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Ce livre est un appel prophétique à une voie qui est entièrement différente. La révolution de Dieu contient des extraits des écrits d'Eberhard Arnold, théologien non-conformiste qui a abandonné et une carrière et l'Église établie afin de vivre l'Evangile.

The captivating story of the world's favorite saint is now retold for a modern audience by one of the great novelists of our time.Perhaps more than any other figure in Christian history since Jesus Christ, Saint Francis of Assisi has captured our imagination, for his is a story of extreme self-sacrifice, of love to God and man. How could this wealthy, handsome youth cast away all the advantages that were his by birth and choose instead a career of poverty and humility? How could he attract members of all strata of society to his mission? And how, when his order became established throughout Europe, could he renounce great personal power and humbly continue his life's work?Here is Francis, from his twelfth-century boyhood to his life as a missionary roaming the very boundaries of the known world. Here too are the men and women who followed him-Bernard de Quintavalle, the rich businessman; Peter Cathanii, the lawyer; Brother Giles, the farmer's son; Lady Clare; and so many others-all drawn together by the personal magnetism and humble faith of their leader, all re-created by bestselling novelist Elizabeth Goudge against a rich medieval canvas.

What happens when an abortion survivor finds her birth mother, who never knew her daughter was alive?Winner, 2018 Christianity Today Book Award, CT WomenSilver Medal Winner, 2018 Illumination Book Awards, Biography & MemoirMelissa Ohden is fourteen when she learns she is the survivor of a botched abortion. In this intimate memoir she details for the first time her search for her biological parents, and her own journey from anger and shame to faith and empowerment.After a decade-long search Melissa finally locates her birth father and writes to extend forgiveness, only to learn that he has died without answering her burning questions. Melissa becomes a mother herself in the very hospital where she was aborted. This experience transforms her attitude toward women who have had abortions, as does the miscarriage of her only son and the birth of a second daughter with complex health issues. But could anything prepare her for the day she finally meets her birth mother and hears her side of their story?This intensely personal story of love and redemption illumines the powerful bond between mother and child that can overcome all odds.

When Mildred goes off to a big party where little brothers are not invited, Harvey finds a secret club in a secret place where big sisters are not allowed to be members. But when Harvey's lonesomeness overpowers his stubbornness, he discovers that a secret club with two members is much better. Full color.

Years after her death, a poet's life and work speak across the generations, inspiring new music and more intentional living.What are the heart's necessities? It's a question Jane Tyson Clement asked herself over and over, both in her poetry and in the way she lived. The things that make life worth living she found in joy and grief, love and longing, and, most importantly, something to believe in. Her observation of the seasons of the soul and of the natural world have made her poems beloved to many readers, most recently jazz artist Becca Stevens. Clement's poetry has gained new life - and a new audience - as lyrics in the songs of this pioneering musician of another century.Like many great poets, from Emily Dickinson to Gerard Manley Hopkins, Jane Tyson Clement (1917-2000) has found more readers since her death than in her lifetime. A new generation that prizes honesty and authenticity is finding in Clement - a restless, questing soul with a life as compelling as her work - a voice that expresses their own deepest feelings, values, and desires.In this attractive coffee table collection of new and selected poems, editor Veery Huleatt complements Clement's poetry with narrative sketches and scrapbook visuals to weave a biography of this remarkable woman who took the road less traveled, choosing justice over comfort, conviction over career, and love over fame.

What is the purpose of my life? What is friendship? What is faith? These universal questions, which are especially relevant to young adults, form the heart of this compelling story, told through real letters and diary entries.Anni, who grows from her teenage years to adulthood over the course of the book, is passionate about life and unsparing in her search for authenticity. Articulate and probing, her words have a contemporary ring as she plumbs the reality of her doubt and sense of spiritual loneliness. Then she experiences a call from God - and finds a life of purpose, faith, and joy.In Anni's own words: "e;It is infinitely reassuring to know that there is an absolute truth, an infinitely great love. It is wonderful to know that one does not have to squander one's life, one does not need to ask anymore what life is really for, what its purpose is."e;Heightening the drama of this coming-of-age memoir is the historical setting in 1920s Germany, as the specter of Nazism looms ever larger over the world of Anni and her friends, giving their questions about life's meaning a special poignancy.

One of the most articulate and biblically grounded voices of the Radical Reformation, Peter Riedemann was only twenty-three when he penned this impassioned confession of faith in the gloom of a sixteenth-century Austrian dungeon. Already a noted Anabaptist leader, Riedemann called fellow persecuted Christians to witness to a love that, "e;when it really burns, having kindled our eagerness for God, the more temptations and tribulations meet it, the more it flares, until it overcomes and consumes all injustice and wickedness."e;A classic testament to religious liberty with a timely message for modern believers, Love Is Like Fire serves as a striking reminder of the spirit that fired the hearts of early "e;heretics"e; during the Reformation. A first translation into English, this book is an important addition to the small but growing number of primary sources on early Anabaptism.

A pastor's frank advice for Christians who want to bring the gospel to their neighbors.Gold Medal Winner, 2016 Illumination Book Award in ministry/mission, Independent PublishersHow can Christians represent the love of Christ to their neighbors (let alone people in foreign countries) in an age when Christianity has earned a bad name from centuries of intolerance and cultural imperialism? Is it enough to love and serve them? Can you win their trust without becoming one of them? Can you be a missional Christian without a church?This provocative book, based on a recently uncovered collection of 100-year-old letters from a famous pastor to his nephew, a missionary in China, will upend pretty much everyone's assumptions about what it means to give witness to Christ.Blumhardt challenges us to find something of God in every person, to befriend people and lead them to faith without expecting them to become like us, and to discover where Christ is already at work in the world. This is truly good news: No one on the planet is outside the love of God.At a time when Christian mission has too often been reduced to social work or proselytism, this book invites us to reclaim the heart of Jesus' great commission, quietly but confidently incarnating the love of Christ and trusting him to do the rest.

Mark Ludy's latest book will appeal to adults and children alike. Digging deeper than the Sunday school tale of cuddly animals on Noah's ark, the story follows the biblical text and illumines Noah's relationship with God, his wife, family, nature, and humanity. Ludy's world-class artwork lets people see, as though for the first time, the beauty within this story - revealing a clearer picture of the nature and character of God and his relationship to humankind. It's immersive and epic in scale and scope. The wordless format invites conversation and storytelling, key building blocks of literacy. And as with his previous books, Ludy's signature mouse Squeakers appears hidden on every page.

One of Germany's literary giants, Ernst Emil Wiechert (1887-1950) was thrown into Buchenwald concentration camp for publicly backing anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemoller. His final novel, published posthumously, deals with the aftermath of the Holocaust - how the survivors, both victims and perpetrators, seek healing and redemption as they pick up the shattered pieces of their world.Evoking comparisons to the Russian greats Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, Wiechert displays an uncommon depth of insight into the human condition at its most degenerate and it ennobling best - an understanding born of his own suffering and quest for rebirth. His novel is peopled with rich and complex characters and charged with both violent feelings and spiritual hunger.First published in 1950 as Missa Sine Nomine (Mass Without a Name), Tidings deserves its place among the masterpieces of European literature.

The most accessible Kierkegaard reader ever ';In a culture awash in religious silliness, Kierkegaard's bracing metaphors expose our mediocrities and energize us with a clarified sense of what it means to follow Jesus.' Eugene Peterson, author, Subversive Spirituality Provocations contains a little of everything from Kierkegaard's prodigious output: his famously cantankerous (yet wryly humorous) attacks on what he calls the ';mediocre shell' of conventional Christianity, his brilliantly pithy parables, his wise (and witty) sayings. Most significantly, it brings to a new generation a man whose writings pare away the fluff of modern spirituality to reveal the basics of the Christ-centered life: decisiveness, obedience, and recognition of the truth.

