Kansas Books

Al Truesdale has rendered a great service to the Church in the form of this little book with a lofty goal: To reach out to those Christians who have become disaffected with the usual forms and practices of worship, particularly prayer. Every local church includes a cadre of such folk, whether we pastors admit to their presence or not. Judging by the exodus of members from our own denominations, and the large chunk of present membership we deem as "inactive," many Christians certainly fall within the parameters of this book's title, and could well benefit from reading it.----------
"We assume that with proper guidance all Christians can practice successful communion with God," an assumption the author notes with disappointment. But "people who can't achieve these goals feel like lepers in the Church." For them, prayer is not merely impractical but a "major obstacle" in their quest for spiritual development and faithful service to God. Truesdale counters that God is indeed a God of hope, as the Bible attests, and that our faith has far more to do with God holding us than with our holding on to God. ------------
Drawing on case studies gleaned from his many years as a pastor and seminary professor, Truesdale correlates the inner struggles and probing questions of people caught in the crush of life who are yet searching for a satisfying spirituality, with the answers of the Christian faith, especially Scripture. This is no "How-to" manual or self-help pamphlet. Superficial, "try harder" solutions are debunked and dismissed. On the contrary fervent prayer is identified as an intense and enduring struggle in which believers remain painfully aware of the great distance separating the hope of God's coming kingdom from their own experience of the brokenness of life in the present. Ultimately, however, it is that hope which allows us to pray even in times when we feel we cannot. Christians who cannot pray can at least claim the hope of that faith which fills them and uplifts them through the power of the Holy Spirit.---------
"When You Can't Pray" would make for a wonderful adult study guide on the topic of prayer, as well as a useful evangelism tool for reaching those members who have become inactive due to experiences that shattered their naïve faith and sent them running for cover.

Smith writes on a subject many authors do not touch on - that of how to counsel a grieving group. His approach is not to ignore individual grief, but instead to move beyond it. A very easy read and good prespective for a working minister.

This most helpful and quite readable treatment of the biblical foundations of the Wesleyan perspective on the life of holiness comes from the prolific pen of William M. Greathouse, General Superintendent Emeritus in the Church of the Nazarene. A university educated churchman, he writes out of a life spent in the pulpit, the classroom, and leadership positions in church and academia, as well as in research and writing.

As he lays out before the reader the Old Testament roots and the New Testament teaching on Christian holiness, William Greathouse blends his pastoral and evangelistic spirit with careful biblical exegesis and scholarly exposition. Fully knowledgeable in the pertinent scholarly literature, he presents an optimism of grace that will inspire the heart of every Christian. The Old Testament ideal of the holy, the Christian experience of the Holy Spirit, the New Testament concepts of sanctification and perfection, and the Sermon on the Mount as a "kingdom ethic" are convincingly related to the contemporary Christian life. Both those who seek to understand the traditional Wesleyan concern for the holy life and those who proclaim it will see it firmly grounded here in Scripture. This fine work is well suited for use as a textbook or supplementary reading in courses on spiritual formation and the theology of holiness.

"Wild and Scenic Kansas" -- now how can you resist a title like that? I haven't lived in Kansas for 40 some years, but in many respects, it's still "home," and this calendar reminds me of why.

This book is a must for any KSU fan. It's triva stems from the days when KSU was lucky to win a game to the present and KSU's rise on the national stage. This is a perfect gift for any KSU football fan and is perfect for disscussion on those long bowl trips. This is a great book

This is the standard book on the lead and zinc mines of the TriState area, meaning the area where Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma come together. Gibson was a professor at the University of Oklahoma and was originally from the area. I suspect this was his doctoral dissertation, based on the date. It is based both on documents, such as mining reports, and interviews he conducted with miners about 1950.

It has all the factual information about the mines you could ever want. It is so thorough that no one has ever felt the need to go back and redo the overall story of the mines, though there are books about other aspects of the mines, such as the strike of 1935 or the miner's health. Dr. Gibson died about twenty years ago.

When this book was written the mines were still operating, though starting to wind down. Today the U.S. government is still spending millions to clean up this area from the heavy metals left by the milling and smelting process, and the threat to the water left by the underground mining.

Gibson's sympathies are clearly with the miners and the Quapaw Indians whose land the mines are on, but he also viewed the mines as the inevitable progress of the business system in the United States and had great admiration for the skill, strength, and courage of the miners and mining engineers.

I have read several of Dr. Gibson's other books as well, and he writes very well, but readers should be aware that he is not that interested in amusing stories about the miner and the mule and such, or really in individual stories. He is more interested in systems and institutions, so if you want a book of funny stories about miners getting drunk and falling into mines, this is not the book for you.

This book will leave you in awe of how hard people worked to make a basic living as recently as the 1950s.

This novel about an early midwestern American family is a facinating look at life in the 19th century. The author gives the characters such interesting lives that the reader keeps turning the pages to see what happens next. I will definitely look for more books by Wilma Lewis

lovely book. Lovely reproductions. Now if I could only learn his techinique. :-)

Philippa Strum's sympathies clearly lie with those who argued for admitting women to the Virginia Military Institute. However, they haven't prevented her from giving us a comprehensive and fairly balanced look at the VMI case from start to ... if not finish, at least to the graduation of the first women to begin the school in the rat line.

One area where Strum's analysis is particularly strong is in tracing the history of anti-discrimination and equal rights law in the United States. She shows the jurisprudential evolution of the idea that, rather than women requiring special protection, all people are entitled to the rights and benefits of equal citizenship, regardless of sex. Indeed, following the trend of relevant Supreme Court cases as the author lays it out for us, it's hard to see how VMI's defenders could have believed the Court would ever do anything *but* order the publicly-funded military academy to admit women on an equal basis.

But believe it they did, and Strum shows how the two sides in the case were arguing fundamentally different points: VMI, that tax-funded single-sex education served a public good, and the Justice Department that, whether single-sex education is good or not, public funding of it (VMI being a government school) is unacceptable under the 14th Amendment. Neither side seemed fully to understand the other, and Strum does a thorough job of showing how the two sides in many ways failed to confront one another's arguments head-on.

Strum frames VMI as a defender of outmoded stereotypes and anachronistic ways of thinking (notably the 'women-as-lady' myth, as she calls it). It's a portrait VMI's defenders no doubt resent, but it's clear that their focus on 'how men learn' versus 'how women learn' was based more on differences between men and women *as groups* than on what kind of system might be best for any given *individual*. After all, as Strum points out, if VMI's adversative system isn't right or attractive for most women, the undeniable fact (based on the number of male high school seniors who apply to VMI relative to their number nationwide, for example) is that it's not right or attractive for most men, either.

This brings us to some areas I wished Strum had developed further. Most interesting was her assertion -- based on circumstantial evidence -- that the Bush Administration (Bush I) must have blocked the Justice Department from arguing that VMI's treasured adversative system was unnecessary for molding the kind of citizen-soldier leaders that VMI exists to produce. Certainly (as Ed Ruggero relates in 'Duty First: West Point and the Making of American Leaders'), the USMA ultimately decided its adversative system was actually counterproductive for that purpose, and so abandoned it. But Justice planted its flag on the (arguably weaker) ground that forcing VMI to admit women would not cause a fundamental change in the VMI system or ethos. The jury is still out about whether that's proven true.

Another question this book raised for me that Strum left entirely unaddressed was the appropriateness of cause-activists pursing their agenda on the bench. Specifically, Strum titles her chapter on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 'The Advocate.' Justice Ginsburg (clearly the hero -- can we still say 'heroine'? -- of this book) spent her pre-Court career promoting a certain understanding of law and pursuing specific social and policy objectives. Once on the bench, judges assume a mantle of impartiality -- in exchange for which they enjoy the 'procedural consensus' Strum defines as the key to translating Court decisions into social change. And yet, Strum makes it clear that Ginsburg's jurisprudence in the VMI case was of a piece with her earlier work. Strum quotes another legal scholar describing the VMI decision as 'the vindication for [Ginsburg's] legal career ... the opinion she hoped the Court would one day arrive at when she first started arguing cases of discrimination in the 1960s' (p. 295). Is it right for judges (of any philosophical persuasion) to continue as advocates once they're on the bench? Public acceptance of that idea would seem to threaten the very 'procedural consensus' the advocates rely upon to achieve their goals.

That question aside, though, I enjoyed reading this comprehensive look at the VMI case. Despite clear indications of where she stands on the question, a few broad ideological brush strokes (conservatives are frequently described as 'angry'), and the occasional off-the-wall comment ('Nothing had been more central to the South than racism' [p. 102].) the author's presentation of both sides of this important case was, on the whole, equitable and balanced. As I said, it's hard to escape the conclusion that VMI's stand was doomed from the start. So long as government runs schools, they will be subject to the political process. And in 1996 as in 1864, VMI couldn't withstand the weight of Uncle Sam, no matter how much its defenders loved it, or how fervently they sacrificed to protect it.

An excellent analysis. He compares the different opinions of notable Word analysts like Moffat, Lightfoot, Wuest, Wycliff and more. He also lets the user know what the original Greek would say. His own opinions are hidden as he lets the Holy Spirit make a judgement of the best translation. When he gives his own opinion, it is good, his commentaries in Romans were outstanding.