I've been thinking a great deal recently about the subject of reconciliation, especially as found in the following passages:

I had never heard of John Perkins until my husband read a book of his last year, and recommended it to me: With Justice for All. It contained a bit of his general life story, but focused on his work on community development in Mississippi. His vision for Christian reconciliation and community development was strong and compelling — I could hear his devotion and determination in his words. But I found myself thinking, “This book was written thirty years ago. What would John Perkins say about things now — have we made any progress?” So of course,...

Recently our local cinema offered a couple free showings of the movie "The Heart of Nuba." Knowing that there was the potential for this to be both intense and graphically violent, I went by myself to a showing.

This movie is a documentary about Tom Catena, an American doctor who went to Sudan to serve as a missionary doctor in a hospital in the war-torn Nuba mountain region. Because of the violence in the region (there are frequent bombings of civilian targets), the missionaries who worked in the hospital were encouraged to leave.

Catena, arguing that his life...

How the Nations Rage (subtitled "Rethinking Faith and Politics in a Divided Age") is an excellent and timely book by Jonathan Leeman. Leeman is the editorial director at 9Marks, and has spent many years serving in churches in the Washington D.C. area. His experiences have given him a very keen understanding of how the comingling of faith and partisan politics can deeply damage the integrity and witness of the church.

The title of the book comes from Psalm 2:

This book was recommended to me by the CEF director for the state of Maine. Our morning staff devotions at camp were a guided exploration of this book.

Spiritual Leadership by J. Oswald Sanders is precisely the leadership book which is needed in many churches. Many current leadership books that have been recommended to me focus on things like church growth, organization, and other external qualities of a church. This book focuses instead on many of the inner qualities that make a true leader in the eyes of God.

Sanders starts off his book with a comparison of...