary fervor will stun those lulled by conventional Christianity. The Early Christians is a topically arranged collection of primary sources. It includes extra-biblical sayings of Jesus and excerpts from Origen, Tertullian, Polycarp, Clement of Alexandria, Justin, Irenaeus, Hermas, Ignatius, and others. Equally revealing material from pagan contemporaries – critics, detractors, and persecutors – is included as well.

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Is there a better way than capitalism? A much-cited recent poll found that more young Americans have a positive view of socialism than of capitalism. There’s a sense of newly opened possibilities: Might this be the moment for a mass movement of solidarity to overthrow the tyranny of concentrated power and wealth? But what exactly is this cause? Socialism’s champions know how to take effective whacks at capitalism, but diagnosis is not yet the cure. This issue of Plough springs from a conviction that there is a better answer beyond capitalism and socialism, a freely chosen life of sharing and caring that overcomes economic exploitation, a way of life that is both thoroughly practical and independent of the state. This vision is much older than Adam Smith and Karl Marx; it lies at the heart of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and throughout the New Testament, as well as in the writings of the Old Testament prophets. It is exemplified by the communal life of the first church in Jerusalem, in which “all who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need” (Acts 2:44–45). Also in this issue: poetry by Jane Tyson Clement; reviews of books by Jennifer Berry Hawes, Robert Macfarlane, Emily Bazelon, and John Connell; and art and photography by Wassily Kandinsky, N. C. Wyeth, Deborah Batt, Kari Nielsen, Chris Arnade, William Morris, Hilzías Salazar, Amedeo Modigliani, Benjamin Meader, Bianca Berends, Elise Palmigiani, and Danny Burrows. Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus’ message into practice and find common cause with others.

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The dramatic story of the genesis of the Anabaptist movement, told directly through the letters of its leaders and other primary documents. The 170 letters and documents in this volume portray how Conrad Grebel, a bright young Swiss patriot, became a fervent, influential leader of the sixteenth-century Anabaptist movement. The editor calls the book “a drama with five acts, prologue, and epilogue” with a cast of 107 characters. The main characters are Grebel himself and Huldrych Zwingli, the vicar at the Grossmünster in Zurich. The climax of the drama comes in January 1525 when Grebel performs the first rebaptisms, signaling the founding of a new church and the rejection of the Anabaptists by Zwingli. “These letters and documents are not published for scholars only,” states the editor, “but for all seekers and believers.” This is the fourth volume in the Classics of the Radical Reformation, a series of Anabaptist and Free Church documents translated and annotated under the direction of the Institute of Mennonite Studies.

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