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With the concept of socialism back in mainstream conversations and increasing numbers of Christians unhappy with “Sunday Christianity,” it’s time to give the lifestyle of Jesus’ first followers another look. This issue of Plough Quarterly does just that, profiling intentional Christian communities past and present and gleaning wisdom on the daily practicalities and pitfalls of communal living from those with years of experience in following Jesus together. Hear from Stanley Hauerwas, Rick Warren, Leonardo Boff, Chiara Lubich, C. S. Lewis, Jean Vanier, Henri J. M. Nouwen, Eberhard Arnold, and D. L. Mayfield. Then there’s new poetry, book reviews, a children’s story by Kwon Jong-saeng, and world-class art by Salvador Dali, Wassily Kandinsky, Juan Rizi, Marianne Stokes, Francisco de Zurbarán, Dong-Sung Kim, Christian Schussele, Gustave Caillebotte. 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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One of Germany’s literary giants, Ernst Emil Wiechert (1887-1950) was thrown into Buchenwald concentration camp for publicly backing anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemöller. His final novel, published posthumously, deals with the aftermath of the Holocaust – how the survivors, both victims and perpetrators, seek healing and redemption as they pick up the shattered pieces of their world. Evoking comparisons to the Russian greats Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, Wiechert displays an uncommon depth of insight into the human condition at its most degenerate and it ennobling best – an understanding born of his own suffering and quest for rebirth. His novel is peopled with rich and complex characters and charged with both violent feelings and spiritual hunger. First published in 1950 as Missa Sine Nomine (Mass Without a Name), Tidings deserves its place among the masterpieces of European literature.

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To give hope in uncertain times, this issue of Plough profiles people who have lived courageously. In unsettling times such as these, being told to “take courage” can sound like a grim joke. Yet courage is precisely what we’re in need of today: courage to stand by the truth, and courage to stand by the gospel’s claim that everyone belongs to God, because Jesus has overcome the world. To inspire such courage – and to guard against a failure of nerve or of imagination – this issue of Plough highlights people who have lived courageously. In this issue: • Chinese dissident Yu Jie looks at the challenges facing the church in China. • Cuban pastor Raúl Suárez reveals how encounters with Christians thawed Fidel Castro’s atheism. • Plough pays tribute to NYPD Det. Steven McDonald, who forgave the young shooter who paralyzed him. • Maureen Swinger tells how a young man with severe disabilities became an exceptional teacher. • Evangelical activist D. L. Mayfield finds an unsettling role model in Dorothy Day. • Comic artist Julian Peters illustrates T. S. Eliot’s poem “Little Gidding.” Plus: • Insights on courage from Teresa of Avila, George Bernard Shaw, Meister Eckhart, and Mother Teresa • Original poetry by Christopher Zimmerman • Reviews of Martin Scorsese’s Silence, Mark Sundeen’s The Unsettlers, and Craig Greenfield’s Subversive Jesus • Profiles of Thomas Müntzer, Traudl Wallbrecher, and the Sisters of Life • Art and photography by Nikolay Ge, Boris Ivanovich Kopylov, Taisia Afonina, Wayne Forte, Dave Beckerman, Luca Sartoni, Wu Guanzhong, and Sadao Watanabe 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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What happens when an abortion survivor finds her birth mother, who never knew her daughter was alive? Now in paperback with a new epilogue by Melissa Ohden and her birth mother.Winner, 2018 Christianity Today Book Award, CT WomenSilver Medal Winner, 2018 Illumination Book Awards, Biography & MemoirMelissa Ohden is fourteen when she learns she is the survivor of a botched abortion. In this intimate memoir she details for the first time her search for her biological parents, and her own journey from anger and shame to faith and empowerment.After a decade-long search Melissa finally locates her birth father and writes to extend forgiveness, only to learn that he has died without answering her burning questions. Melissa becomes a mother herself in the very hospital where she was aborted. This experience transforms her attitude toward women who have had abortions, as does the miscarriage of her only son and the birth of a second daughter with complex health issues. But could anything prepare her for the day she finally meets her birth mother and hears her side of their story?This intensely personal story of love and redemption illumines the powerful bond between mother and child that can overcome all odds.

