For the Healing of the Nation offers a serious look at the social and political climate in the United States from a biblical perspective, emphasizing race and "otherness," economics and the environment, and institutional violence (war and capital punishment). An autobiographical thread traces the journey of a white male coming of age in the mid-twentieth-century Deep South as his evolving faith leads him to painful breaks with inherited values and standard views on controversial issues. Critical not only of both major political parties but also of centrist compromises between Right and Left, Russell Pregeant seeks a "forward" position, which he terms "ecocommunitarian," based on biblical values. His musings touch on both southern and American identities and on the nature of the biblical writings and the ways they should and should not be used in contemporary debates. Central to the entire work are discussions of how idolatrous commitments to a culture's prevalent ideologies obscure the essential demands of biblical faith.

Who are our Baptist saints? Paul Dekar, Centenary Professor at McMaster Divinity College, answers this question with his captivating stories of the groups and individuals who spoke out as Christ's witnesses of peace.

A description of the missionary work the author saw at first hand in the Far East before the Madras conference in 1938 and a discussion of the constructive ideas underlying the world movement of Christianity.

How does one forgive an international political transgression as deep as genocide or apartheid? Forgiveness is often conceived of as an element of personal morality, and even at that it is difficult. This book argues that it is also an essential part of political ethics, especially when dealing with collective wrongdoing by political regimes. In the past, a retributive justice demanding prosecution and punishment of all past offenses has kept the international community away from moving on to the next step in regime change. Here, Mark R. Amstutz takes a restorative justice approach, calling for nations to account for crimes through truth commissions, public apology and repentance, reparations, and ultimately forgiveness and the lifting of deserved penalties. The distinctive feature of forgiveness is the balance it strikes between backward-looking accountability and forward-looking reconciliation. The Healing of Nations combines a theory of the role of forgiveness in public life with four key case studies that test this ethic: Argentina, Chile, Northern Ireland, and South Africa. Amstutz uses the hard cases to illustrate the promise and limits of forgiving without forgetting.

The Healing of a Nation, winner of the 1971 Anisfield-Wolf Award for the best scholarly book in the field of race relations, applies the insights of modern psychology and sociology to an exploration of the causes and cures of racism. Taking a fresh look at the works of such giants as Pavlov, Freud, Marx, Myrdal, and Kurt Lewin, David Loye shows us how their theories and findings can be used to help solve our racial dilemma.