In Faith and Fraternity Laura Branch provides the first sustained comparative analysis of London’s livery companies during the Reformation. Focussing on the Grocers and the Drapers, this book challenges the view that merchants were zealous early Protestants and that the companies to which they belonged adapted to the Reformation by secularising their ethos. Rather, the rhetoric of Christianity, particularly appeals to brotherly love, punctuated the language of corporate governance throughout the century, and helped the liveries retain a spiritual culture. These institutions comprised a spectrum of religious identities yet members managed to coexist relatively peacefully; in this way the liveries help us to understand better how the transition from a Catholic to a Protestant society was negotiated.

Sudden loss creates shared experiences. After his wife’s accident, Greg Tonkinson had countless nights without sleep. During those times, it felt like Greg was alone in the dark—but he found great comfort in reading God’s Word and the books of other “fraternity members.” The words he found were from people who deeply understood what he was feeling—as if they were walking with him through that first year of loss. Unwanted Fraternity is Greg Tonkinson’s record of that challenging time. His honest, conversational writing style includes two main components: journal entries from a widowed father of three young children and Bible references (over 150). Tonkinson addresses areas of doubt, fear, deep sadness, and trudging through the proper reactions when others don’t know how to respond. He emphasizes the importance of community while working through the realization that life will go on after loss, even if it will never be the same. Ultimately, Unwanted Fraternity is intended to remind individuals of the hope that comes with a relationship with Christ, the true Healer of grief.

College is a time to learn, explore, and grow, but what does faith have to do with it? In this collection of essays, gifted writers in their twenties and early thirties reflect on their college years by telling stories—some hilarious, some heart-wrenching—on the intersection of faith and college. At a time when so much is written about young adults but not by young adults, this collection allows writers to reveal their college experience in their own voice, sharing, through reflection on their own joys and sorrows, unique insight into students’ experience of college. Themes include negotiating identity, sex and sexuality, discerning the future, studying abroad, and transitions in faith. This collection includes stories from large public universities and small, faith-related colleges. Perfect for faith leaders, college administrators, study groups, young adults, and anyone who loves a college student, Kissing in the Chapel, Praying in the Frat House reveals college struggles that help us reflect on faith and life in college, and forever.

Providing the first systematic comparative study of the religious culture of early-modern London's livery companies, this book focuses on two leading guilds - the Grocers and the Drapers - to better understand how religious identities were constructed and expressed in Reformation England. London's livery companies always had a strong religious element to their corporate identity, but their reaction to religious change has to date been only lightly explored, appearing either in the context of broad institutional histories or general surveys of religious change. This major study explores three key research questions by looking at both the institutions of the liveries and the individuals they comprised. Firstly, it provides a better understanding of how the transition from a Catholic to a Protestant society was mediated and negotiated by elite groups through a focus on two of London's largest, most ancient and archivally-intact companies. It illuminates how merchants reconciled potentially competing loyalties to Church, Crown and Company. In particular, it sheds light upon the responses of merchants, and thereby civic elites, to religious change, demonstrating how institutions whose membership comprised a spectrum of religious identities managed to live, trade and work alongside one another whilst maintaining a culture based upon Christian doctrine. Supported by a substantial prosopographical study that tracked approximately 1000 members of the livery of the Grocers and Drapers across different aspects of public and private life - through company court minutes and accounts, churchwardens' accounts, vestry minutes, wills, trade records and letters - this book offers a fascinating insight into the intersection of religious belief, trade, and networks in sixteenth-century England.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY San Francisco Chronicle • The Plain Dealer The inspiring true story of a group of young men whose lives were changed by a visionary mentor On April 4, 1968, the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., shocked the nation. Later that month, the Reverend John Brooks, a professor of theology at the College of the Holy Cross who shared Dr. King’s dream of an integrated society, drove up and down the East Coast searching for African American high school students to recruit to the school, young men he felt had the potential to succeed if given an opportunity. Among the twenty students he had a hand in recruiting that year were Clarence Thomas, the future Supreme Court justice; Edward P. Jones, who would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize for literature; and Theodore Wells, who would become one of the nation’s most successful defense attorneys. Many of the others went on to become stars in their fields as well. In Fraternity, Diane Brady follows five of the men through their college years. Not only did the future president of Holy Cross convince the young men to attend the school, he also obtained full scholarships to support them, and then mentored, defended, coached, and befriended them through an often challenging four years of college, pushing them to reach for goals that would sustain them as adults. Would these young men have become the leaders they are today without Father Brooks’s involvement? Fraternity is a triumphant testament to the power of education and mentorship, and a compelling argument for the difference one person can make in the lives of others.

The religion of Orange politics is an ethnographic study of the Orange Order in contemporary Scotland. The Order is ultra-Protestant, ultra-British, and ultra-unionist. It is also vehemently anti-Catholic. Drawing on new debates about the politics of hate, this book asks if religious bigotry can ever form part of human experiences of 'The Good'.

Shalom/Salaam: A Story of a Mystical Fraternity is a groundbreaking study introducing To The popular reader, The story of respectful and loving interfaith relations between Sufis (Islamic mystics) and Jewish spiritual thinkers for nearly one thousand years. From the inception of Islam, To the Golden Age (8th-12th centuries) Jewish-Sufis of Arabia, North Africa and Spain, through the Kabbalists in Spain And The Holy Land, and then into 18th century European Hasidism, Islamic and Jewish ideas commingled to influence both paths, As well as strongly influencing the Jewish mystical system. This story is important to understanding contemporary Jewish-Muslim relations. As Egyptian Ambassador Sallama Shaker notes: "Block's narrative is an eye-opener for peace activists and politicians who are in search for genuine peace built on mutual respect – This is a 'must read book'." Many medieval Jews interacted with and were influenced by the Sufi way. Moses Maimonides, considered the pre-eminent Jewish medieval thinker, Solomon ibn Gabirol, whose "piyyut" are still sung during the Sabbath liturgy the world over, Judah Halevi, whose work, according To The chief Rabbi of Palestine in the early 20th century, contains that which is most precious about the Jewish soul and hundreds of other seminal Jewish thinkers often read Sufi treatises in Arabic, wrote Islamic-inspired mystical odes and sometimes even based their interpretations of Jewish tradition on Sufi thought and practice.