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The gospel teaches that every human is sacred. Refugee children and Islamist terrorists. Police officers and young African Americans. Unborn babies, always, and also abortionists. Orange-haired casino owners, former First Ladies, progressive hipsters, prosperity-gospel televangelists, members of Congress, Confederate-flag-waving white nationalists? Sacred. This absurd claim is at the heart of the gospel. Each person is created in the image and likeness of God. Each is someone for whom Jesus died. And if this is true, we have much work to do. The writers in this issue may not agree on the best ways and means, but each challenges us to consider the implications of this gospel of life that makes no exceptions. Also in this issue: -- A former asylum seeker returns to Iraq to stand with Christians on the run from ISIS. -- Shane Claiborne tells us why abolishing the death penalty is the church’s business. -- Joel Salatin, America’s most famous farmer, reveals what pigs can teach us about the glory of God. -- John Dear reports on the Vatican’s historic turn toward nonviolence. -- Erna Albertz tells Richard Dawkins how her sister with Down syndrome can help him. -- Gun owners respond to gun violence with a fresh take on “swords into plowshares.” -- Ron Sider looks at the consistently pro-life witness of the early church. -- A hospice nurse reflects on euthanasia and the value of being a burden. -- Jason Landsel asks what made MohammadMuhammad Ali great. Then there’s new poetry, book reviews, a children’s story, insights from Pope Francis and George MacDonald, and art by Pawel Kuczynski, Xenia Hausner, William H. Johnson, Käthe Kollwitz, and Deidre Scherer. 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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Pain is inevitable. Almost everyone is living with some kind of pain, whether the cause is physical, emotional, financial, social, or spiritual. A desire to escape it has led thousands of Canadians to seek euthanasia, and countless others into opioid addiction. What can we learn from people around the world for whom pain is a fact of life? How can we help others bear their pain? How might the wisdom of earlier eras help us? What answers does faith offer? On this theme: - Navid Kermani visits farming Madagascar battling drought caused by climate change. - Benjamin Crosby asks why churches haven’t spoken out against Canada’s euthanasia experiment. - Tom Holland sums up the history of pain in two artworks and three lives. - Lisabeth Button shares correspondence with a friend succumbing to Alzheimer’s. - Rick Warren demonstrated how our own suffering can lead to our best ministry. - Wang Yi, an imprisoned Chinese pastor, calls churches to face repression boldly. - Leah Libresco Sargeant profiles nuns providing palliative care. - Eleanor Parker considers an Anglo-Saxon poem, “The Dream of the Rood.” - Brewer Eberly tells what he learned from an insufferable patient. - Randall Gauger, who lost his son to cancer, finds lessons in C. S. Lewis. Also in the issue: - A report on the resurgence of bison by Nathan Beacom - Original poetry by Sofia M. Starnes and Julia Nemirovskaya - An excerpt from a new graphic novel, By Water - Reviews of Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, James K. A. Smith’s How to Inhabit Time, and Nick Cave’s and Seán O’Hagan’s Faith, Hope and Carnage. - Readings from Eduardo Galeano, Felicity of Carthage, Anselm of Canterbury, Julian of Norwich, Martin Luther, and J. Heinrich Arnold 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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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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In a society uprooted by two world wars, industrialization, and dehumanizing technology, a revolutionary farmer turns to poetry to reconnect his people to the land and one another. A farmer, poet, activist, pastor, and mystic, Britts (1917–1949) has been called a British Wendell Berry. His story is no romantic agrarian elegy, but a life lived in the thick of history. As his country plunged headlong into World War II, he joined an international pacifist community, the Bruderhof, and was soon forced to leave Europe for South America. Amidst these great upheavals, his response – to root himself in faith, to dedicate himself to building community, to restore the land he farmed, and to use his gift with words to turn people from their madness – speaks forcefully into our time. In an age still wracked by racism, nationalism, materialism, and ecological devastation, the life he chose and the poetry he composed remain a prophetic challenge.

