Author: Dagoberto Gilb File Type: epub Sonny Bravo is a tender, unusually smart fifteen-year-old who is living with his vivacious mother in a large city where intense prejudice is not just white against black, but also brown. When Sonnys mother, Silvia, suddenly marries an Okie building contractor named Cloyd Longpre, they are uprooted to a small apartment building, Los Flores. As Sonny sweeps its sidewalks, he meets his neighbors and becomes ensnared in their lives Cindy, an eighteen-year-old druggie who is married and bored Nica, a cloistered Mexican girl who cares for her infant brother but who is never allowed to leave their unit. The other tenants range from Pink, an albino black man who sells old cars in front of the building, to Bud, a muscled-up construction worker who hates blacks and Mexicans, even while hes married to a Mexican-American woman. Dagoberto Gilb, in arguably his most powerful work yet, has written an inspiring novel about hate, pain, anger, and love that transcends age, race, and time. Gilbs novel displays the fearlessness and wit that have helped make him one of this countrys most authentic and original voices.

Author: R. Alan Streett File Type: epub When the earliest Christ-followers were baptized they participated in a politically subversive act. Rejecting the Empires claim that it had a divine right to rule the world, they pledged their allegiance to a kingdom other than Rome and a king other than Caesar (Acts 177). Many books explore baptism from doctrinal or theological perspectives, and focus on issues such as the correct mode of baptism, the proper candidate for baptism, who has the authority to baptize, and whether or not baptism is a symbol or means of grace. By contrast, Caesar and the Sacrament investigates the political nature of baptism. Very few contemporary Christians consider baptisms original purpose or political significance. Only by studying baptism in its historical context, can we discover its impact on first-century believers and the adverse reaction it engendered among Roman and Jewish officials. Since baptism was initially a rite of non-violent resistance, what should its function be today? In this wide-ranging discussion across New Testament texts, Alan Streett locates baptism in the context of and in relation to Roman power. He argues that baptism was a believers sacramentum, a pledge of allegiance that sets up complex interactions with allegiance to Caesar and the imperial system. This is a significant and much-needed contribution to understandings of baptism. --Warren Carter, Professor, Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University Centuries of comfortable Christendom have tended to domesticate baptism to a benign religious ritual entirely at home within the empire. But Caesar and the Sacrament awakens us to the true radical nature of Christian baptism. Alan Streetts latest book is an important and timely work that calls Christians to live out their baptismal identity in fidelity to Christ and resistance to empire. --Brian Zahnd, Pastor, Word of Life Church, St. Joseph, Missouri Alan Streetts fascinating Caesar and the Sacrament places the meaning and practice of baptism in early Christianity into a full and nuanced context . . . Streetts carefully researched and well written book joins a number of other studies that have appeared in recent years rightly underscoring the importance of knowing well the Roman world in which Jesus and his movement emerged. --Craig A. Evans, Professor of Christian Origins, Houston Baptist University In this bold, comprehensive, and compelling study, Alan Streett makes a convincing case that the earliest Christians understood baptism as their pledge of allegiance to Christ and his kingdom, which involved renouncing all other allegiances . . . when most view baptism as nothing more than an innocuous religious sacrament, it would be hard to overstate the importance of digesting this remarkable work. --Gregory A. Boyd, Senior Pastor, Woodland Hills Church, St. Paul, Minnesota Streett does nothing less than show that the understanding of baptism in Constantinian Christianity that privatized and spiritualized baptism was a gross misinterpretation that we, at the end of Christendom, may now unlearn. One may hope that Streetts study will awaken the church to the wide and deep accents of baptism that is both a gift from God and mandate to an emancipated transformed public life. --Walter Brueggemann, Professor Emeritus, Columbia Theological Seminary R. Alan Streett is Senior Research Professor of Biblical Theology at Criswell College, Dallas, Texas. He is author of Subversive Meals (Pickwick, 2013). **From the Back Cover In this wide-ranging discussion across New Testament texts, Alan Streett locates baptism in the context of and in relation to Roman power. He argues that baptism was a believerssacramentum, a pledge of allegiance that sets up complex interactions with allegiance to Caesar and the imperial system. This is a significant and much-needed contribution to understandings of baptism. --Warren Carter, Professor, Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University Centuries of comfortable Christendom have tended to domesticate baptism to a benign religious ritual entirely at home within the empire. ButCaesar and the Sacramentawakens us to the true radical nature of Christian baptism. Alan Streetts latest book is an important and timely work that calls Christians to live out their baptismal identity in fidelity to Christ and resistance to empire. --Brian Zahnd, Pastor, Word of Life Church, St. Joseph, Missouri Alan Streetts fascinatingCaesar and the Sacramentplaces the meaning and practice of baptism in early Christianity into a full and nuanced context . . . Streetts carefully researched and well written book joins a number of other studies that have appeared in recent years rightly underscoring the importance of knowing well the Roman world in which Jesus and his movement emerged. --Craig A. Evans, Professor of Christian Origins, Houston Baptist University In this bold, comprehensive, and compelling study, Alan Streett makes a convincing case that the earliest Christians understood baptism as their pledge of allegiance to Christ and his kingdom, which involved renouncing all other allegiances . . . when most view baptism as nothing more than an innocuous religious sacrament, it would be hard to overstate the importance of digesting this remarkable work. --Gregory A. Boyd, Senior Pastor, Woodland Hills Church, St. Paul, Minnesota Streett does nothing less than show that the understanding of baptism in Constantinian Christianity that privatized and spiritualized baptism was a gross misinterpretation that we, at the end of Christendom, may now unlearn. One may hope that Streetts study will awaken the church to the wide and deep accents of baptism that is both a gift from God and mandate to an emancipated transformed public life. --Walter Brueggemann, Professor Emeritus, Columbia Theological Seminary About the Author R. Alan Streett is Senior Research Professor of Biblical Theology at Criswell College, Dallas, Texas. He is author of Subversive Meals (Pickwick, 2013).

Author: John Paton Davies Jr. File Type: pdf At the height of the McCarthyite hysteria of the 1950s, John Paton Davies, Jr., was summoned to the State Department one morning and fired. His offense? The career diplomat had counseled the U.S. government during World War II that the Communist forces in China were poised to take over the countrywhich they did, in 1949. Davies joined the thousands of others who became the victims of a political maelstrom that engulfed the country and deprived the United States of the wisdom and guidance of an entire generation of East Asian diplomats and scholars. The son of American missionaries, Davies was born in China at the turn of the twentieth century. Educated in the United States, he joined the ranks of the newly formed Foreign Service in the 1930s and returned to China, where he would remain until nearly the end of World War II. During that time he became one of the first Americans to meet and talk with the young revolutionary known as Mao Zedong. He documented the personal excesses and political foibles of Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek. As a political aide to General Joseph Vinegar Joe Stilwell, the wartime commander of the Allied forces in East and South Asia, he traveled widely in the region, meeting with colonial Indias Nehru and Gandhi to gauge whether their animosity to British rule would translate into support for Japan. Davies ended the war serving in Moscow with George F. Kennan, the architect of Americas policy toward the Soviet Union. Kennan found in Davies a lifelong friend and colleague. Neither, however, was immune to the virulent anticommunism of the immediate postwar years. China Hand is the story of a man who captured with wry and judicious insight the times in which he lived, both as observer and as actor. **

Author: Gojko Polovina File Type: pdf