Southern Church

Why did southern white evangelical Christians resist the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s? Simply put, they believed the Bible told them so. These white Christians entered the battle certain that God was on their side. Focusing on the case of South Carolina, The Bible Told Them So shows how, despite suffering defeat in the public sphere with the triumph of the civil rights movement, white evangelicals continued to battle for their own institutions, preaching and practicing a segregationist Christianity they continued to believe reflected God's will.

In High Tide at Pelican Pointe, we once again begin our story in the quaint little town of Park Place, nestled in the heart of the Olde English District of South Carolina. We find the good Reverend Rock Clark and his very pregnant wife, Liz, making preparations to take a much-needed beach vacation, leaving the busyness of his growing congregation behind. They've been gifted 10 days in Miss Edie's Pelican Pointe beach house with three days alone before the rowdy Clark clan joins them for their annual pilgrimage to the sea.

What do church ladies really think? Composed and often so quiet as to be thought invisible, church ladies have secret powers to change the world. What are those special powers? They love well. They give well. They can often cook! And they play an essential role in a great rescue operation for mankind. For although they appear to have Ninja warrior strengths (and can be invisible!), they are helpers to the only Superhero who ever really saved the world and mankind. They know His name and will tell you. And they can show you what it's like to brought to life and empowered to love instead of ...

For fourteen-year-old Leah Payne, life in her beloved coastal Carolina town is worlds away from the harsh realities of the day. Loyal to her lumberjack father, she knows only of the familiarity of her small community, the magic of the natural world, and the creative intuition that prompts her to march to the beat of her own drum. But when an accident takes her father's life, leaving her an orphan, Leah finds herself cast into a family of strangers whose welcoming façade hides a terrible secret.

When the car sailed over the embankment carrying the four members of the pulpit committee, Mildred Budge called out, “Jesus saves.” The others heard it, but they were also experiencing their own quick flashes of insight. Liz, a serial widow, felt unsatisfied with her life. She wanted more. Sailing toward her death, she still did. Sam, who had turned the steering wheel that had sent them over the embankment, was looking forward to the crash. He wanted to feel it—the hard slam of collision. His hands held the wheel tightly, bracing for it. Jake smiled. He resisted holding Mildred’s ...

In 1979 the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith withdrew Hans Kung's missio canonica. Pope Paul VI approved the censure saying, "We are obligated to declare that in his writings he fell short of integrity and the truth of the Catholic faith." Through a 1980 agreement with the Vatican, Kung is now permitted to teach, but only under secular auspices. In this acclaimed Modern Library Chronicle, Kung examines the Catholic Church through its many reformations, focusing on the people and events...

Women’s rights activist, Lynn Cummings, switches up churches like shoes. As soon as her anointing is exposed, she runs – that is, until she finds a pew at First Baptist Church, where Lynn is anchored by the wiles of the debonair Pastor Stewart. Lynn, becomes the woman on Stewart’s arm, and with that, becomes the target of women who are always up in Pastor Stewart’s face, namely, his quote-unquote friend Bianca, the skin-bleaching, man-worshipping teen choir director who’ll stop at nothing to become Stewart’s first lady. Even Nay, the wife of Stewart’s right hand man, Associate...

“Don’t you ever want to run away from Christmas?” Mildred Budge’s answer to Dixie was immediate and truthful. “Yes, yes, yes,” Mildred said with conviction. She couldn’t stop saying yes, though the very idea that a good church lady would want to run away from the occasion during the year that marked the birth of Jesus-- the reason for the season for a tried and true church lady of the South-- was almost beyond explanation. “Then, let’s go. Let’s go to Fountain City and find Mr. Fixit and eat sublime pies,” her friend Dixie urged. The two needed Mr. Fixit because of a ...

When a church lady falls in love, she falls hard. Sometimes she lands on her knees. Miss Budge does as she moves quietly and powerfully through her daily life in Old Cloverdale, where F. Scott Fitzgerald once courted Zelda, and two miles away Nat King Cole was born. Fitzgerald wrote about love. Nat Cole sang about love, and Mildred Budge knows those words. She can sing along with Nat and has. But Miss Budge lives love too—is always in love. The world wants a certain kind of love. Miss Budge offers a different kind—one that is so rare, so foreign as to be misunderstood…. But make no ...

It’s the 1960s in North Carolina, and Lorraine Delford has it all—an upstanding family, a perfect boyfriend, and an idyllic home complete with a white picket fence. Yet every time she looks through her father’s telescope, she dreams of leaving it all behind to go to space. It’s ambitious, but Lorraine has always been exceptional.

