Headlines rage with big stories about big churches. But tucked away in neighborhoods throughout North America is a profound work of hope quietly unfolding as the gospel takes root in the context of a place. The future of the church is local, connected to the struggles of the people and even to the land itself.

This collection of around 500 original collect-style prayers and biddings covering the life of the Church and the life of the world. Contemporary in focus and language, the prayers are written in a concise style that makes them ideal for public worship but will also appeal to those who wish to pray privately but struggle to find the words. Prayer topics include: • The Church Year and Festivals • The Global and Local Church • The Environment and Social Justice • Politics and the Leaders of the Nations • Life Stages • Spheres of Work, Arts and Education • Suffering and Tragedy Helpful guidance on leading public prayer and writing your own collects is also included.

These are the stories of people who have come to Ireland for work, education, retirement, love and in some cases forced from their homes by death and destruction. New to the Parish: Stories of Love, War and Adventure from Ireland's Immigrants is an important reminder that every migrant is a human being, and that every one of us has a story to tell.

This “fast-moving, entertaining biography” of the woman behind the Parish Hadley interior design firm is “like eavesdropping on a lively society lunch” (Publishers Weekly). A New York Times Notable Book Sister—as she was called by family and friends—was born Dorothy May Kinnicutt into a patrician New York family in 1910, and spent her privileged early life at the right schools, yacht clubs, and coming-out parties. Compelled to work during the lean years of the Depression, she combined her innate design ability with her upper-echelon social connections to create an extraordinarily successful interior decorating business. The Parish-Hadley firm’s list of clients reads like an American Who’s Who, including Astors, Paleys, Rockefellers, and Whitneys—and she helped Jacqueline Kennedy transform the White House from a fusty hodge-podge into a historically authentic symbol of American elegance. Cozy, airy, colorful but understated, her style came to be known as “American country,” and its influence continues to this day. Compiled by her daughter and granddaughter from Sister’s own unpublished memoirs, as well as from hundreds of interviews with family members, friends, staff, world-renowned interior designers (Mark Hampton, Mario Buatta, Keith Irvine, Bunny Williams, and her longtime partner Albert Hadley, among many others), and clients including Annette de la Renta, Glenn Bernbaum, and Mrs. Thomas Watson, Sister Parish takes us into the houses—and lives—of some of the most fascinating and famous people of this inimitable woman’s time. Fully updated, the revised edition features a new foreword by Albert Hadley and an appreciation by Bunny Williams, who began her career at Parish-Hadley. “Selections from Mrs. Parish’s own rather wonderful, often moving, reminiscences, intercut with observations from her family, employees, clients and friends.” —The New York Times Book Review “Sister’s delightfully self-deprecating humor illuminates the biography throughout.” —Kirkus Reviews Includes photographs

As faith communities in the United States grow increasingly more diverse, many churches are turning to the shared parish, a single church facility shared by distinct cultural groups who retain their own worship and ministries. The fastest growing and most common of these are Catholic parishes shared by Latinos and white Catholics. Shared parishes remain one of the few institutions in American society that allows cultural groups to maintain their own language and customs while still engaging in regular intercultural negotiations over the shared space. This book explores the shared parish through an in-depth ethnographic study of a Roman Catholic parish in a small Midwestern city demographically transformed by Mexican immigration in recent decades. Through its depiction of shared parish life, the book argues for new ways of imagining the U.S. Catholic parish as an organization. The parish, argues Brett C. Hoover, must be conceived as both a congregation and part of a centralized system, and as one piece in a complex social ecology. The Shared Parish also posits that the search for identity and adequate intercultural practice in such parishes might call for new approaches to cultural diversity in U.S. society, beyond assimilation or multiculturalism. We must imagine a religious organization that accommodates both the need for safe space within distinct groups and for social networks that connect these groups as they struggle to respectfully co-exist.

As strong and fiery as undiluted Irish whiskey.--New York Times Book Review

Steeples topped by crosses still dominate neighborhood skylines in many American cities, silent markers of local worlds rarely examined by historians. In Parish Boundaries, John McGreevy chronicles the history of these Catholic parishes and connects their unique place in the urban landscape to the course of American race relations in the twentieth century.