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.

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.

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.

How is theology liberating? In this post-Gorbachev world in which many demand freedom, and which the West seems ill-equipped to deliver, can we even envisage a liberative theology? Taking as his starting point the Marxist complaint that Christianity is ideological, Dr Scott argues that it is not enough for Christian theology to talk about liberation. It must be liberative. Stressing with feminist and liberation theologies the embodied, contextual nature of theology, the constructive proposal made here locates God's liberating abundance towards society in an interpretation of resurrection as social. Only in this way can a trinitarian Christian account of liberation be adequately grounded. This study will be of interest to those who wish to know if theology may speak truthfully about the transformation of society. In a period of crisis and hope, the book offers the shape of a liberative theology that might nerve Christian practice towards social freedom.

Thinking that postmodernism is a threat, many Christians take a duck-and-cover approach to dealing with it. But that will not make postmodernism go away. Can Christians learn from postmodern thinkers and their critique of modernism? Yes, says author Crystal L. Downing. Postmodernism should not be judged by some of the problematic practices carried out in its name. In a lively engagement with literature, philosophy and art, Downing introduces readers to what postmodernism is and where it came from, aiming to show how Christians can best understand, critique and even benefit from its insights. She draws on her own experiences as a graduate student and her careful research into this worldview's modernist and artistic origins, the challenges of foundationalism and poststructuralism, and the complexity of relativism. She ends with a challenge to Christians: that they not be postmodern in their attitudes towards postmodernism, but instead to "be in the world and not of it" and to extend grace where it is most needed. Downing believes that the challenges, questions and insights of postmodernism can contribute to a deeper and clearer grasp of our faith, as well as providing unique paradigms for sharing the truth of Christ.

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.