BESTSELLERS

How Barbara Jordan used sacred and secular scriptures in her social activismUS Congresswoman Barbara Jordan is well-known as an interpreter and defender of the Constitution, particularly through her landmark speech during Richard Nixon’s 1974 impeachment hearings. However, before she developed faith in the Constitution, Jordan had faith in Christianity. In “My Faith in the Constitution is Whole”: Barbara Jordan and the Politics of Scripture, Robin L. Owens shows how Jordan turned her religious faith and her faith in the Constitution into a powerful civil religious expression of her social activism. Owens begins by examining the lives and work of the nineteenth-century Black female orator-activists Maria W. Stewart and Anna Julia Cooper. Stewart and Cooper fought for emancipation and women’s rights by “scripturalizing,” or using religious scriptures to engage in political debate. Owens then demonstrates how Jordan built upon this tradition by treating the Constitution as an American “scripture” to advocate for racial justice and gender equality. Case studies of key speeches throughout Jordan’s career show how she quoted the Constitution and other founding documents as sacred texts, used them as sociolinguistic resources, and employed a discursive rhetorical strategy of indirection known as “signifying on scriptures.” Jordan’s particular use of the Constitution—deeply connected with her background and religious, racial, and gender identity—represents the agency and power reflected in her speeches. Jordan’s strategies also illustrate a broader phenomenon of scripturalization outside of institutional religion and its rhetorical and interpretive possibilities.

Read more less

There is a well known saying that "when the student is ready, the teacher will appear" (Buddhist Proverb) - well, my teachers have appeared in the form of horses and continue to do so. Anyone who has spent any length of time around horses cannot have failed to have observed some of the profound lessons they are able to teach us. The question however, is whether we have actually learnt from them! Inside the covers of this book, you will find some of those lessons that I am now sharing with you so that their legacy can grow and 'ripple' outwards. There have been so many lessons but these are some of the most important. They are presented through pictures, thoughts and observations, including those given to me by our horses and ponies and also through some of the journal and blog entries I have made to illustrate the lesson. They are not in any particular order and can be read as a kind of 'journey' as we have experienced them or as individual gifts of motivation and learning; whichever suits you.

Read more less

The first biography to rescue the true story of Josiah Henson, restoring to history his role in the Underground RailroadJosiah Henson led a fascinating life—from the plantation fields of Maryland to the Georgetown Market to the plantations of Kentucky to escaping to freedom in Canada to being introduced to the Queen in England. Born enslaved, Henson eventually escaped and became a respected minister and famed secular leader."My Name Is Not Tom" is a biography of Josiah Henson, the man catapulted into fame after Harriet Beecher Stowe noted that certain events in his life partially influenced the development of her fictional character Uncle Tom. While previous biographies have relied heavily on Henson's four autobiographies, which replicated the myth that he was the sole inspiration for Stowe's character, "My Name Is Not Tom" uses new primary source research to fill in the untold parts of his extraordinary life and examine his views of slavery and morality, which changed substantially over the course of his life.

Read more less