We know what globalization is, but often not how to respond to it—except with guilt. In Justice in a Global Economy: Strategies for Home, Community, and World, edited by Pamela Brubaker, Rebecca Todd Peters, and Laura Stivers, contributors offer readable assessments of globalization but also specific ways to navigate the ethical and spiritual questions it raises—at both the individual and corporate levels. How should I think about household labor? How can we revitalize our communities? Christ didn’t come to make us guilty, the authors write, but to teach us a new way to live. Westminster John Knox Press.
Bridges to Contemplative Living with Thomas Merton, edited by Jonathan Montaldo and Robert Toth, is a series of eight booklets intended for small groups interested in delving deeper into contemplative living. Each booklet contains guidelines for eight sessions, with reading selections from Merton and other authors—including Karen Armstrong, Eckhart Tolle, and Rainer Maria Rilke—and questions for reflection. The first two booklets are available; the others will be finished next spring. Ave Maria Press.
Can true justice come from punishment? That’s the question Laura Magnani and Harmon Wray take up in Beyond Prisons: A New Interfaith Paradigm for Our Failed Prison System. Written from a Quaker perspective, the authors look at the factors that produced the present prison-industrial complex and its failings, sentencing laws, the juvenile justice system, prison conditions, and more, ending with an alternative vision of justice. An important and compassionate book. Fortress Press.
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