In Freedom in Resistance and Creative Transformation, Michael Miller addresses the concept of freedom that is central to the grammar of Christian faith and important in a wide range of religious and nonreligious settings across the globe. He confronts the fact that despite the claimed importance of freedom there continues to be interpersonal, socio-political, and religious power hierarchies that keep some people dominant and others subjugated. The book suggests that often these hierarchies are informed by Christian teachings that deny freedom to human beings on the basis of their humanity per se. Having classified humanity as fallen, we are instructed that freedom is experienced by disparaging our humanity as we actually experience it, seeing ourselves as our own worst enemies and accepting bondage to God--the bondage reflected in the character of relations with those seen as God's special representatives in the world. Miller presents a case against this understanding of the human situation, and in the process he critically engages the Old and New Testaments along with ideas of significant representatives of Christian orthodoxy. As an alternative he promotes freedom that is finite, realistically libertarian, and relational as most compatible with the character of human beings that are partially self-creating and self-determining. Contributing to this position is the view that an infinitely temporal God, by character and desire, participates in human life in a way that ensures the requisite space for authentic decision making, from which emerges genuinely novel possibilities for human life. This dynamic has implications for the continued development of the human species and the quality of life in the cosmos as a whole.

Contemporary Western society has a strange relationship with freedom. Unbridled subjective liberty and narrow fundamentalism pull away from each other in mutual loathing while sociological forces seek to manipulate both sides. The church needs to recover and reconstruct a theology of freedom to navigate between the perils of both extremes and to avoid being manipulated by these forces. Just as biblical figures are taught through parables and metaphors, this book uses jazz improvisation as an analogy for Christian freedom. Just as jazz improvisation relies on successfully navigating constraints such as the history and traditions of jazz, jazz theory, and musical instruments, so Christian freedom also relies on constraints such as the biblical canon, church history, theology, and the church itself. Through understanding the freedom jazz musicians enjoy in making music together, we can better understand how Christian freedom might be enacted in daily life. If Western churches discover and enact Christian freedom in a meaningful way, the songs that they improvise will be as siren calls to people in chains.

A new generation engages the theology of John Howard Yoder. These essays wrestle with questions of power and its implications for social practices including policing, nonviolence, sexism, governmentality, dialogue, political critique, theological construction, and the work of “inheriting” a theological tradition. The authors and their approaches to Yoder’s work are diverse. They bring a wide array of backgrounds to the task, from activism and church leadership to advanced studies and the professorate. What each has in common is an instinct to place Yoder’s work into new conversations and to examine it through new lenses. Authors include Chris K. Huebner, Nekeisha Alexis-Baker, Paul Martens, John C. Nugent, and Paul C. Heidebrecht.

More Will Sing Their Way to Freedom is about Indigenous resistance and resurgence across lands and waters claimed by Canada. Both Indigenous and non-Indigenous contributors describe and analyze struggles against contemporary colonialism by the Canadian state and, more broadly, against the global colonial-capitalist system. Resistance includes Indigenous survival against centuries of genocidal policies and the on-going dispossession and destruction of Indigenous lands and waters. Resurgence is the re-invention of diverse Indigenous ways of being, knowing and doing in politics, economics, the arts, research and all realms of life. The underlying argument of More Will Sing Their Way to Freedom is that colonial-capitalism is a historical fact but not an inevitability. By analyzing and detailing various forms of Indigenous resistance and resurgence, the authors here describe practices and visions that prefigure a possible world where there is justice for Indigenous peoples and renewed healthy relationships with “all our relations.”

It is possible for Communities of Faith to break through to creative change-if they are willing to learn how to get differences working together without a war. Proven practical tools that effect organizational rejuvenation, and a roadmap of change keeps congregations moving together in the same direction. Author John E. Piper explores issues such as: How to recognize controlling self-interests How to identify hidden decision-makers Church Chess-the win-lose turf game that everyone loses Creating a complementary team where everyone wins Learning to drive safely on the open roadmap of change Most change efforts center on either people, processes, or structure. These tools bond together the varying perceptions, styles and interests, so that a congregation can get its organizational act together and maintain its integrity through future crises. In this way, congregations can shape change before it pushes them out of shape.

The product of 35 senior scholars' research, these volumes examine the psychology driving the religious, political, and economic forces that cause turbulence and violence in human society. Religious, political, and economic revolts have defined the human experience throughout history. These kinds of universal turbulence continue to be the dominate source of human suffering and perplexity during the first decade of the 21st century. What can intensive study of the psychodynamics of cultural and social eruptions tell us that may serve to move cultures around the world beyond ongoing strife? This work seeks to find out, examining the spectrum of cultural and social eruptions from ancient Jewish, Christian, and Muslim revolutions to the modern day economic and political turbulence in Eastern Europe, the Near East, and Latin America. The breadth of this three-volume set ranges from the 12th century BCE to the current struggles in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria; and from the irrational violence of the French Revolution to the genuine quest for liberty of the American Revolution and the Singing Revolutions in the Baltic States in recent decades. Each volume is introduced with a description of its philosophical perspective and concludes with a brief summarization of the takeaways of the research presented.

This thought-provoking book is divided into two parts, each of which contains four chapters. In Part I, titled "Rethinking Resistance", contributors assert that "resistance" continues to hold utility as both an analytic concept and mode of action in the world, and therefore demands renewed engagement. Part II contains essays that offer novel frames for addressing progressive social change that might serve to replace "resistance" entirely, and thus is entitled "Thinking Beyond".

Teenage Allen Maruyama internalized the hostility directed at Japanese/Japanese Americans subsequent to the Pearl Harbor attack. He says he learned to hate himself and “felt subhuman,” but Presbyterians in his home state of Colorado “befriended” him. He proved himself as a student athlete and US Army Buck Sergeant. He graduated from McCormick Theological Seminary (MA, Christian education, and MDiv). His MTS is from Dubuque Seminary. Only when he earned a PhD in theology from the Aquinas Institute of Philosophy and Theology did he feel “emancipated,” no longer suffering from shame while living and working as a Japanese American in white majority culture. Allen’s Nisei (second generation) experiences and his issho kenmei personality (all in, full throttle, nonstop) propelled him into centers of change and controversy in fields as diverse as social justice, theology, and cultural and church history. Dr. Allen Maruyama is the first Asian American to stand for the position of moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA).