Bøger af D. L. Mayfield

No matter who wins the next election, Caesar will remain Caesar, doing some good and some bad. But Christians report to a different king.This issue starts with a provocation. In his opening letter, editor Peter Mommsen suggests Christians are too excited about the wrong politics: ¿Questions of public justice should matter deeply to Christians. We dare not be indifferent about securing healthcare for all and ending interventionist wars; we must seek to reduce abortions and strengthen families. When an election comes, we should pray and then, perhaps, lend our support to a candidate we judge may, on balance, advance social righteousness. But if the early Christians and the Anabaptists are right, this isn¿t the politics that matters most. And so, as a matter of faithfulness, we should question how much it deserves of our passion and time. Our allegiance belongs elsewhere.¿In contrast to an election campaign, this politics may feel grittier and less glamorous. This issue of Plough Quarterly explores what this alternate vision of faithful Christian witness in the political sphere might look like.Yoüll find articles on:What two leading political theorists of left and right agree onWhat persecution taught Anabaptists about politicsThe Bruderhof¿s interactions with the stateTolstoy¿s case against making war more humaneHow some Christians read Romans 13 under fascism

What we want for schools reveals what we value as a society."What's the point of school?" Parents have a stock set of responses, but the question remains unsettled, even two centuries after the Prussians invented compulsory education. The Prussian idea of what a school is for - to mold the populace to serve the state - seems unacceptable today. In vogue, instead, are slogans like "acquiring marketable skills" and "realizing your full potential." These ideas powerfully shape our culture. Ultimately, they boil down to pursuing one supreme value: individual success in a competitive world.Schools are a mirror of our society as a whole; what we want for schools makes plain what and whom we value in our common life. In the Christian tradition, the life of discipleship is also a school. In this educational community, under the instruction of our one Teacher, we learn not to seek empowerment, but to find strength in weakness; not to out-achieve others, but to serve them; not to pursue our passion, but to obey a call.Also in this issue: poetry by Christian Wiman; reviews of new books by Robert Macfarlane, Jackie Morris, Francisco Cantú, Leif Enger, Carol Anderson, Stephanie Land, and Susan Wise Bauer; and art by Margaret McWethy, Albrecht Dürer, Raphael, Gérard David, Jackie Morris, Gustaf Tenggren, Sergey Dushkin, Anja Percival, Dmitry Samofalov, Christoph Wetzel, Sherrie York, Cathleen Rehfield, Pawel Kuczynski, and Jason Landsel.Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus' message into practice and find common cause with others.

From childhood, D.L. Mayfield longed to be a missionary, so she was thrilled when the opportunity arose to work with a group of Somali Bantu refugees in her hometown of Portland, OR. As the days, months, and years went by, her hopeful enthusiasm began to wear off, her faith became challenged, and the real work of learning to love and serve her neighbors grew harder, deeper, and more complex. She writes: ?The more I failed to communicate the love of God to my refugee friends, the more I experienced it for myself. The more overwhelmed I felt as I became involved in the myriads of problems facing my friends who experience poverty in America, the less pressure I felt to attain success or wealth or prestige. And the more my world started to expand at the edges of my periphery, the more it became clear that life was more beautiful and more terrible than I had been told.?In this collection of stunning and surprising essays, Mayfield invites readers to reconsider their concepts of justice, love, and reimagine being a citizen of this world and the upside-down kingdom of God.