These narratives by four famous black woman preachers and evangelists, published between 1835 and 1907, all share a theme that continues to dominate Afro-American literature even today: the power of Christianity to give strength and comfort in the struggle for liberation from caste and gender restrictions.

Re-Storying Your Faith has caught our culture’s imagination from nouveau experiences of spirituality through channeling and meditation to traditional spiritual practices of personal devotions, scripture reading, and prayer. Building on Christian spirituality, this spiritual practice of re-storying our faith offers people an everyday experience of discovering multiple faith stories to give meaning to their spiritual journey. Built into this process is a way of discovering individual uniqueness as well as sharing discovered stories in faith communities, whether it is a Sunday school class or a group of like-minded friends. ,

All cultures use story as a way to make sense of life experiences. Yet for many, particularly in the western world, only a single story line is seen as the “real truth.” Using narrative therapy as a caregiving approach can help individuals uncover multilayered narratives that are far more complex and liberating. Coyle contends that not only are these more complex narratives more helpful in giving our lives meaning, they also critique the cultural discourses in which they arose. Drawing on both theological approaches and real life experiences, Coyle creates a contextual pastoral theology that helps caregivers find the power of God in people’s stories.

All cultures use story as a way to make sense of life. Yet for many, only a single story line is seen as the "real truth." Using narrative therapy as a caregiving approach can help individuals uncover multilayered narratives that are far more complex and liberating. Drawing on theological approaches and real life experiences, Coyle creates a contextual pastoral theology that helps caregivers find the power of God in people's stories.

In Storycraft: The Art of Spiritual Narrative, celebrated author Walter Wangerin Jr. illustrates the power of well-told stories and shows how important embracing story is as an essential tool for preaching and teaching the gospel. The book offers a theology of story that is profoundly incarnational as the Word takes on flesh in practiced speech.

Examines the spiritual and earthly results of conversion to Christianity for African-American antebellum writers. Using autobiographical narratives, Yolanda Pierce argues that for African Americans, accounts of spiritual conversion revealed "personal transformations with far-reaching community effects.

Identity, family, and community unite three autobiographical texts by New World crypto-Jews, or descendants of Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity in 17th-century Iberia and Spanish America. Ronnie Perelis presents the fascinating stories of three men who were caught within the matrix of inquisitorial persecution, expanding global trade, and the network of crypto-Jewish activity. Each text, reflects the unique experiences of the author and illuminates their shared, deeply rooted attachment to Iberian culture, their Atlantic peregrinations, and their hunger for spiritual enlightenment. Through these writings, Perelis focuses on the social history of transatlantic travel, the economies of trade that linked Europe to the Americas, and the physical and spiritual journeys that injected broader religious and cultural concerns into this complex historical moment.

Nancy Tatom Ammerman examines the stories Americans tell of their everyday lives, from dinner table to office and shopping mall to doctor's office, about the things that matter most to them and the routines they take for granted, and the times and places where the everyday and ordinary meet the spiritual. In addition to interviews and observation, Ammerman bases her findings on a photo elicitation exercise and oral diaries, offering a window into the presence and absence of religion and spirituality in ordinary lives and in ordinary physical and social spaces. The stories come from a diverse array of ninety-five Americans — both conservative and liberal Protestants, African American Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Mormons, Wiccans, and people who claim no religious or spiritual proclivities — across a range that stretches from committed religious believers to the spiritually neutral. Ammerman surveys how these people talk about what spirituality is, how they seek and find experiences they deem spiritual, and whether and how religious traditions and institutions are part of their spiritual lives.

Couples can make significant progress toward resolving their own problems when they receive appropriate guidance from a caring person. This book outlines five tasks focused on identity, agency, and meaning that spiritual caregivers can use to empower couples for significant change in just three to five conversations. This form of "empowering guidance" is a dimension of pastoral conversation rather than formal counseling. Critically integrating desert spiritual theology with empirical data about successful marriages, Bidwell advocates for mutuality and partnership within covenanted relationships, which allows partners to create an alliance strong enough to resist the forces that threaten relationships--especially the negative influences of criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and withdrawal.

Sentimental Confessions is a groundbreaking study of evangelicalism, sentimentalism, and nationalism in early African American holy women’s autobiography. At its core are analyses of the life writings of six women--Maria Stewart, Jarena Lee, Zilpha Elaw, Nancy Prince, Mattie J. Jackson, and Julia Foote--all of which appeared in the mid-nineteenth century. Joycelyn Moody shows how these authors appropriated white-sanctioned literary conventions to assert their voices and to protest the racism, patriarchy, and other forces that created and sustained their poverty and enslavement. In doing so, Moody also reveals the wealth of insights that could be gained from these kinds of writings if we were to acknowledge the spiritual convictions of their authors--if we read them because (not although) they are holy texts. The deeply held, passionately expressed beliefs of these women, says Moody, should not be brushed aside by scholars who may be tempted to view them as naïve or as indicative only of the racial, class, and gender oppressions these women suffered. In addition, Moody promotes new ways of looking at dictated narratives without relegating them to a status below self-authored texts. Helping to recover a neglected chapter of American literary history, Sentimental Confessions is filled with insights into the state of the nation in the nineteenth century.