Given the number of people who've been "e;saved,"e; you'd think the world was becoming a brighter place. It could be, too, if more people would grasp the joy of losing themselves in service to God and each other. People like Christoph Blumhardt, who, in his quest to get to the essentials of faith, burns away the religious trappings of modern piety like so much chaff.Blumhardt writes with unabashed fervor, but his passion encourages rather than intimidates. His witness influenced theological giants like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth. But Action in Waiting is not theology; it is too blunt, too earthy, too real. Its "e;active expectation"e; of God's kingdom shows us that the object of our hope is not relegated to some afterlife. Today, in our world, it can come into its own - if only we are ready.

A dramatic true story of a man refined by fire, a Bruderhof pastor whose spiritual legacy continues to touch thousands.Can our wounds become our greatest gift? Bruderhof pastor J. Heinrich Arnold was a broken man. Yet those who knew him said they never met another like him. Some spoke of his humility and compassion; others of his frankness and earthy humor. In his presence, complete strangers poured out their darkest secrets and left transformed. Others met him with hatred.Writer Henri Nouwen called him a "e;prophetic voice"e; and wrote of how his words "e;touched me as a double-edged sword, calling me to choose between truth and lies, selflessness and selfishness. . . . Here was no pious, sentimental guide; every word came from experience."e;Who was this extraordinary yet simple man? In this gripping and richly spiritual book, Peter Mommsen tells the dramatic true story of the grandfather he hardly knew. Read it, and you will never look at your own life the same way again.Gold Medal Winner, 2016 IPPY Book of the Year Award in Biography, Independent PublishersSilver Medal Winner, 2016 Benjamin Franklin Award in Religion, Independent Book Publishers Association

Don't wait for the end times--we can experience the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the presence of God's future already now.If you want to pick a theological fight with someone, enter into a discussion about eschatology. You'll encounter a kaleidoscope of opinions and, more likely than not, outright disagreement. On one end of the spectrum there are the doomsday naysayers who, in warning us to get ready for the end, have determined in advance the very signs of Christ's return. On the other end are those who idealize God's future to such an extent that it has virtually no relevance for faith.Enter Johann Christoph Blumhardt. Blumhardt cuts through both end-time speculation and eschatological indifference with a passionate plea to make room, here and now, for God's coming kingdom. Blumhardt's whole approach toward "e;last things"e; is so out of the ordinary that it fills one with an authentic exhilaration that defies the staid confines of conventional Christianity. These sermons articulate not just a theology of hope but are refreshing, compelling insights into the prophetic vision of the great outpouring of the Spirit upon all flesh. With confidence and holy expectation, Blumhardt reminds us that we can experience now, and even hasten on, the presence of God's future. We need only pray for it, watch for it, and live for it. It is at hand!

