In The Long Defeat, Akiko Hashimoto explores the stakes of war memory in Japan after its catastrophic defeat in World War II, showing how and why defeat has become an indelible part of national collective life, especially in recent decades. Divisive war memories lie at the root of the contentious politics surrounding Japan's pacifist constitution and remilitarization, and fuel the escalating frictions in East Asia known collectively as Japan's "history problem." Drawing on ethnography, interviews, and a wealth of popular memory data, this book identifies three preoccupations - national belonging, healing, and justice - in Japan's discourses of defeat. Hashimoto uncovers the key war memory narratives that are shaping Japan's choices - nationalism, pacifism, or reconciliation - for addressing the rising international tensions and finally overcoming its dark history.

This book makes a fresh contribution to a growing genre of popular literature facing Christianity's late-modern or postmodern decline. It situates the broader fate of Christian faith within the eschatological realism of J.R.R. Tolkien's characterization of history as a "long defeat."

The sexual revolution is part of wider and deeper developments happening in our world. It asserts the total freedom of the individual to behave as if the traditions of religion, the wisdom of philosophy, and the realities of biology have no claim on how we live, especially in the area of sexuality. The author traces the history of the sexual revolution, from the early days of the Enlightenment through Marxist movements to our own times, and the failure of governments and even churches to defend sound principles for sexual behavior. He records the constant teaching of popes and Church councils and highlights their focus on the integration of sexual morality and personality within the contexts of human nature, marriage, and the welfare of children. Bishop Elliott acknowledges that Catholic parents, teachers, and pastors need guidance about sexual ethics. And so do high school and college students. To help them understand the teaching of the Church and affirm it, he offers not only the clarity that comes from a thorough understanding of the subject, but also the pastoral sensitivity that has resulted from decades of service to the Church.

Does the New Testament teach that a wife must submit to her husband as head? If so, does it have a lasting value beyond the cultural milieu in which it was first articulated? The Politics of Conjugal Love takes a fresh approach to this classic issue in theological anthropology, paying specific attention to the role of theological hermeneutics in its interpretation. Conor Sweeney and Brian T. Trainor contend that both “subordinationist” and “anti-subordinationist” readings of headship and submission miss the mark. Their alternative is a baptismally specified trinitarian reading in which headship and submission appear as modes intrinsic to both life in Christ and the love proper to the highest mode of trinitarian love.

Jesus did not say "take and think." He said "take and eat." This is embodied worship. It includes gestures, rites, kneeling, raising hands, and of course eating and drinking a holy meal with God. These activities are liturgies. Liturgy is the physical, embodied activity of worship--it's what we do in worship--everyone has a liturgy! As such, worship is the church's primary means of discipleship. Instead of fearing to kneel because it's "Roman Catholic," or fearing to raise your hands because it's "Pentecostal," perhaps we should simply see what God recommends in the Scriptures--then without fear and by faith (at the appropriate time) start kneeling, raising our hands, and eating a covenant meal with God (on a weekly basis). The hope is to replace a fear-driven approach to worship with a faith-driven, embodied worship that offers deep, robust, and beautiful worship experiences combined with the hope of great blessings. In doing so, we hope for nothing less than a new reformation--a reformation in worship.

The concept of vocation in an early modern setting calls to mind the priesthood or religious life in a monastery or cloister; to be “called” by God meant to leave the concerns of the world behind. Beginning in the mid-seventeenth century, French Catholic clergy began to promote the innovative idea that everyone, even an ordinary layperson, was called to a vocation or “state of life” and that discerning this call correctly had implications for one’s happiness and salvation, and for the social good. In Callings and Consequences Christopher Lane analyzes the origins, growth, and influence of a culture of vocation that became a central component of the Catholic Reformation and its legacy in France. The reformers’ new vision of the choice of a state of life was marked by four characteristics: urgency (the realization that one’s soul was at stake), inclusiveness (the belief that everyone, including lay people, was called by God), method (the use of proven discernment practices), and liberty (the belief that this choice must be free from coercion, especially by parents). No mere passing phenomena, these vocational reforms engendered enduring beliefs and practices within the repertoire of global Catholic modernity, even to the present day. An illuminating and sometimes surprising history of pastoral reform, Callings and Consequences helps us to understand the history of Catholic vocational culture and its role in the modernizing process, within Christianity and beyond.