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Longlisted for the 2023 Dublin Literary AwardWinner of the Ivo Andrić Grand Prize for best novel of 2022From the INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING AUTHOR Eugene Vodolazkin – winner of the BIG BOOK AWARD, the LEO TOLSTOY YASNAYA POLYANA AWARD, and the READ RUSSIA AWARDFor fans of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Umberto EcoVodolazkin’s new novel Brisbane is “a sophisticated and frequently moving study in dissonance, dedicated to pointing out contrasts between art and life, beauty and decay, intention and outcome. And, yes, between Ukraine and Russia” (Booklist).Brisbane is a richly layered, universal coming-of-age story of a musical prodigy robbed of his talent by an incurable disease who attempts to overcome his mortality. After Gleb Yanovsky, a celebrated guitarist, is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at age fifty, he permits a writer, Sergei Nesterov, to pen his biography. For years, they meet regularly as Gleb recounts the life he’s lived thus far: a difficult childhood in Kyiv, his formative musical studies in St. Petersburg, and his later years in Munich, where he lives with his wife and meets a thirteen-year-old virtuoso whom he embraces as his own daughter. In a mischievous and tender account, Gleb recalls a personal story of a lifetime quest for meaning, and how the burden of success changes with age.Expanding the literary universe spun in his earlier novels, Vodolazkin explores music and fame, heritage and belonging, time and memory in this beautifully-wrought and relevant tale that carefully unravel into a puzzle: Whose story is it – the subject's or the writer's? Are art and love really no match for death? Is memory a reliable narrator? In Brisbane, the city of our dreams, as in music, Gleb hopes he’s found a path to eternity – and a way to stop the clock.

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"Trocmé has the prophetic gift of bypassing doctrinal fluff and cutting to the heart of Jesus’ message: a stark call for repentance, love, and socio-economic change. Read him with caution: this book may change your life." —Donald Kraybill, author, The Upside-Down KingdomAndré Trocmé of Le Chambon is famous for his role in saving thousands of Jews from the Nazis during World War II. But his bold deeds did not spring from a void. They were rooted in his understanding of Jesus’ way of nonviolence – an understanding that gave him the remarkable insights contained in this long out-of-print classic.In this book, you’ll encounter a Jesus you may have never met before – a Jesus who not only calls for spiritual transformation, but for practical changes that answer the most perplexing political, economic, and social problems of our time.

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When Blumhardt, a nineteenth-century pastor from the Black Forest, agreed to counsel a tormented woman in his parish, all hell broke loose – literally. But that was only the beginning of the drama that ensued. Zuendel’s account, available here in English for the first time, provides a rare glimpse into how the eternal fight between the forces of good and evil plays itself out in the lives of the most ordinary men and women. More than that, it reminds us that those forces still surround us today, whether we are awake to them or not.

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The most accessible Kierkegaard reader ever “In a culture awash in religious silliness, Kierkegaard’s bracing metaphors expose our mediocrities and energize us with a clarified sense of what it means to follow Jesus.” –Eugene Peterson, author, Subversive Spirituality Provocations contains a little of everything from Kierkegaard’s prodigious output: his famously cantankerous (yet wryly humorous) attacks on what he calls the “mediocre shell” of conventional Christianity, his brilliantly pithy parables, his wise (and witty) sayings. Most significantly, it brings to a new generation a man whose writings pare away the fluff of modern spirituality to reveal the basics of the Christ-centered life: decisiveness, obedience, and recognition of the truth.

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One of the most famous passages in modern literature reimagined in a graphic novel adaptation. Two acclaimed Russian artists have collaborated to create an original graphic novel adaptation of the most famous chapters of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov: “Rebellion” and “The Grand Inquisitor.” Ivan Karamazov, after protesting a God who allows innocents to suffer, recites for his brother Alyosha a poem he has written about Jesus’ reappearance on earth during the Spanish Inquisition. One of the most famous passages in modern literature, this work raises important questions about free will, human nature, religion, power, and the radically subversive way of Jesus.

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To find out why Pope Francis is making Oscar Romero a saint, read the words that cost him his life.”A church that does not provoke crisis, a gospel that does not disturb, a word of God that does not touch the concrete sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed – what kind of gospel is that?”Three short years transformed El Salvador’s Archbishop Oscar Romero from a defender of the status quo into one of the most outspoken voices of the oppressed. An assassin’s bullet ended his life, but his message lives on. In March 2018 Pope Francis announced that the Catholic Church would canonize Oscar Romero, acknowledging that he is indeed a saint who was martyred for proclaiming the gospel, and that the political and social implications of that message, which so scandalized the powerful, flowed directly from Romero’s faithfulness to the teachings of Jesus.These selections from Romero’s diaries and radio broadcasts invite each of us to align our own lives with the way of Jesus that lifts up the poor, welcomes the broken, wins over enemies, and transforms the history of entire nations.