When troubled consciences find healing they become a force for good.The conscience, our inner moral compass, is a sensitive instrument meant to warn us against all that might endanger our life and happiness. Many today despise or ignore the conscience, calling its working unhealthy repression of natural urges, or rejecting any certainty in the name of relativism. Others are tormented by its accusations.In this little book, Arnold points the way to complete healing and restoration of even the most troubled conscience. When Christ's forgiveness sets the conscience free and floods it with his live-renewing spirit, it becomes an active force for good, giving us clarity in personal, social, and political questions and leading us to peace, joy, justice, and community.The Conscience is the second volume of five in Inner Land: A Guide into the Heart of the Gospel.About Inner LandA trusted guide into the inner realm where our spirits find strength to master life and live for God.It is hard to exaggerate the significance of Innerland, either for Eberhard Arnold or his readers. It absorbed his energies off and on for most of his adult life--from World War I, when he published the first chapter under the title War: A Call to Inwardness, to 1935, the last year of his life.Packed in metal boxes and buried at night for safekeeping from the Nazis, who raided the author's study a year before his death (and again a year after it), Innerland was not openly critical of Hitler's regime. Nevertheless, it attacked the spirits that animated German society: its murderous strains of racism and bigotry, its heady nationalistic fervor, its mindless mass hysteria, and its vulgar materialism. In this sense Innerland stands as starkly opposed to the zeitgeist of our own day as to that of the author's.At a glance, the focus of Innerland seems to be the cultivation of the spiritual life as an end in itself. Nothing could be more misleading. In fact, to Eberhard Arnold the very thought of encouraging the sort of selfish solitude whereby people seek their own private peace by shutting out the noise and rush of public life around them is anathema. He writes in The Inner Life:<br."e;These are times of distress. We cannot retreat, willfully blind to the overwhelming urgency of the tasks pressing on society. We cannot look for inner detachment in an inner and outer isolation...The only justification for withdrawing into the inner self to escape today's confusing, hectic whirl would be that fruitfulness is enriched by it. It is a question of gaining within, through unity with eternal powers, a strength of character ready to be tested in the stream of the world."e;Innerland, then, calls us not to passivity, but to action. It invites us to discover the abundance of a life lived for God. It opens our eyes to the possibilities of that "e;inner land of the invisible where our spirit can find the roots of its strength and thus enable us to press on to the mastery of life we are called to by God."e; Only there, says Eberhard Arnold, can our life be placed under the illuminating light of the eternal and seen for what it is. Only there will we find the clarity of vision we need to win the daily battle that is life, and the inner anchor without which we will lose our moorings.

A Hundred Days of Carnage, Twenty-Five Years of RebirthIn the space of a hundred days, a million Tutsi in Rwanda were slaughtered by their Hutu neighbors. At the height of the genocide, as men with bloody machetes ransacked her home, Denise Uwimana gave birth to her third son. With the unlikely help of Hutu Good Samaritans, she and her children survived. Her husband and other family members were not as lucky.If this were only a memoir of those chilling days and the long, hard road to personal healing and freedom from her past, it would be remarkable enough. But Uwimana didn't stop there. Leaving a secure job in business, she devoted the rest of her life to restoring her country by empowering other genocide widows to band together, tell their stories, find healing, and rebuild their lives. The stories she has uncovered through her work and recounted here illustrate the complex and unfinished work of truth-telling, recovery, and reconciliation that may be Rwanda's lasting legacy. Rising above their nation's past, Rwanda's genocide survivors are teaching the world the secret to healing the wound of war and ethnic conflict.

A trusted guide into the inner realm where our spirits find strength to master life and live for God.It is hard to exaggerate the significance of Innerland, either for Eberhard Arnold or his readers. It absorbed his energies off and on for most of his adult life--from World War I, when he published the first chapter under the title War: A Call to Inwardness, to 1935, the last year of his life.Packed in metal boxes and buried at night for safekeeping from the Nazis, who raided the author's study a year before his death (and again a year after it), Innerland was not openly critical of Hitler's regime. Nevertheless, it attacked the spirits that animated German society: its murderous strains of racism and bigotry, its heady nationalistic fervor, its mindless mass hysteria, and its vulgar materialism. In this sense Innerland stands as starkly opposed to the zeitgeist of our own day as to that of the author's.At a glance, the focus of Innerland seems to be the cultivation of the spiritual life as an end in itself. Nothing could be more misleading. In fact, to Eberhard Arnold the very thought of encouraging the sort of selfish solitude whereby people seek their own private peace by shutting out the noise and rush of public life around them is anathema. He writes in The Inner Life:<br."e;These are times of distress. We cannot retreat, willfully blind to the overwhelming urgency of the tasks pressing on society. We cannot look for inner detachment in an inner and outer isolation...The only justification for withdrawing into the inner self to escape today's confusing, hectic whirl would be that fruitfulness is enriched by it. It is a question of gaining within, through unity with eternal powers, a strength of character ready to be tested in the stream of the world."e;Innerland, then, calls us not to passivity, but to action. It invites us to discover the abundance of a life lived for God. It opens our eyes to the possibilities of that "e;inner land of the invisible where our spirit can find the roots of its strength and thus enable us to press on to the mastery of life we are called to by God."e; Only there, says Eberhard Arnold, can our life be placed under the illuminating light of the eternal and seen for what it is. Only there will we find the clarity of vision we need to win the daily battle that is life, and the inner anchor without which we will lose our moorings.