In life, we all have decisions. Growing up in a dysfunctional Brady bunch with two mothers and four dads, life was anything but simple. From my dad killing my best friend to my siblings taking advantage of my innocence and finding my mother naked numerous times surrounded by pills. All this before I was seven. At a young age, I learned how to persevere and be resilient. It was a rocky road battling crippling mental illness and having the only constant in life be change. It was lonely and demeaning. My biggest roadblocks were family. Blood does not always run thicker than water. But I adapted. I overcame. I beat the odds. I chose the road less traveled. I never accepted defeat.

Critical Race Theory, like most ideologies before it, promises an earthly paradise premised on ceaseless revolution, but instead of delivering on this promise, it produces a terrestrial hell echoing the inner nihilism of modern life. Contemporary social justice movements, just like progressivism, the New Deal, and post-Civil War Southern Democrats, place Westerners in bondage rather than delivering on the promise of unlimited freedom. Requiem for Reality responds to the widening pendulum shifts of our age. These developments consume and incense the nation. These shifts offer a bewildering set of claims grounded in the presumption that race and other forms of human identity explain all forms of disparity and inequality. Against such claims, it is crucial to distinguish between a development narrative and a bias narrative for the purpose of explaining ethnic disparity. The development narrative is grounded in data that often deliver unwelcome facts. The facts show that Asian Americans, as well as West Indian blacks, often do better than white Americans in schooling, per capita income, and crime rates. Indeed, Syrian Americans, Korean Americans, Indonesian Americans, Taiwanese Americans, and Filipino Americans experience significantly higher median household incomes than whites and higher test scores, lower incarceration rates, and longer life expectancies. Oblivious to such facts, the bias narrative, on the other hand, grounds itself in the “white privilege” thesis suggesting that only race matters. Surfacing from the toxic pit of ideology, the bias narrative emphasizes the racist claim that African Americans are the only ethnic group in the world who cannot succeed under less-than-ideal conditions. Separated from important facts, this narrative often substitutes absolute Neo-pagan certainties originating in a make-believe world for commonplace notions of truth and reality. As such, the “white privilege” thesis, rather than improving the conditions of African Americans and others, offers a utopian dream that threatens to become a national nightmare. The urgent pursuit of utopia reflects trends that are largely anthropological, sociological, and more spiritual than political. Responding to these developments, which have given rise to victimhood claims within gender and transgender categories will require more than argumentation, rational analysis, superior logic, or even the inauguration of a Hanging Judge. It will require courage because otherwise, Chairman Mao’s forecast, stating that there is a great disorder under heaven and the situation is excellent, may come true here just like it has already come true for China.

After Lee and Grant met at Appomatox Court House in 1865 to sign the document ending the long and bloody Civil War, the South at last had to face defeat as the dream of a Confederate nation melted into the Lost Cause. Through an examination of memoirs, personal papers, and postwar Confederate rituals such as memorial day observances, monument unveilings, and veterans' reunions, Ghosts of the Confederacy probes into how white southerners adjusted to and interpreted their defeat and explores the cultural implications of a central event in American history. Foster argues that, contrary to southern folklore, southerners actually accepted their loss, rapidly embraced both reunion and a New South, and helped to foster sectional reconciliation and an emerging social order. He traces southerners' fascination with the Lost Cause--showing that it was rooted as much in social tensions resulting from rapid change as it was in the legacy of defeat--and demonstrates that the public celebration of the war helped to make the South a deferential and conservative society. Although the ghosts of the Confederacy still haunted the New South, Foster concludes that they did little to shape behavior in it--white southerners, in celebrating the war, ultimately trivialized its memory, reduced its cultural power, and failed to derive any special wisdom from defeat.

J. R. R. Tolkien’s magnum opus, The Lord of the Rings has been beloved for generations, selling millions of copies and selling millions more tickets through its award-winning film adaptations. The immense cultural impact of this epic is undeniable, but the deeper meaning of the story often goes unnoticed. Here, Joseph Pearce, author of Bilbo’s Journey uncovers the rich—and distinctly Christian—meaning just beneath the surface of The Lord of the Rings. Make the journey with Frodo as he makes his perilous trek from the Shire to Mordor, while Pearce expertly reveals the deeper, spiritual significance. Did you know that the events of The Lord of the Rings are deeply intertwined with the Christian calendar? Or what the Ring, with its awesome and terrible power represents? How do the figures of good and evil in the story reflect those forces in our own lives? Find the answers to these questions and much more in Frodo’s Journey.