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Lightning and forest fires could strike terror in primitive humans, yet they also cherished fire as a life-giving gift from the gods. Eberhard Arnold surveys the symbolism of light and fire in the Bible, literature, and history to illuminate our love/fear relationship with God. The Holy Spirit, like fire, is a two-edged sword: it brings the blazing wrath of God’s judgment, consuming all that is dead and cold in us, but also the radiant warmth of his love, mercy, and redemption. Though Inner Land was not explicitly critical of the Nazi regime, it nevertheless attacked the spirits that animated German society at the time: racism and bigotry, nationalistic fervor, mass hysteria, and materialism. The chapter “Light and Fire,” in particular, was a deliberate public statement at a decisive moment of Germany’s history. Eberhard Arnold sent Hitler a copy on November 9, 1933. A week later the Gestapo raided the community and ransacked the author’s study. After this first raid, Eberhard Arnold asked two friends to pack the already printed signatures of Inner Land in watertight metal boxes and bury them at night for safekeeping. They later dug up Inner Land and smuggled it out of the country, publishing it in Lichtenstein after Eberhard Arnold’s death. The fourth volume of five in Inner Land, Fire and Spirit contains two chapters, “Light and Fire” and “The Holy Spirit.” About Innerland: 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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Main Description: This issue opens with the story of Melania and her real estate-magnate husband, who decide to divest themselves of their entire wealth. These early Christians, who sold off their many estates and freed eight thousand slaves, were only exceptional in the amount they gave away. Jesus, after all, had advised a rich man, “Go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor.” And he emphatically warned that you cannot serve two masters: you cannot serve God and money. What does that mean for Christians today, in a society and economy premised on the accumulation of capital? How can we resist and subvert the power of money? On this theme: - Clare Coffey looks at how multilevel marketing commodifies friendship. - Sharon Rose Christner describes what happens when a Vatican palace becomes a homeless shelter. - Alastair Roberts writes in praise of Mary of Bethany’s extravagant love. - A photojournalist asks what’s left of the Cuban Revolution seventy years after it began. - Jack Bell revisits William Cobbett’s spirited defense of the vanishing British commons. - Maria Weiss finds pain and friendship in the forced community of a leper colony. - Maureen Swinger reveals the joys and pitfalls of owning twenty-two cars (collectively). - Robert Lockridge describes what he’s learned running a pay-as-you-can café. Also in the issue: - The winning poems in the 2023 Rhina Espaillat Poetry Award contest - An excerpt from Eugene Vodolazkin’s new novel, A History of the Island - Reviews of Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s Thin Places, Lydia Millet’s Dinosaurs, and Jennifer Banks’s Natality - Readings on Christianity and money from Eberhard Arnold, Peter Riedemann, Nicolai Berdyaev, Basil of Caesarea, Maria Skobtsova, C. S. Lewis, and Dorothy Day 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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In welcoming refugees from Syria, European countries are showing the world what mercy looks like. But mercy, surely, doesn’t stop there. What if the United States followed Germany’s lead and offered mercy to the throngs of Central Americans who seek to cross its southern border? What does mercy look like in relation to the 2.2 million people being held in US prisons and jails? Or the working poor unable to adequately care for their families? Or the millions of children paying the bitter price of the sexual revolution and its erosion of lifelong marriage? The diverse contributors to this issue of Plough Quarterly focus on how people of faith, by extending forgiveness and mercy, are transforming lives – and perhaps even the course of world events. Perspectives from Philip Yancey, Gerhard Müller, Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz, Charles E. Moore, Eva Mozes Kor, Leo Tolstoy, Charles Williams, Hashim Garrett, Michael Manning, Kim Hyun-sik, Graham Greene, Julian of Norwich, and Eberhard Arnold are sure to stimulate reflection and discussion. And as always, the magazine is illustrated with world-class art by the likes of Ferdinand Hodler, Camille Pissarro, Rembrandt, Fra Angelico, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Fritz von Uhde, Jon Redmond, Balázs Boda, Allan Rohan Crite, 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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The contributors to this issue of Plough Quarterly focus on what it means to bear witness to the gospel. Peggy Gish reports on the church’s response to Boko Haram in Nigeria, where thousands of Christians have been killed. But in addition to witnesses who die for their faith, there are those who live for it, such as the families of those who died in Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. And in the wake of the US Supreme Court’s move to redefine marriage, we can’t talk about Christian witness without considering marriage and sexuality. With insights from Russell Moore, N. T. Wright, Amy Carmichael, Pope Francis, George Fox, Ivan Illich, Julia Chaney-Moss, Nathaniel Peters, Channah Ben-Eliezer, Chico Fajardo-Heflin, Les Isaac, Paul Sanders, and Robert Paeglow, this issue is sure to stimulate reflection and discussion. And as if that weren’t enough, you also get world-class art by Caravaggio, August Macke, Eric Drooker, Denis Barsukov, Pablo Picasso, George Tooker, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Janice Earley, John Singer Sargent, Paul Sanders, Paul Klee, Ghislaine Howard, and others. 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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In an age of distraction, this issue of Plough Quarterly looks at inwardness – how sustainable human community and social activism must be rooted in the spiritual life. How much of your day is spent in reality, and how much in a fake world? We’ve learned that screen time is bad for you, too much media consumption damages your heart, and Facebook can make you mentally ill. We’re aware of the mind-altering power of advertising, the dehumanizing passions of our polarized politics, and the fact that millions of us have learned to multitask while watching footage of refugees drowning. But what are we to do about it? If this fake world is invading our souls, it’s in our souls that we must find the cure. Only a return to inwardness can bring distracted moderns back to Jesus and to constructive work for his kingdom. Here activists may object: Isn’t it the height of selfishness to retreat into our interior life when we ought to be out saving starving children? Yet Christians through the ages have insisted that inwardness is crucial to the life of discipleship. It’s what keeps us from falling for demagogues and false gospels, from wasting life on superficialities, and from ignoring our neighbor. In fact, throughout history it has often been the mystics who were most active in serving others. In true Plough fashion, this issue brings together a colorful cast of examples: from medieval Beguines and Benedictines to Gerard Manley Hopkins, Simone Weil, and Fannie Lou Hamer, to contemporary voices like Robert Cardinal Sarah, Johann Christoph Arnold, and three persecuted Syrian priests. These lives offer us glimpses of the real world from which our fake world seeks to distract us, and can guide us in our own refusal to conform. Also in this issue: • Poetry from Gerard Manley Hopkins and Malcolm Guite • Insights on inwardness from Meister Eckhart, Eberhard Arnold, Marguerite Porete, Simone Weil, and Isaac Penington • A forum on the Benedict Option with Rod Dreher, Ross Douthat, Jacqueline C. Rivers, and Randall Gauger • Artwork by Jason Landsel, Bruce Herman, Jane Chapin, Graham Berry, Fra Angelico, Francisco de Zurbarán, Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, Matthew J. Cutter, John August Swanson, Vittorio Matteo Corcos, and Leon Dabo 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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What happens when we let the living God into our practical lives? Everyone is looking for deeper meaning in their lives and for personal peace as well as peace for all. But are we ready for what can happen when we invite the living God to rule our personal lives and transform us and our society? Where religion, self-help, and the political ideologies of left and right have failed us, God enters with power to break the grip of money, violence, and tribalism and bring about a new life of justice and fellowship. This book is not for those who look to spirituality as an escape from reality. But for those who hunger for change that is genuine and tangible, for a personal peace of heart that is inseparable from justice and peace between nations, Arnold’s words will be a rousing encouragement to expect more than you ever dared hope. Experiencing God is the third volume in Inner Land: A Guide into the Heart of the Gospel

