In Hurtin’ Words, Ted Ownby considers how a wide range of writers, thinkers, activists, and others defined family problems in the twentieth-century American South. Rather than attempting to define the experience of an archetypal “southern family,” Ownby looks broadly at contexts such as political and religious debates about divorce and family values, southern rock music, autobiographies, and more to reveal how people in the South used the concept of the family as a proxy for imagining a better future or happier past. Read More

Can I Get a Witness? Thirteen Peacemakers, Community Builders, and Agitators for Faith & Justice is our newest publication. There are many ways you can access the prophetic witness of this book. Discover the compelling stories of thirteen pioneers for social justice who engaged in peaceful protest and gave voice to the marginalized, working courageously out of their religious convictions to transform American culture. Read More

On Friday, March 22, Charles Marsh will present a lecture on Can I Get a Witness? Thirteen Peacemakers, Community Builders, and Agitators for Faith & Justice as the part of the Rebels With a Cause symposium. Along with Hal Crowther, author of Freedom Fighters and Hell Raisers: A Gallery of Memorable Southerners, they will discuss discuss their collections of biographical essays on unexpected and underappreciated leaders in struggles for justice and equality. Book sales and signing will follow. Read More

Join us on a journey through Lent with Howard Thurman, Dorothy Day, Mahalia Jackson, Cesar Chavez, and more witnesses to faith and justice. We’ll be reading our new book, Can I Get a Witness? Thirteen Peacemakers, Community Builders, and Agitators … Read More

On February 23, Charles Marsh will deliver a lecture entitled “‘From the Phraseological to the Real’: Lived Theology and the Public University” at the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion as part of their culminating conference for a project focused on the place of theology in the university. Read More

On February 26-28 at 5:00 PM, Professor Marie Griffith will be speaking as part of the Richard E. Myers Lecture Series at University Baptist Church. Professor Griffith will be giving a series of lectures entitled “Can a Fractured Nation Make Peace? Facing History and Restoring Our Deepest Values.” There are three different lectures included in the series. Read More

In Baptized in Blood, Charles Reagan Wilson has created a significant and well-written study of the South’s civil religion, one of two public faiths in America. Wilson shows how in the wake of the Civil War, southerners adopted the Lost Cause as a way to preserve their cultural identity by blending Christian rhetoric and symbols with the rhetoric and imagery of Confederate tradition. Read More

In Infected Christianity, Alan Davies focuses on five modern “Christs” to examine how the Christian church has succumbed to the infection of racist ideas. Davies shows that the myths of race and nation, innocent in themselves, have evolved into “sacred” myths and histories which not only infected Christianity but have served to legitimize ruling racist elites.   Read More

The Mule Train, about 150 people in twenty mule-drawn wagons from Marks, Mississippi, was determined to make the nation aware of the plight of America’s poor. This was the start of the Poor People’s Campaign, created by Dr. King shortly before he was assassinated. Both The Mule Train and its origin is now mostly forgotten, but The Mule Train commemorates it in this collection of photographs by Roland Freeman and others. Read More

Many people know about Fannie Lou Hamer’s impassioned speech delivered at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, but far fewer people are familiar with the speeches Hamer delivered at the 1968 and 1972 conventions, to say nothing of addresses she gave closer to home, or with Malcolm X in Harlem, or even at the founding of the National Women’s Political Caucus. Read More