Description:
This new edition of a paperback first released in 1993 contains a foreword by Martin Marty and William Sloane Coffin's sermon preached after September 11, 2001. A Protestant minister and social activist, he is convinced that a better world is both imaginable and feasible. Faith is needed along with another virtue:
"If faith puts us on the road, hope is what keeps us there. It enables us to keep a steady eye on remote ends. It makes us persistent when we can't be optimistic, faithful when results elude us. For like nothing else in the world, hope arouses a passion for the possible, a determination that our children not be
This new edition of a paperback first released in 1993 contains a foreword by Martin Marty and William Sloane Coffin's sermon preached after September 11, 2001. A Protestant minister and social activist, he is convinced that a better world is both imaginable and feasible. Faith is needed along with another virtue:
"If faith puts us on the road, hope is what keeps us there. It enables us to keep a steady eye on remote ends. It makes us persistent when we can't be optimistic, faithful when results elude us. For like nothing else in the world, hope arouses a passion for the possible, a determination that our children not be asked to shoulder burdens we let fall. Hopeful people are always critical of the present but only because they hold such a bright view of the future. To lay claim to this future today, American Christians should live at loving odds with their country and world, much as the biblical prophets and Jesus himself lived at dangerous odds with the Israel and the world of their day."
Coffin addresses issues that he thinks are crucial to the nation's well-being and to the planet's survival: race and class, sexism, homophobia, abortion, the environment, and nuclear weapons. Here we are eleven years later and these issues continue to loom large in our consciousness.
Near the end of the book, Coffin challenges clergy to speak out on controversial issues. He concludes with these uplifting words:
" 'This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine.' Those who have attended a candlelight march know how much more inspiring are thousands of little flames than those giant lights that illuminate ballparks. All of us who have read Jesus' parables know that when God gives the talents--even one--we must give the effort. Besides, serving the common good is so much more fulfilling, less boring than pursuing private gain. If it is sometimes more painful, that's all right: in pain we are more alive than in complacency. I believe that God is calling each and every one of us to show up, to 'double the heart's might,' to help one another build a more just and generous society at home and a genuine viable global community that hates war and holds nature in reverence. Our calling today is like God's call to Moses: arising from the world's pain, it is a call to alleviate that pain by sharing it. And with so much in the bud, the moment is ripe."
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Manufacturer: Westminster John Knox Press
Release date: 8 March 2007
ISBN-10 : 0664228569 |
ISBN-13: 9780664228569
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