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How close do we dare to get to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount? It’s widely considered the key to understanding who Jesus was and what mission he strove to fulfill. For two millennia, countless people have wrestled to apply it, from Augustine to Luther to Tolstoy to Gandhi. Alongside much wisdom, there has been much evasion, prompting Jewish theologian Pinchas Lapide’s tart comment: “The history of the impact of the Sermon on the Mount can largely be described in terms of an attempt to domesticate everything in it that is shocking, demanding, and uncompromising, and render it harmless.” There’s good reason for this: Jesus’ teaching is deeply disruptive. It demands a top-to-bottom reordering of life, work, and social relations, starting with radical economic sharing, nonresistance and love of enemies, lifelong marriage, and unconditional forgiveness. This issue of Plough Quarterly focuses on people willing to get their hands dirty living out the Sermon on the Mount. Their ranks include Dorothy Day, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, John Wesley, Henri Nouwen, Mother Teresa, and others you’ll meet in these pages. Their insights are not to be consumed passively. Rather, they should inspire and equip each of us to roll up our sleeves and get to work. Bold, hope-filled, and down-to-earth, Plough Quarterly features thought-provoking articles, commentary, interviews, short fiction, book reviews, poetry and artwork to inspire everyday faith and action. Each issue brings together essential voices from many traditions to give you fresh insights on a core theme such as peacemaking, biblical justice, children and family, building community, man and woman, nature and the environment, nonviolence, or simple living. Starting from the conviction that the teachings and example of Jesus can transform and renew our world, it aims to apply them to all aspects of life, seeking common ground with all people of goodwill regardless of creed.

