The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice from the Civil Rights Movement to Today [Paperback]

Charles Marsh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 8, 2006

Speaking to his supporters at the end of the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956, Martin Luther King, Jr., declared that their common goal was not simply the end of segregation as an institution. Rather, "the end is reconciliation, the end is redemption, the end is the creation of the beloved community." King's words reflect the strong religious convictions that motivated the civil rights movement in the South in its early days. Standing courageously on the Judeo-Christian foundations of their moral commitments, civil rights leaders sought to transform the social and political realities of twentieth-century America. In The Beloved Community, Charles Marsh shows that the same spiritual vision that animated the civil rights movement remains a vital source of moral energy today. The Beloved Community lays out an exuberant new vision for progressive Christianity and reclaims the centrality of faith in the quest for social justice and authentic community.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Charles Marsh is Professor of Religion at the University of Virginia and Director of the Project on Lived Theology. He is the author of Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the award-winning God's Long Summer, and The Last Days. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (August 8, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465044166
• ISBN-13: 978-0465044160
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #86,119 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Charles Marsh is professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia and director of the Project on Lived Theology. He was born in Alabama and spent most of his childhood years in Mississippi. Marsh is the author of six books, including the forthcoming "Welcoming Justice: God's Movement Toward Beloved Community", which he co-authored with John M. Perkins, the civil rights activist and pastor. His book "God's Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights", won the 1998 Grawemeyer Award in Religion. He is currently writing a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor and theologian executed by the Gestapo in 1945. Marsh was a recipient of a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond tolerance to compassion: that is the Church's greatest strength, August 24, 2006

By 

Paul Grant "historian-in-training, author, sp... (Madison, Wisconsin, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice from the Civil Rights Movement to Today (Paperback)

We talk tolerance, as well we should, but in the church we believe in compassion - in suffering alongside the hurting - something much bigger than tolerance. We talk acceptance of those who are different, but in the Bible's record of the early church, we see not acceptance, but people becoming family with one another. Becoming a beloved community is far more difficult - and therefore more miraculous - than mere equality under law.

On a more hopeful note, beloved community never died, even as the Civil Rights movement lost steam, fragmented and lost many its leaders to murder. The story of Christians pressing onward and upward toward justice in the here and now, starting with Martin Luther King, and continuing today is the subject of Beloved Community, Charles Marsh's new book. It ought to be required reading for all Christian activists: there is a distinct pattern to success and failure in the Christian pursuit of beloved community, and Marsh dissects it all.

All this is far more important than coalition politics, because beloved community is a subset of the church - a community created by God and sent into the world. Christian activism is thus a different critter altogether than many other social reform movements, liberal or conservative, with whom the Christians in question may agree or disagree. Ultimately, this is God's story. God's overarching mission in the world is to create a kingdom for himself, and populated with people who have been rescued from their own sin, and reshaped into a distinct community. The Greek word for church - ekklesia - literally means "called out" from the rest of society. Beloved community is just a fancy way of saying "Church as it out to be."

From the collapse of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Community, through Francis Schaeffer's L'Abri fellowships, to several of today's spiritual and community leaders, Marsh's book is a message of hope for Christians: Beloved Community is alive!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Loving Jesus = Pursuing Justice, April 23, 2010

By 

David Swanson (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice from the Civil Rights Movement to Today (Paperback)

There is a recent conversation within Evangelical circles that goes something like this: *While it's good for Christians to pursue justice we must be careful not to neglect evangelism. The cultures at large may applaud our involvement with justice but evangelism is the true Christian distinction.* After reading The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice from the Civil Rights Movement to Today I've come to think this conversation represents an entirely lopsided understanding of justice, one that mostly neglects the history of social justice in America. According to Charles Marsh, it is the distinction of Christian faith that has defined movements of justice. The Beloved Community offers a compelling corrective to those who make too-clean divisions and hierarchies between the work of justice and evangelism.

If you've read Marsh, a professor at the University of Virginia, you've likely been amazed at the author's ability to write history (footnotes and quotations abound) as an utterly captivating narrative. Chapters are arranged around a handful of women and men whose experiences during the Civil Rights Movement advance Marsh's thesis, that it has been a robust Christian faith that inspires and sustains advocates for a more just American society. According to the author, when these movements wandered from their Christian roots they became unfocused, selfish and generally ineffective at bringing about systemic change. This is a strong stance, but Marsh argues it persuasively by piling up story upon story of farmers, preachers and students who were compelled to great sacrifice by their Christian hope, what Dr. King called "the great event of Calvary."

The story Marsh tells is relatively unknown by many within majority culture churches, a major reason for the persistent conversations about the merits of evangelism over justice. As I read The Beloved Community- my favorite book of the past year- I found myself wishing more self-identified Evangelical pastors and churches were familiar with this history. The theology and practice of those Christ-centered men and women of past decades have so much to teach us today, including the fact that persistent work for justice is no more welcomed by society than is evangelism.

The Beloved Community tells both hopeful and discouraging stories within the larger history of social justice, but the book ends with recent examples of those compelled to join their justice-minded parents and grandparents in the Christian faith. Marsh makes clear that this history is still being written by those who take seriously their discipleship to Jesus. Hope, then, is the resounding note through the book and, despite the many set-backs and challenges, it is Christian hope that pushes the movement for justice forward even today.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent survey of the Christian history of civil rights - good and bad, May 26, 2009

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D. W. Smith (Mobile, AL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice from the Civil Rights Movement to Today (Paperback)

Great survey of the Christian basis of Dr. King and Civil Rights, Clarence Jordan and Koinonia Farms, and SNCC (Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee). Showed the influence of Christianity in its beginning and currently. Then second half of the book surveyed some current Christian ministries that maintain a strong Christian foundation and continue to pursue the beloved community based on the person of Jesus Christ. Especially powerful details around the Christian Community Development Association and Dr. John Perkins. Beautiful story. Very encouraging in pursuing the Beloved Community.