Description: Making Justice Our Business is the story of Darryl Hunt, and of those drawn to him who refused to give up on him, each other, and justice. Boyd tells the story of how one summer morning in 1985, an attractive, white newspaper editor named Deborah Sykes was raped, brutally stabbed, and murdered in a Southern town. A 911 caller gave a false name--Sammy Mitchell--and the investigation quickly focused on him and his friend, Darryl Hunt, a black nineteen-year-old orphan. Facing public pressure and having a history with Mitchell, a District Attorney won a conviction before an all-white jury, sending Hunt to prison for life. Convinced of his innocence, a handful of people led a community effort to free him that turned into a nineteen-year struggle with a few exhilarating highs, but more discouraging, depressing defeats against an intractable justice system. Their dogged determination led to an improbable series of events in 2003 that broke the case open. This is the story of an extraordinary man told by a white, uneasy participant who came late to the struggle but was transformed by the process. Endorsements: ""Stephen Boyd offers a moving account of the eighteen-year-longnightmare of Darryl Hunt. . . . In the faithful work of extraordinarily ordinaryMuslims, Jews, and Christians, we see the force of divine love that wouldn't quit, and we catch a clear vision of what it takes from all of us to create ahumane societywhere it is easier for us to truly love all our brothers and sisters."" --Sr. Helen Prejean author ofDead Man Walking "" . .. I suggest this book as an important read for every American citizen."" --Maya Angelou author ofI KnowWhy the Caged Bird Sings "" . . . Let this defining volume stand as witness to thefallacy that our justice system reigns supreme; rather, what does is the humanspirit that survives and is joined by others equally committed to telling thetruth. . . . I am left with an overwhelming sense of awe and gratitude forDarryl's spirit andProfessor Boyd's tenacity."" --asha bandele author ofThe Prisoner's Wife "" . . .MakingJustice Our Businessis equal parts ringing social critique and personal faithjourney. For Darryl and for all who continue to suffer unjustly, another necessaryblow against the prison industrial complex has been struck."" --Alton B. Pollard III Howard University School of Divinity About the Contributor(s): Stephen Boyd is the John Allen Easley Professor of Religion at Wake Forest University. He is the author of Pilgram Marpeck: His Life and Social Theology (1992) and The Men We Long to Be (1996).

Contributors to this book--historians, biblical specialists, theologians, ethicists, and scholars of comparative religions--examine the relationship between religious tradition and manhood. The essays cover a broad range of topics--from the dynamics of power in shaping masculine identity, to the role religion plays in shaping masculine identity, to the experience of myth, ritual, spiritual discipline, and community in the lives of men.

This intellectual and social history is the first comprehensive biography of Pilgram Marpeck (c. 1495-1556), a radical reformer and lay leader of Anabaptist groups in Switzerland, Austria, and South Germany. Marpeck's influential life and work provide a glimpse of the theologies and practices of the Roman Church and of various reform movements in sixteenth-century Europe.
Drawing on extensive archival data documenting Marpeck's professional life, as well as on his numerous published and unpublished writings on theology and religious reform, Stephen B. Boyd traces Marpeck's unconventional transition from mining magistrate to Anabaptist leader, establishes his connections with various radical social and religious groups, and articulates aspects of his social theology. Marpeck's distinctive and eclectic theology, Boyd demonstrates, focused on the need for personal, uncoerced conversion, rejected state interference in the affairs of the church, denied the need for a monastic withdrawal from the secular world, and called for the Christian's active pursuit of justice before God and among human beings.