Seven radical elders : how refugees from a civil-rights-era storefront church energized the christian community movement, an oral history / edited by David Janzen, foreword by C. Christopher Smith.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Smith, C. Christopher, writer of foreword.

Janzen, David, 1968- editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Christian communities--Illinois--Chicago.

Christian communities.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (208 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Eugene, Oregon : Cascade Books, [2020]

Summary:

Many young idealists, after a few failures, burn out and return to status quo lives. Not so with the seven radicals in this book, who met in an interracial house church and intentional community on Chicago's West Side during the civil rights era. Here you will make the acquaintance of a Church of the Brethren pastoral couple who tried to bring communal life to the black ghetto; a fashionable socialite who trashed her curlers and joined the simple life; an elite Stanford graduate who cast his lot with a bus full of black teens on an epic ride to Washington, DC, to hear MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech; two ethnic-Mennonite women who became community leaders and elders during a male-dominated era; and a painfully shy "geek" awakened to the traumas of racism by five days in the Albany, Georgia, jail. Now, in their seventies, eighties, and nineties, these veterans of community witness to the possibility of radical life conversions, engagement with the hard, slow work of racial reconciliation that learns from mistakes and does not quit. This book concludes with the invitation to the joyful path of becoming who God made us to be--saints.

Contents:

Julius Belser: Toolbox-toting visionary of interracial community

Peggy Eberly Belser: Feisty helpmeet and peaceable host

Hilda Carper: Loyal truth-teller, artist of community, sister to the least

Margaret Wenger Gale: Divinely appointed community leader, despite herself

Albert Steiner: Geek (before there were geeks) with a heart for God and His nation

Allan Howe: Many gifts communally forged

Jeanne Casner Howe: How the March on Selma moved one sister to leave curlers behind and become a grateful, lifelong, simple-life servant of Jesus in community

Concluding reflections: Priceless treasure in cracked pots

Appendix: A brief chronolgy of the seven radical elders' story.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781725256859

1725256851