Roll Away the Stone: Saving America's Children [Paperback]

Fred Taylor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1999 | ISBN-10: 1882480465 | ISBN-13: 978-1882480463

Roll Away the Stone is an inspiring response to a painful subject - the escalating number of abused, neglected, and impoverished children and families and the mounting severity of their problems. The author uses a familiar Biblical story (the raising of Lazarus from death) as a powerful metaphor for social action that brings together in one interactive process the resourcefulness of the privileged community, the resilience of the victims, visionary leadership, and the mysterious workings of faith-in-action. The author then projects the issue of persistent poverty of women and children and the parallel increase of crime, drugs, homelessness, ill health, inadequate education and underemployment onto the national liberal - conservative political debate. He challenges the narrowness of the existing debate as grounded in outdated assumptions about how the world works, and describes new, emerging paradigms that can lead us toward a society that works for everyone.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"All of us who are ground down by the daily struggle against seemingly intractable social problems need to hear Fred Taylor's message of hope. Fred uses the story of his own agency's birth and its 30-year evolution to show that progress is possible - and to itemize what it takes. Then he zooms out from the FLOC's history to the future to suggest some exciting new directions for our progress as a species." -- David S. Liederman, Executive Director, Child Welfare League of America

"In this remarkable book Taylor draws on his deep spiritual roots and 30 years of work with families and on the streets of Washington, DC to illuminate how much work can be done to change the lives of children who are hidden from public view, growing up with no realistic possibility of a decent life." -- Lisbeth Schorr, Author of Common Purpose

Given interest in faith-based approaches to urban woes, this credo will have appeal. Taylor, the minister who has headed Washington, DC's, For Love of Children (FLOC) since it was formed in the '60s to end the district's "warehousing" of abused and neglected children, use the parable of Lazarus as a metaphor for entrenched poverty and the potential for bringing new life to poor young people, in particular, through the eclectic approach FLOC has taken. He challenges and then discusses the need to rethink old assumptions, expand the political debate, and apply new paradigms at the grass roots. -- Booklist

About the Author

Fred Taylor is Executive Director of For Love of Children (FLOC) in Washington, DC, a pioneering, community-based child and family service organization started during the Civil Rights movement in l965. Taylor has led the organization from its inception. He is a graduate of Vanderbilt, Yale Divinity School and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, an ordained minister, married and the father of three grown children.

Product Details

• Paperback: 263 pages
• Publisher: Information Intl (February 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1882480465
• ISBN-13: 978-1882480463
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,634,604 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A solid choice for those who want to make a difference in their communities, February 8, 2009

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Roll Away the Stone: Saving America's Children (Paperback)

Children have no control of how they grow up, which is why care for children is at the forefront of many's minds. Now in a newly expanded and updated second edition, "Roll Away the Stone: Saving America's Children" is a book describing the organization known as 'For Love of Children', a company founded by Fred Taylor and that he served as head of until earlier this decade. Discussing poverty and calling for community action cross the country, "For Love of Children" is a solid choice for those who want to make a difference in their communities.

5.0 out of 5 stars New Stories and Solutions, April 27, 2000

By 

Kimberly S. Wade - See all my reviews

This review is from: Roll Away the Stone: Saving America's Children (Paperback)

When you pass a person on a corner asking for spare change, what do you think? After more than thirty years of working with poor children and their families in DC, Fred Taylor has a pretty good guess. Either you tend to have a "liberal" response and blame society, or a more "conservative" response and blame the individual. But neither view, Taylor believes, helps us get closer to the goal of saving more children from growing up to be that person on the corner.

Taylor has written a book, Roll Away the Stone: Saving America's Children, to present an alternative model for responding to the plight of poor children and their families. The paradigm he presents focuses on what's best about people, and seeks to build partnerships with communities that capitalize on the life-giving potential of the people who live there. But he doesn't ignore the worst either: one of his chapters focuses solely on the complications of drug addiction, and he frequently addresses tangles of dysfunctional behaviors. By including the good, bad and ugly, Taylor is able to come up with a holistic model that offers a potential way out of the persistent poverty that is life for 1 in 5 children in America.

Taylor tells great stories, as any good Baptist preacher should, which fill and enliven the book. The Biblical story of the title -- Jesus calling Lazarus up from death -- is reinterpreted throughout. The real-life story of Taylor and his allies' work to close Junior Village, a institution that housed 900 of DC's poorest children in the 1960's, provides the hope of success and the reality of continued struggle in our own backyard. Marcus's story, and the stories of many other DC children and their families, help drive the book's urgency. Other stories of Taylor himself on Outward Bound adventures exemplify the challenges and the risks of new thinking and acting.

Perhaps as valuable as the new paradigm is Taylor's candor about mistakes made and his own human struggle to reject despair. The organization Taylor founded in 1966 and still leads, For Love of Children (FLOC), has tried many things to save the poor children of DC and has learned many lessons. FLOC's apartments, for families who need the housing to fend off homelessness and keep their children out of the foster care system, has had a change in management policies to ensure a balance between compassion for uniquely vulnerable tenants and tenant responsibility for rent and property. Some of FLOC's other work, such as policy advocacy, has faded, while new ground has been broken -- notably, in the outdoor education program and camp.

Taylor's experience of going where he is led to experiment, fail, succeed, learn, despair, and persist ultimately makes Roll Away the Stone an inspirational tale. For the millions of Americans involved with community outreach efforts, the book provides interesting possibilities for how to work in new ways with poor children and their families. And for all of us, it gives us something new to think about next time we give some spare change.