Sometimes it can seem as if friends are more work and pain than they're worth, with friendship challenges that we have to endure and struggle through. Life gets in the way of our well-intentioned efforts to connect. Conflicts and differences over serious issues divide us and make us think that we could never be close to a person ever again. How can we build real relationships that are life giving and pass the test of time? Bryan Loritts mines one of the Bible's least-known books for insights into how friendships can flourish even in the midst of sin and brokenness.

This work is focused to be a spiritual strength to as many that will be ready for the use of the Master. It will show you that your status and qualification determine nothing in the presence of God, even the smallest of mankind, seemingly insignificant person can as well be used by God. It is neither by personalities nor what we are and possess that God is looking at in us, but what He can bring out from us. In African God’s Generals, the author reveals the glory of God in the lives of fourteen (14) powerful indigenous ministers God used to ignite the fires of revivals and set the path of...

All your favorite characters have returned for your tenth visit to First Church and Falls City, Georgia.Bishop Sean Evans and his partner Rabbi Eze Dolan face new threats of being outed.Colonel Mitchell rallies a large group of supporters to attack the ministry of Father Steele Austin.Chadsworth Purcell Alexander reaches out to Steele for help and risks having his identity exposed.Steele and Randi must decide how to punish Virginia Mudd Willoughby.The Reverend Melvin and Judith MacClaren return to Falls City and raise over a million dollars in one night.Elmer Idle and Rose MacClaren receive...

Can this swoon-worthy hero turn Dani's dreams into reality? Sure, Wade Spencer is easy on the eyes, has that Southern charm, and comes from a good family, but Dani has been burned by the like before and she’s not fool enough to try it again. But her little girl sees a potential daddy. Seeing how Wade showers her daughter with all the love the girl’s father has denied her, Dani can’t help but warm up to the idea of giving love another try. Wade has a lot going on—a mother with a life-threatening illness to look after, four younger siblings to keep in line, and a farm to run. That ...

Is she beyond the reach of redemption? Jolene Spencer had been perplexed from the first mention of Micah Abrams. Why would a grown man uproot his life and move two states over at the urging of Jo’s momma? How did he and Ma even meet? And he’s raising a daughter by himself. Where is the child’s momma and how does she fit into his plans? When Jo first sees him standing on the front porch, staring like a deer caught in the headlights and seemingly unable to speak, she pegs him as a shy one. But then he walks in with a confident swagger and mingles with her family like he’s been there ...

A one-night stand. An unwanted pregnancy. A life-changing experience. Zane Spencer can't hide from his mistakes anymore, so tail tucked between his legs, he returns home to Shiloh for a fresh start. He'll swallow his pride, go back to working on the farm he never should have left in the first place, and maybe one day he'll deserve to find a sweet girl to marry and raise a family of his own. No one will ever find out that instead of chasing his dreams with his band, he’d spent most of his time away as an Elvis impersonator. But a surprise that will change his life forever awaits him back ...

In the 1980s, Erika Bornman’s family join, and ultimately move to, KwaSizabantu, a Christian mission based in KwaZulu-Natal, which is touted as a nirvana, founded on egalitarian values. But something sinister lurks beneath ‘the place where people are helped’. Life at KwaSizabantu is hard. Christianity is used to justify harsh punishments, and congregants are forced to repent for their sins. Threats of physical violence ensure adherence to stringent rules. Parents are pitted against children. Friendships are discouraged.

DeShawn lives a high, creative, and promiscuous life in San Francisco. But when he’s called back to his cramped Alabama hometown for his uncle’s funeral, he’s hit by flashbacks of handsome, doomed neighbors and sweltering Sunday services. Amid prickly reminders of his childhood, DeShawn ponders family, church, and the men in his life, prompting the question: Who deserves love?

Each Christmas retired chemistry teacher Edwina Bopp makes her newest invention of miracle fudge as a fundraiser for missions in her small Southern town Fountain City. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the good lady cooks through the night and then gives the candy away to the fudge-hungry group of people who know this year's newest recipe is coming and line up in front of her store before she ever opens the door of her Main Street candy shop. People receive their portion of this year's fudge and place donations for missions in her jar on the counter, expecting miracles. Some miracles have...

In January of 1950, Mary Church Terrell, an 86-year-old charter member of the NAACP, headed into Thompson’s Restaurant, just a few blocks from the White House, and requested to be served. She and her companions were informed by the manager that they could not eat in his establishment, because they were “colored.” Terrell, a former suffragette and one of the country’s first college-educated African-American women, took the matter to court. Three years later, the Supreme Court vindicated her outrage: District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co., Inc. was decided in 1953.