Twenty of the best Christmas stories of all time are collected in one handsomely illustrated anthology. Selected for their literary quality and spiritual integrity, these time-honored favorites will resonate with readers year after year.

When we read the book of nature, what do we read there? ¿All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all,¿ says a well-known hymn. This issue of Plough celebrates the creatures of our planet ¿ plant, animal, and human ¿ and the implications of humankind¿s relationship to nature.But if nature can be read as a book that reveals the wisdom of its Creator, it also reveals things less lovely than stars and singing birds ¿ a world of desperate competition for survival, mass extinctions, and deadly viruses. Is such a world a convincing argument for the Creator¿s goodness? Turns out Christians and skeptics alike have been asking such questions since long before Darwin added a twist.Are we moderns out of practice at reading the book of nature? And if we forget how, will we fail to read human nature as well ¿ what rights or purposes our Creator may have endowed us with? What then is there to limit the bounds of technological manipulation of humankind?This issue of Plough explores these and other fascinating questions about the natural world and our place in it.In this issue:- Sussex farmer Adam Nicholson evokes centuries of handwork that shaped the landscape of the Weald.- Gracy Olmstead revisits the land her forebears farmed in Idaho.- Ian Marcus Corbin tries walking phoneless to better note the beauty of the natural world.- Amish farmer John Kempf, a leader in regenerative agriculture, foresees a healthier future for farming.- Leah Libresco Sargeant offers a feminist critique of society¿s war on women¿s bodies.- Iván Bernal Marín visits Panama City¿s traditional fishermen.- Maureen Swinger recalls to triumphs of second grade in forest school.- Edmund Waldstein questions head transplants and the limits of medical science.- Kelsey Osgood says it¿s natural to fear death, and to transcend that fear through faith.- Tim Maendel lifts the veil on urban beekeeping along the Manhattan skyline.You¿ll also find:- An essay by Christian Wiman on the poetry of doubt and faith- New poems by Alfred Nicol- A profile of Amazon activist nun Dorothy Stang- An appreciation of Keith Green¿s songs- Insights on creation from Blaise Pascal, Julian of Norwich, Francis of Assisi, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Christopher Smart, Augustine of Hippo, The Book of Job, and Sadhu Sundar Singh- Reviews of The Opening of the American Mind, and Kazuo Ishigurös Klara and the SunPlough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus¿ message into practice and find common cause with others.

