In the forthright style that has earned him a reputation for controversy, theologian Gregory Baum presents the new Faith and Justice movement in various... churches — especially the Roman Catholic Church — together with the considerable opposition to it. He discusses why many Christians are becoming activists, turning their faith into deeds by working for the liberation of the poor. He argues for a new ecumenism, permitting a more representative opinion within the Church and, in a larger sense, for what he believes are the fundamentals of a "just society."

In this provocative essay on that least understood virtue, compassion, the authors challenge themselves and us with these questions: Where do we place... compassion in our lives? Is it enough to live a life in which we hurt one another as little as possible? Is our guiding ideal a life of maximum pleasure and minimum pain? Compassion answers no.After years of study and discussion among themselves, with other religious, and with men and women at the very center of national politics, the authors look at compassion with a vigorous new perspective. They place compassion at the heart of a Christian life in a world governed far too long by principles of power and destructive control. Compassion, no longer merely an eraser of human mistakes, is a force of prayer and action -- the expression of God's love for us and our love for God and one another.Compassion is a book that says no to a compassion of guilt and failure and yes to a compassionate love that pervades our spirit and moves us to action. Henri Nouwen, Donald McNeill, and Douglas Morrison have written a moving document on what it means to be a Christian in a difficult time.

Compassionate Statistics: Applied Quantitative Analysis for Social Services (With Instructions for SPSS 14.0) is an attempt to "de-mythologize" a... content area that is both essential for professional social service practitioners, yet dreaded by some of the most experienced among them. Using friendly, straightforward language as well as concrete illustrations and exercises from social service practice, author Vincent E. Faherty catapults students and experienced professionals to a pragmatic level where they can handle quantitative analysis for all their research and evaluation needs.

Compassionate Therapy explores the characteristics of difficult clients. Arguing that resistance and conflict can be a constructive force, Kottler shows... how practitioners can use these struggles to examine their own abilities, deepen their compassion, and improve therapeutic flexibility and effectiveness.

For much of human history, most of the population lived and worked on farms but today, information about livestock is more likely to come from... children's books than hands-on experience. When romanticized notions of an agrarian lifestyle meet with the realities of the modern industrial farm, the result is often a plea for a return to antiquated production methods. The result is a brewing controversy between animal activist groups, farmers, and consumers that is currently being played out in ballot boxes, courtrooms, and in the grocery store. Where is one to turn for advice when deciding whether to pay double the price for cage-free eggs, or in determining how to vote on ballot initiates seeking to ban practices such as the use of gestation crates in pork production or battery cage egg production? At present, there is no clear answer. What is missing from the animal welfare debate is an objective approach that can integrate the writings of biologists and philosophers, while providing a sound and logical basis for determining the consequences of farm animal welfare policies. What is missing in the debate? Economics. This book journeys from the earliest days of animal domestication to modern industrial farms. Delving into questions of ethics and animal sentience, the authors use data from ingenious consumers' experiments conducted with real food, real money, and real animals to compare the costs and benefits of improving animal care. They show how the economic approach to animal welfare raises new questions and ethical conundrums, as well as providing unique and counter-intuitive results.

The urban landscape is changing and, as a result, urban ministries are at a crossroads. If the Church is to be an effective agent of compassion and... justice, Robert Lupton notes, we must change our mission strategies. In this compelling book, Lupton asks the tough questions about service providing and community building to help ministries enhance their effectiveness. What are the dilemmas that caring people encounter to faithfully carry out the teachings of Scripture and become personally involved with "the least of these?" What are some possible alternatives to the ways we have traditionally attempted to care for the poor? How do people, programs and neighborhoods move towards reciprocal, interdependent relationships? To effect these types of changes will require new skill sets and resources, but the possibilities for good are great.

Dr. Dan and Kate Montgomery's masterwork on integrating psychology and theology has practical application in the fields of pastoral ministry,... counseling, personality theory, and discipleship. Praised by professors at Yale, Fuller, Gordon-Conwell, Garrett-Evangelical, University of Dubuque, Andover Newton, and Dallas theological seminaries, the Self Compass® growth tool produces personality transformation, strengthens relationships, and increases intimacy with God. Dr. Ray Anderson calls the book "stunning and stimulating; recommended as required reading here at Fuller Theological Seminary." Theologian Gabriel Fackre writes: "Thank you, Dan and Kate Montgomery, for this remarkable mating of theology and psychology."

This book argues that it is time for African nations to govern themselves using modified, indigenous political structures and ideologies. Osabu-Kle... closely examines the colonization experience and the massive transplantation of Western political forms as well as the post-independence period of structural transformation. He delves into the makeup of a number of indigenous African political systems: the Ovimbunda, Zulu, Ashanti, and Ga peoples whose cultures, though geographically distant, exhibit common characteristics, including consensualism and a balance between centralization and decentralization to check the abuse of power. Osabu-Kle argues that only a type of democracy compatible with the historic African cultural environment is capable of achieving the political conditions for successful development. But he goes beyond establishing that precolonial African political systems were democratic. Rather, he describes how the indigenous political culture might be modified to achieve the political conditions necessary to work towards a successful future. This dynamically written, lively, and informed study provides a provocative challenge to conventional Western commentaries on Africa and current thinking about the continent's "re-democratization."

Fountainhead Press is pleased to introduce COMPbiblio, the first book in the Fountainhead Press X Series for Professional Development. This book enables... students and instructors to access biographical and scholarly information about leading figures in the field of composition and other fields directly related to the study and teaching of composition. COMPbiblio traces the evolution of composition by presenting how current leaders in composition came to their careers and continue to reinvent their research and teaching practices as new ideas arrive in composition studies. The books format is designed to serve equally well as a textbook for graduate seminars or as a reference manual for a wider audience. In the Leaders section, each chapter is devoted to a specific composition leader and contains a brief biographical narrative and an annotated bibliography of sources relating to the work of that individual. In the Influences sections, each chapter is focused on representative works in and around writing theory and practice to start your search.