THE STORY: When a Bronx Borough President is forced by the mortgage crisis into a confrontation with a local minister, the question they confront is one that faces us all: What is the relationship between spiritual experience and social action?

The Confessions of a Storefront Church is a no-holds-barred, cold, hard truth that will make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. A real-life observation that hits the target time after time. After his new birth, the Scriptures seemed to jump off the pages and speak to him. Unaware of the ordinance to be licensed or ordained by a church, he knew that the Bible said, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that you should go and bring forth fruit." His decision to go was controversial in the eyes of many, but looking into the eyes of God, he found inner peace and beauty. Yet back on earth, the reality was that he had entered the ferocious teeth of an unrelenting theological firestorm!

On one level this book tells a very particular story - of a church started by a charismatic woman born just 16 years after the Emancipation Proclamation which not only survived the death of the founder, but also institutionalised power-sharing by female and male elders. On another level, it tells a more universal human story of institution building, establishing community, and pursuing a life of faith while negotiating rapidly changing and often adversarial social realities.

Moving the Rock tells the stories of a group of African American women who belong to a small storefront church in central Seattle.

Using Psalm 139, Abbey Wedgeworth walks alongside women suffering the heartbreak of miscarriage. Having experienced the sorrow of miscarriage herself, she acknowledges the isolation commonly felt and the impact that such an experience can have on faith. The 31 biblical reflections in this beautiful and comforting book remind grieving women that God sees them, knows them, loves them, and is actively caring for them. These precious verses will show women that God can bring comfort, assurance, protection, and purpose in the very sorrow that they are experiencing. Includes personal stories of pregnancy loss from others, including Courtney Reissig, Kristie Anyabwile, and Eric Schumacher encouraging sufferers that they are not alone. It is a very helpful book to give to women who are suffering in this way.

“Some of Shanley’s sharpest comic writing in years… His intense engagement with questions of religion and ethics remains distinctive and invigorating.” — Charles Isherwood, New York Times “There’s a deeper philosophical vein that the author mines, allowing his language to acquire the heft and timbre of a serious moral debate…We taste bitterness, but also much that is sweet.” — David Cote, TimeOut New York “A postmodern morality play that’s as funny as it is bracing.” — Karen D’Souza, San Jose Mercury News Concluding the “Church and State” trilogy of plays that began with Doubt and Defiance, Storefront Church tells the story of a Bronx Borough President who is forced by the mortgage crisis into a confrontation with a local minister. Blending earthy humor and philosophical reflection, this compassionate morality tale is an exploration of the often thorny relationship between spiritual experience and social action. John Patrick Shanley is the author of Doubt: A Parable (Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony Award for Best Play), Outside Mullingar (Tony nomination for Best Play), Defiance, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea and Dirty Story, among many other plays. He wrote the teleplay for Live from Baghdad (Emmy nomination for Outstanding Writing of a Miniseries, Movie or Dramatic Special) and the screenplays for Congo, Alive, Five Corners, Joe Versus the Volcano, Doubt (Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay) and Moonstruck (Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay).

During the early twentieth century, millions of southern blacks moved north to escape the violent racism of the Jim Crow South and to find employment in urban centers. They transplanted not only themselves but also their culture; in the midst of this tumultuous demographic transition emerged a new social institution, the storefront sanctified church. Saved and Sanctified focuses on one such Philadelphia church that was started above a horse stable, was founded by a woman born sixteen years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and is still active today. "The Church," as it is known to its members, offers a unique perspective on an under-studied aspect of African American religious institutions. Through painstaking historical and ethnographic research, Deidre Helen Crumbley illuminates the crucial role these oftentimes controversial churches played in the spiritual life of the African American community during and after the Great Migration. She provides a new perspective on women and their leadership roles, examines the loose or nonexistent relationship these Pentecostal churches have with existing denominations, and dispels common prejudices about those who attend storefront churches. Skillfully interweaving personal vignettes from her own experience as a member, along with life stories of founding members, Crumbley provides new insights into the importance of grassroots religion and community-based houses of worship.

Kyle Roberts explores the role of evangelical religion in the making of antebellum New York City and its spiritual marketplace. Between the American Revolution and the War of 1812a period of rebuilding after seven years of British occupationevangelicals emphasized individual conversion and rapidly expanded the number of their congregations. Then, up to the Panic of 1837, evangelicals shifted their focus from their own salvation to that of their neighbors, through the use of domestic missions, Seamen s Bethels, tract publishing, free churches, and abolitionism. Finally, in the decades before the Civil War, the city s dramatic expansion overwhelmed evangelicals, whose target audiences shifted, building priorities changed, and approaches to neighborhood and ethnicity evolved. By that time, though, evangelicals and the city had already shaped each other in profound ways, with New York becoming a national center of evangelicalism."

Moving the Rock tells the stories of a group of African American women who belong to a small storefront church in central Seattle.