How did violence become OK? And is there any way back?At some point between George Floyd¿s killing on May 25 and the invasion of the US Capitol on January 6, Americäs consensus against political violence crumbled. Before 2020, almost everyone agreed that it should be out of bounds. Now, many are ready to justify such violence ¿ at least when it is their side breaking windows or battling police officers. Something significant seems to have slipped. Is there any way back?As Christians, we need to consider what guilt we bear, with the rise of a decidedly unchristian ¿Christian nationalism¿ that historically has deep roots in American Christian culture. But shouldn¿t we also be asking ourselves what a truly Christian stance might look like, one that reflects Jesus¿ blessings on the peacemakers, the merciful, and the meek?Oscar Romero, when accused of preaching revolutionary violence, responded: ¿We have never preached violence, except the violence of love, which left Christ nailed to a cross.¿ If we take Jesus¿ example and his call to nonviolence at face value, we¿re left with all kinds of interesting questions: What about policing? What about the military? What about participating in government? This issue of Plough addresses some of these questions and explores what a life lived according to love rather than violence might look like.In this issue:- Anthony M. Barr revisits James Baldwin¿s advice about undoing racism.- Gracy Olmstead describes welcoming the baby she did not expect during a pandemic.- Patrick Tomassi debates nonviolence with Portland¿s anarchists and Proud Boys.- Scott Beauchamp advises on what not to ask war veterans.- Rachel Pieh Jones reveals what Muslims have taught her about prayer.- Eberhard Arnold argues that Christian nonviolence is more than pacifism.- Stanley Hauerwas presents a vision of church you¿ve never seen in practice.- Andrea Grosso Ciponte graphically portrays the White Rose student resistance to Nazism.- Zito Madu illuminates rap¿s role in escaping the violence of poverty.- Springs Toledo recounts his boxing match with an undefeated professional.You¿ll also find:- An interview with poet Rhina P. Espaillat- New poems by Catherine Tufariello- Profiles of Anabaptist leader Felix Manz and community founder Lore Weber- Reviews of Marly Youmans¿s Charis in the World of Wonders, Judith D. Schwartz¿s The Reindeer Chronicles, Chris Lombardi¿s I Ain¿t Marching Anymore, and Martín Espadäs FloatersPlough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus¿ message into practice and find common cause with others.

What is a family and what is it good for?Story 1: Families are in crisis, and the cause is moral breakdown. We urgently need a deep renewal of our family culture, supported by public policies that strengthen traditional marriage and encourage childbearing.Story 2: Families are in crisis, and the cause is capitalism. We need structural changes in society so that all families can flourish: parental leave, guaranteed healthcare, flexible work hours for parents, restorative justice.What if both these stories are true? This issue of Plough reflects on what a family is and what it is for, so that the transformations needed to solve the crisis of the family start from a firm basis, not a nostalgic ideal or progressive theorizing. As always, we take as a starting point the teachings of Jesus. It turns out his idea of family values might not be what people think. He calls us to extend our natural love for our biological family to a vast new throng of siblings - a family of many ethnicities and cultures that includes the widowed, the unmarried, the outsider, and the stranger. In this issue: - Ross Douthat asks what is stopping people from having the one more child they desire.- Edwidge Danticat says families are not nuclear.- Gina Dalfonzo reveals what singles know best about the church as family.- Norann Voll remembers a Jewish woman who escaped the Holocaust and married a German.- W. Bradford Wilcox and Alysse ElHage report on how the Covid pandemic has impacted the family.- Noah Van Niel asks whether masculinity is OK anymore.- Cardinal Christoph Schönborn reflects the burden of family history, celibacy, and monument toppling.- Sarah C. Williams pinpoints the source of feminist pioneer Josephine Butler's daring.- Rabbi Jonathan Sacks begins the story of marriage 385 million years ago in a lake in Scotland.- Zito Madu recalls how his father's amazing storytelling saved the past from oblivion.You'll also find:- M. M. Townsend on what Louisa May Alcott and Simone de Beauvoir had in common- A special announcement about Plough's new poetry contest: the Rhina Espaillat Poetry Award- A reading from G. K. Chesterton- Two new poems by Rachel Hadas- Reviews of Eric Edstrom's Un-American, Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law's Prison by Any Other Name, Brian Doyle's One Long River of Song, and Martín Caparrós's HungerPlough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus' message into practice and find common cause with others.

A veces sensible, a veces provocativo, pero siempre alentador, Arnold guía a los lectores a llevar una vida a semejanza de Cristo, en medio de las presiones y tensiones de la vida moderna. Tal vez lo más difícil de seguir a Cristo es convertir nuestras buenas intenciones en hechos. Cristo nos llama y anhelamos responder a su llamado, pero una y otra vez fallamos en nuestra determinación. ¿Es posible el discipulado hoy?Muchas selecciones en este libro ofrecen respuestas a necesidades o problemas específicos. Otras abordan temas más amplios como el sufrimiento en el mundo, la salvación y la venida del reino de Dios. Pero todas están llenas de convicción y compasión, dando nueva esperanza a los que se encuentran solos o desanimados en la búsqueda diaria de seguir a Cristo.

