Readers' Choice Award Winner Think of the little girls you know: your daughter, a niece, a friend's child. Then think about this: little girls are tossed away every day. All over the world, women and girls face troubles such as starvation, displacement, illiteracy, sexual exploitation and abuse. In fact, statistics show that the world's most oppressed people are overwhelmingly female. Moved by the plight of these neglected girls, advocates Kay Marshall Strom and Michele Rickett took a trip across continents to interview girls and to partner with ministries working to help females in some of the most difficult places in the world. These pages hold those girls' stories: stories of deep pain and suffering, inspiring courage, and incredible hope. They are the stories of girls who have discovered their value in God's eyes, in the midst of cultures that have rejected them. They are stories of rescue and redemption by God working through compassionate people-people like you. These pages might hold pieces of your story as well, as the authors invite you to pray and speak on behalf of the millions of women and girls who still need to know how much they're worth. For each of the five sections of the book-physical suffering, education, sexual protection, prison and war, and spiritual life-the authors provide specific, practical action steps and prayer points that allow you to get involved as God leads. This expanded edition includes updated statistics throughout and a discussion guide to accompany each section of the book, as well as a new preface.

The Rhetoric of Operation Rescue is a comprehensive examination of the rhetoric of Operation Rescue, a pro-life social protest group (prominent between 1988 and 1992) that orchestrated blockades of clinics where abortions are performed. Steiner examines how the group sought to persuade people-primarily conservative evangelical and fundamentalist Christians-to join their ranks, as well as how they sought to use their form of social protest to achieve their public policy goals. In so doing, Steiner explains both the group's initial success (beginning with its 1988 "Siege of Atlanta" protests) and its ultimate failure. More fundamentally, though, Steiner shows how the group appealed to the convictions of conservative evangelical and fundamentalist Christians in the United States. He shows how the rhetoric of Operation Rescue-for those conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists that found it convincing-shaped fundamental understandings of what their Christian faith means, how to practice it in an authentic manner, and how to engage in public dialogue and political activism.

For the past sixty years, the Pentecostal and Charismatic movement has played a major role in Zambia. In this book, Naar Mfundisi-Holloway explains the history of this development and its impact on civic engagement. She opens a discussion on church-state relations and explains how the church presented a channel of hope in the wake of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, despite having a history that eschewed civic engagement. In fact, the pandemic propelled the church to work alongside the state in the fight against the disease. Using interviews and historical analysis, this book provides valuable insight into how Pentecostal and Charismatic churches have effectively engaged matters of civic concern in Zambia dating from colonial times.

This book studies Korean American girls between thirteen and nineteen and their formation with regard to self, gender, and God in the context of Korean American protestant congregational life. It develops a hybrid methodology of de-colonial aims and indigenous research methods, aiming to facilitate transformative life in faith communities.

Foreword INDIES 2021 Finalist for Religion Religious faith reduces the risk of suicide for virtually every American demographic except one: LGBTQ people. Generations of LGBTQ people have been alienated or condemned by Christian communities. It's past time that Christians confronted the ongoing and devastating effects of this legacy. Many LGBTQ people face overwhelming challenges in navigating faith, gender, and sexuality. Christian communities that uphold the traditional sexual ethic often unwittingly make the path more difficult through unexamined attitudes and practices. Drawing on her sociological training and her leadership in the Side B/Revoice conversation, Bridget Eileen Rivera, who founded the popular website Meditations of a Traveling Nun, speaks to the pain of LGBTQ Christians and helps churches develop a better pastoral approach. Rivera calls to mind Jesus's woe to religious leaders: "They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them" (Matt. 23:4). Heavy Burdens provides an honest account of seven ways LGBTQ people experience discrimination in the church, helping Christians grapple with hard realities and empowering churches across the theological spectrum to navigate better paths forward.

With so many injustices, small and great, across the world and right at our doorstep, what are people of faith to do? Since the 1930s, organizing movements for social justice in the U.S. have largely been built on assumptions that are secular origin--such as reliance on self-interest and having a common enemy as a motivator for change. But what if Christians were to shape their organizing around the implications of the truth that God is real and Jesus is risen? Alexia Salvatierra has developed a model of social action that is rooted in the values and convictions born of faith. Together with theologian Peter Heltzel, this model of "faith-rooted organizing" offers a path to meaningful social change that takes seriously the command to love God and to love our neighbor as ourself.

Because the Holocaust, at its core, was an extreme expression of a devastating racism, the author contends it has special significance for African Americans. Locke, a university professor, clergyman, and African American, reflects on the common experiences of African American and Jewish people as minorities and on the great tragedy that each community has experienced in its history--slavery and the Holocaust. Without attempting to equate the experiences of African Americans to the experiences of European Jews during the Holocaust, the author does show how aspects of the Holocaust, its impact on the Jewish community worldwide, and the long-lasting consequences relate to slavery, the civil rights movement, and the current status of African Americans.

Written from a Christian perspective, this book argues that the implications of the Holocaust touch all people, and that it is a major mistake to view the Holocaust as an exclusively Jewish event. Instead, the author asks whether it is possible for both African Americans and Jewish Americans to learn from the experience of the other regarding the common threat that minority people confront in Western societies. Locke focuses on the themes of parochialism and patriotism and reexamines the role of the Christian churches during the Holocaust in an effort to challenge some of the prevailing views in Holocaust studies.

Questions about civil society have been reopened in recent years with increasing urgency. How can we preserve and protect democracy? Is it possible to bring a moral dimension back into public life? How strong or weak do we want government to be? What can motivate us to be better, more responsibly engaged citizens? In this book, well-known author Robert Wuthnow presents an engaging and provocative exploration of the role of Christianity in civil society which, he says, "applies to other U.S. religions as will." Professor Wuthnow considers three aspects of the relationship between Christianity and civil society: (1) whether civil society is in jeopardy and what effects the declining influence of Christianity has on civil society; (2) whether Christians can be civil, including an examination of the conflicts that have arisen among religious groups in the public arena and the so-called culture wars that many in the media have been discussing; and (3) the growing multiculturalism in the United States, how Christian groups are responding to the new diversity, and how Christianity can regain a critical voice for itself in these debates. Robert Wuthnow is the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor of Social Sciences and Director of the Center for the Study of American Religion at Princeton University. He is the author of fifteen books, including Learning to Care: Elementary Kindness in an Age of Indifference and God Mammon in America.

This book will stir you to fan the flames of revival in your own heart so you can partner with the Holy Spirit and fellow believers to see a sweeping move of God transform America and the world.

Are we living in the last days? Is it possible that God is getting ready to pour out His Spirit on the earth one last time before Jesus returns?

In Revival...IF, best-selling author Rod Parsley gives readers a road map for cultivating renewal in their own hearts and minds and for participating in spiritual revival on a national scale.

Drawing from over forty years of experience with revival personally and in ministry, Parsley:

• Clarifies what revival is and what it is not
• Explains the difference between revival and awakening
• Includes historical accounts and current perspectives on various revivals

While the methods of revival may change, the message remains the same. This book shares timeless, biblical truths that will empower believers to seize the moment and experience true, lasting revival and personal renewal.

This book describes how Christian communities in South Africa have responded to HIV/AIDS and how these responses have affected the lives HIV-positive people, youth and broader communities. Drawing on Foucault and the sociology of knowledge, it explains how religion became influential in reshaping ideas about sexuality, medicine and modernity.