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The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice from the Civil Rights Movement to Today

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The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice from the Civil Rights Movement to Today

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Overview

A noted theologian explains how the radical idea of Christian love animated the African American civil rights movement and how it can power today's social justice struggles

Speaking to his supporters at the end of the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956, Martin Luther King, Jr., declared that their common goal was not simply the end of segregation as an institution. Rather, "the end is reconciliation, the end is redemption, the end is the creation of the beloved community." King's words reflect the strong religious convictions that motivated the African American civil rights movement. As King and his allies saw it, "Jesus had founded the most revolutionary movement in human history: a movement built on the unconditional love of God for the world and the mandate to live in that love." Through a commitment to this idea of love and to the practice of nonviolence, civil rights leaders sought to transform the social and political realities of twentieth-century America.

In The Beloved Community, theologian and award-winning author Charles Marsh traces the history of the spiritual vision that animated the civil rights movement and shows how it remains a vital source of moral energy today. The Beloved Community lays out an exuberant new vision for progressive Christianity and reclaims the centrality of faith in the quest for social justice and authentic community.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465044160
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	08/08/2006
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.55(w) x 8.45(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Charles Marsh is Commonwealth Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia and Director of the Project on Lived Theology. He is the author of several award-winning books, including Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God's Long Summer, and The Last Days, and coauthor of Welcoming Justice. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

What People are Saying About This

Grace Elizabeth Hale

In this fascinating account of faith in action, Charles Marsh examines the necessity of hope, the seemingly contradictory truth that a vision of Christian transcendence animates lasting struggles for social change...The Beloved Community calls Christians back to a politics of empathy and social justice and activists back to the sustaining life of the faith. Marsh aims for nothing less here than the resurrection of the evangelical Christian left.
—(Grace Elizabeth Hale, Author of Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940)

Alan Jacobs

Charles Marsh is one of our best theologians, one of our best historians, one of our best storytellers. In this book -- his most expansive and ambitious one to date -- he places the Christian faith of the civil rights movement in a larger context: he shows us the faith that drove that movement, but also shows that its energy is still potent today, among places and people that we pay insufficient attention to. Most important, Marsh articulates a vision for renewal, a way that the larger community of faith can recover its passion for true social justice. This is a vital book by a major American thinker.
—(Alan Jacobs, author of Shaming the Devil and A Visit to Vanity Fair)

Philip Yancey

Half a century ago an underground army rallied around a vision in order to change the moral landscape of America. Part historian, part raconteur, and part preacher, Charles Marsh calls us to keep alive that vision and to fulfill its promise. I found myself both moved to nostalgia and stirred to action as I read his gripping account.
—(Philip Yancey, author of What's So Amazing About Grace)

Millard Fuller

Millard Fuller, Founder and President, Habitat for Humanity International
What a magnificent book! Charles Marsh writes eloquently about 'lived theology' in the context of the civil rights movement and related social and religions endeavors such as Koinonia Farm near Americus, Georgia, which emphasized social justice, racial reconciliation and redemption. Read every word. You'll be enlightened, revived, and blessed.

Lauren F. Winner

Charles Marsh brings the eloquence of a memoirist, the skill of a historian, and the insight of a theologian to this remarkable study of Christian faith and the pursuit of social justice in America. The stories Marsh tells are thrilling, and inspiring, and sometimes sad. This book will want to make you stand up and shout; and kneel and pray; and then go out and do something remarkable.
—(Lauren F. Winner, author of Girl Meets God and Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity)

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Editorial Reviews

"One of the most original books I've read in a long time...[Charles Marsh] has reminded us of what is required to keep America moving toward social justice."—Bill Moyers

"[Marsh] traces the influence of faith on the civil rights movement and argues that the spiritual underpinnings of that movement can serve as a source of moral energy today...an argument for the enduring power of progressive Christianity."—Ruth Graham, Slate

"Among the finest studies of the civil rights movement...Marsh writes lucidly and lyrically, fusing theology and history with a vigorous and unobtrusive intelligence."—Books and Culture

"A stirring account of Christian faith in action...the author makes a fervent pleas for spiritual renewal and recommitment."—Christian Science Monitor

"This book will want to make you stand up and should; and kneel and pray; and then go out and do something remarkable."—Lauren F. Winner, author of Girl Meets God and Mudhouse Sabbath

"[Marsh is] part historian, part raconteur, and part preacher...I found myself both moved to nostalgia and stirred to action as a I read his gripping account."—Philip Yancey, author of What's So Amazing About Grace

From the Publisher

In this ambitious, wide-ranging book, Marsh, a religion professor at the University of Virginia, argues that the Civil Rights movement was, at its core, a Christian attempt to forge a "beloved community" of believers who identify with the poor and dispossessed and seek justice on their behalf. As his alternative telling unfolds, he introduces readers to a Martin Luther King Jr. they may not recognize (one who looked forward to a life of privilege and comfort until he was forced into leadership of the Montgomery Bus Boycott), as well as lesser-known figures such as Koinonia farm founder Clarence Jordan and Voices of Calvary founder John Perkins. Both of these men, like many others featured in the book, came to activism by way of Christian faith and belie the popular notion of "the civil rights movement as a secular movement that used religion to its advantage." Marsh laces his narrative with powerful critiques of secularism-among both activists and academics-and of white evangelical Christians for shallow, ineffectual concern for the poor and for people of color. He ends on a positive note, however, citing example after example of contemporary Christians eschewing lives of middle-class comfort in favor of attempts to build the beloved community in the most troubled corners of America. (Jan.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

"The revolution begins in the pews." So opens this closely reasoned study of the faith expressed in good works like the Civil Rights Act and antipoverty movement. At the heart of Marsh's (Religion/Univ. of Virginia; The Last Days, 2001, etc.) narrative stands Martin Luther King Jr., who, like Jimmy Carter, found inspiration for a socially active Christianity in the writings of Reinhold Niebuhr but became convinced that the Christ of the theologians is an abstraction-and that "abstractions cannot empower acts of compassion and self-sacrifice, or sustain the courage to speak out against the day." Certain instead that God lives in action, King chose to use faith-based action as an instrument of social change. He inspired many followers but was far from alone, and the great service of Marsh's book is to introduce readers to inspiring figures they may not have heard of. One is Clarence Leonard Jordan, a former seminarian who founded an agricultural/religious community, Koinonia Farm, that didn't set out deliberately to work for civil rights but came to be a center for the nascent movement in Georgia in the 1940s as its members created "opportunities for economic development among rural blacks" and "an organic approach to racial healing." Another is John Perkins, an African-American pastor who came to see racism as an illness and its perpetrators as victims. He remarked that "Racism is satanic, and I knew it would take a supernatural force to defeat it." Fond of twitting conservatives who profess faith but then flock to the likes of Oliver North, Perkins joins many other progressive Christians in the South who are committed to resisting racism and injustice and to founding that city-on-a-hillvision of "the beloved community," a body embraced but not contained by any church. Faith is not about reifying the American way of life, Marsh insists, or other forms of delusional self-worship; it is about doing good. Here, he offers examples of spiritual vision at work-and hard work at that. Author tour. Agent: Carol Mann/Carol Mann Agency

Kirkus Reviews