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What should we do with enemies?Jesus challenges us to love our enemies. In today’s swirl of hatemongering, political polarization, and online nastiness, even Christians have skirted this command or given it up as impossible or foolish. What does it really mean to love our enemies? And how might our lives and our world change if we did? In this issue we apply these tough questions to real situations, and hear from people who have put this command into practice in some of the toughest circumstances.On this theme: - Can we afford to love our enemies in a cancel culture?- What sort of enemies did Jesus expect us to love? - The problem with "love the sinner, hate the sin"- Channeling outrage while working with children displaced by war- What Coptic Christians know about praying for their persecutors- Two incarcerated friends defy a racist prison culture.- What about mental illness, when your mind becomes your enemy? - Students find ways to debate tough issues constructively.- A Russian Christian speaks out against the war in Ukraine.Also in the issue:- Maria Novella De Luca photographs Algerian women demining the Sahara.- Dana Wiser remembers civil rights activist Staughton Lynd.- Zena Hitz asks what we’d do with our time if we weren’t so busy.- Kathleen A. Mulhern gives advice for keeping the faith afterhours.- Susannah Black Roberts celebrates the life and example of Tim Keller.- Nathan Beacom call for reestablishing Lyceums in working-class towns.- Maureen swinger recounts the exploits of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty.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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A new generation of teachers envisions a liberal arts education that is good for everyone. Why would anyone study the liberal arts? It’s no secret that the liberal arts have fallen out of favor and are struggling to prove their relevance. The cost of college pushes students to majors and degrees with more obvious career outcomes. A new cohort of educators isn’t taking this lying down. They realize they need to reimagine and rearticulate what a liberal arts education is for, and what it might look like in today’s world. In this book, they make an honest reckoning with the history and current state of the liberal arts. You may have heard – or asked – some of these questions yourself: Aren’t the liberal arts a waste of time? How will reading old books and discussing abstract ideas help us feed the hungry, liberate the oppressed and reverse climate change? Actually, we first need to understand what we mean by truth, the good life, and justice. Aren’t the liberal arts racist? The “great books” are mostly by privileged dead white males. Despite these objections, for centuries the liberal arts have been a resource for those working for a better world. Here’s how we can benefit from ancient voices while expanding the conversation. Aren’t the liberal arts liberal? Aren’t humanities professors mostly progressive ideologues who indoctrinate students? In fact, the liberal arts are an age-old tradition of moral formation, teaching people to think for themselves and learn from other perspectives. Aren’t the liberal arts elitist? Hasn’t humanities education too often excluded poor people and minorities? While that has sometime been the case, these educators map out well-proven ways to include people of all social and educational backgrounds. Aren’t the liberal arts a bad career investment? I really just want to get a well-paying job and not end up as an overeducated barista. The numbers – and the people hiring – tell a different story. In this book, educators mount a vigorous defense of the humanist tradition, but also chart a path forward, building on their tradition’s strengths and addressing its failures. In each chapter, dispatches from innovators describe concrete ways this is being put into practice, showing that the liberal arts are not only viable today, but vital to our future. *** Contributors include Emily Auerbach, Nathan Beacom, Jeffrey Bilbro, Joseph Clair, Margarita Mooney Clayton, Lydia Dugdale, Brad East, Don Eben, Becky L. Eggimann, Rachel Griffis, David Henreckson, Zena Hitz, David Hsu, L. Gregory Jones, Brandon McCoy, Peter Mommsen, Angel Adams Parham, Steve Prince, John Mark Reynolds, Erin Shaw, Anne Snyder, Sean Sword, Noah Toly, Jonathan Tran, and Jessica Hooten Wilson

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