In Why Forgive? Arnold lets the untidy experiences of ordinary people speak for themselves--people who have earned the right to talk about forgiving.Some of these stories deal with violent crime, betrayal, abuse, hate, gang warfare, and genocide. Others address everyday hurts: the wounds caused by backbiting, gossip, conflicts in the home, and tensions in the workplace. The book also tackles what can be the biggest challenge: forgiving ourselves.These people, who have overcome the cancer of bitterness and hatred, can help you unleash the healing power of forgiveness in your own life.Why Forgive? these stories and decide for yourself.

We need a vision of how medicine might serve the good of the whole human person: the body's health, but also the health of that "piece of divinity in us."Medicine, so long as you don't need it, is a tangential part of life, just one more profession among others. Until that is, a loved one suffers an accident or falls sick. Then, suddenly, medicine is quite literally, a matter of life or death. Medicine is also big business. Doctors have been reclassified as "service providers," and patients are "clients." Such commercialism breeds false incentives and inequalities, even in nations.We need a vision of how medicine might serve the good of the whole human person: the body's health, but also the health of that "piece of divinity in us." We need love and reverence for humans as they are, not humans as technology may someday engineer them to be. Jesus, the healer from Nazareth, showed what it means to love the imperfect, the frail, the average. The glory of the medical profession is that it is dedicated to these works of mercy. In today's money-driven healthcare industry, such tasks are often poorly rewarded. Yet they're at the heart of medicine's original mission.Also in this issue: original poetry by Suzanne Harlan Heyd; reviews of new books by Barbara Ehrenreich, Ryan T. Anderson, Beth Macy, and David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé; and art by Tim Lowly, Michelangelo, Julian Peters, Wanjin Gim, Scott Goldsmith, Jan Mostaert, Suleiman Mansour, Cécile Massie, Peter Doig, Erin Hanson, and Jason Landsel.Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus' message into practice and find common cause with others.

How did earliest Christians receive and understand the teaching of Jesus and the apostles? These writings, among the earliest used in training new disciples, show a clear, vibrant, practical faith concerned with all aspects of discipleship in daily life¿vocation, morality, family life, social justice, the sacraments, prophesy, citizenship, and leadership.For the most part, these writings have remained buried in academia, analyzed by scholars but seldom used for building up the church community. Now, at a time when Christians of every persuasion are seeking clarity by returning to the roots of their faith, these simple, direct teachings shed light on what it means to be a follower of Christ in any time or place.The Didache, an anonymous work composed in the late first century AD, was lost for centuries before being rediscovered in 1873. The Shepherd was written by a former slave named Hermas in the second century AD or possibly even earlier.

With the concept of socialism back in mainstream conversations and increasing numbers of Christians unhappy with ¿Sunday Christianity,¿ it¿s time to give the lifestyle of Jesus¿ first followers another look. This issue of Plough Quarterly does just that, profiling intentional Christian communities past and present and gleaning wisdom on the daily practicalities and pitfalls of communal living from those with years of experience in following Jesus together.Hear from Stanley Hauerwas, Rick Warren, Leonardo Boff, Chiara Lubich, C. S. Lewis, Jean Vanier, Henri J. M. Nouwen, Eberhard Arnold, and D. L. Mayfield. Then there¿s new poetry, book reviews, a children¿s story by Kwon Jong-saeng, and world-class art by Salvador Dali, Wassily Kandinsky, Juan Rizi, Marianne Stokes, Francisco de Zurbarán, Dong-Sung Kim, Christian Schussele, Gustave Caillebotte.Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus¿ message into practice and find common cause with others.