Bishop Books

Grammick and Furey's The Vatican and Homosexuality is one of the key seminal texts that every person should read, in order to understand the Catholic Church views on Homosexuality and from it, where the Church's views on HIV/AIDS and their entire theological stance eminate. For their work with people living with HIV/AISA and their work with the dispossessed and marginalised, Grammick and Furey were given a choice by the Vatican - stop writing or face ecclesial censure. A typical reaction by a Church which didn't want to get involved with the undeserving poor.

In this work, L. Gluck shows the reader her true strong emotion, and the enthalpy of love. Her images are gripping -- sometimes stark and at other times lush and vibrant. Common to all her pieces is the ability to move the reader to feel emotion. Maybe it is a sudden gasp of revelation of connection or perhaps the moment comes later, when the poetry resurfaces from deep in memory. Beware, emotions will be evoked.

Anyone one who has ever dreamed of making a long canoe voyage will enjoy this book! It also gives one an idea of what life was like when the account was written.

The activities are arranged in three chapters: summer, winter and year-round. Each category of activity has a logo, presented on pages 2 and 3. Just turn to the appropriate logo at the top of the page to rent bikes, cross-counry ski, hike or do any of the 29 activities included in this book.

The left-hand column of each page includes information about fees, seasons and hours of operatons, plus addresses or directions and phones numbers.

Because the area covered in this book extends from Bishop in Owens Valley at 4,410' north to Lee Vining and Mono Lake at 6,461' and include mountains that tower to 12,000', the start and length of winter vary. Downhill skiing at Mammoth Mountain can last until late June, while hikers and mountain bikers will find open trails and roads at lower elevations much of the year. But, remember, thunderstorms or snow can occur at higher elevations any time of year.
--- excerpt from book's Introduction

In 1850, Eric Jansson of Sweden, a charismatic leader confident in his divine mission, led some 1,200 followers to the United States, marking the beginning of the exodus of emigrants from Sweden to North America. This book tells Jansson's story, from his birth in Biskopskulla, through his receiving his diving mandate, his conflict with the Lutheran state-church, his emigration to the United States, and his eventual death. Along the way, Paul Elmen, a Professor of Moral Theology at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, looks at Jansson's theology and its roots, what made conflict between it and Swedish Lutheranism inevitable, and how it differed from Wesleyan theology.

If you are interested in Eric Jansson, or the commune he formed at Bishop Hill, Illinois, USA, then you really must read this book. It covers Eric Jansson's life in greater detail than I have ever seen it covered. Also, Professor Elmen's examination of Jansson's theology was quite fascinating, and gave me a greater understanding of what he and his followers believed. Overall, I thought that this was an excellent book on Eric Jansson, one that I highly recommend.

Fascinating insight into growing up poor in turn of the century Birmingham, England. I think this may originally have been 2 books, The first part is told from a child's point of view, the latter part as an adult. The detailed descriptions and interesting characters draw you into the story and provide a real sense of being there. Excellent fodder for family historians.

Renée Curry's White Women Writing White is an admirably well researched, independent, brave, and often brilliant and startling book. It will undoubtedly prove germinal (and controversial) in critical whiteness studies. It provides an absolutely new perspective on the poets Hilda Doolittle (H. D.), Elizabeth Bishop, and Sylvia Plath. It draws attention, truly for the first time, to the racial signifiers in the texts of these three great poets. It treats whiteness as a marked characteristic in the same way as blackness and Asianness have traditionally functioned in mainstream American literature and culture. It repeatedly and convincingly locates racial meanings in passages that have never been read in that light before. This book transforms the landscape. It is the most significant new work on these poets in years.

If you're looking for a book that will spiritually move you, purchase this book today! The writer is definitely lead of God as the revelation of God's Word in this book is clear and the scriptures reference and support every revelation. This book will change your life!

Bishop takes us for a wild ride in this book. Combining meta-fiction (making the text of the book self-reference itself) with outrageous parody of the horror genre (it gets awesomelly surreal!), he comes out with an absurdist comedy that manages to be scary at the same time.

The story in few words: Writer and recent widow Stevie Crye's electric typewriter breaks up, leaving her without the tool of her trade. She gets her machine fixed by a creepy thecnician, and she gets an unexpected extra oomph when the typewriter begins typing by itself. At first, the machine transcripts Stevie's nightmares. Gradually, it CONSTRUCTS her nightmares, and provides her with hallucinations that taint her waking hours. (Or are the hallucinations the real thing?) When Stevie reads these compositions, they are the chapters of the book, verbatim.

If you read the Animal Man comics during Grant Morrison's run, you might have an idea of what to expect on the matter of trippiness. If you didn't, suffice it to say that you may experience the same confussion as Stevie when Bishop reminds you that all you're reading is just fiction, and yet the ficticious characters fight to show their free will within the constraints of plot.

Stephen Spencer's William Temple: A Calling to Prophecy is a fine introduction to the life and thought of one of the most influential Anglican Archbishops of Canterbury of not just the 20th century, but for all time. Temple was born in 1881 and died in 1944 of gout, from which he had suffered for much of his life. Although sickly at points, he was a man of tremendous vision and compassion, receiving visitors until shortly before his death, and fighting in particular for the cause of the working poor over the course of his lifetime. A socialist, he was also a tremendous intellectual, and the apex of what Michael Ramsey (Archbishop of Canterbury 1961 - 1974) called "liberal catholicism" - that is, a critical negotiation between, on the one hand, the inherited faith of the Church catholic and, on the other hand, the challenges and insights presented by new ideas and understandings. Spencer does a fine job throughout this book of showing how Temple's social commitments, intellectual endeavors, and spiritual life were intertwined with one another. Temple thus emerges as the ideal Anglican saint: intellectually rigorous, theologically broad-minded yet deeply rooted, and charitable.

There are eight chapters in the book, beginning with Temple's privileged upbrining - his father, Frederick Temple, was also Archbishop of Canterbury - and moving on through his youth and ordination in the Church of England. Part of Spencer's basic point was that Temple had a tremendous sense of calling on his own life, but that this calling was only realized as he increasingly yielded himself to his calling within the Church. Temple thus appears as something of a liminal figure; his intellectual commitments took him outside of the Church - above all to German Idealism - but his sense of spiritual calling drove him more deeply into church life and, therefore, higher and higher in the Church's hierarchy. One could, therefore, argue that Spencer's account is somewhat hagiographical and not strictly biographical. I think this is fair, but I also think that a sense of the holy is necessary when discussing the life and thought of a saint. Thus, I think Spencer ought to be commended rather than criticized for making this one of his major subthemes.

One of the more interesting facets of the book - and one of the more immediately relevant to Anglican arguments about identity and theology, I think - is Spencer's discussion of Temple's ecumenical endeavors. Temple - disastrously, in my mind - sought an ecumenism that was based upon the sacrament of baptism at the expense of the sacrament of confirmation. Thus, one of the historic markers of catholic Christian identity was shed by Temple in order to reach out to Protestants who had abandoned the episcopate and all of which that entails. Such a move was, no doubt, noble on his part, but one may ask whether or not, in retrospect, it was wise; it weakened the Church's sacramental practices, and in his own lifetime aroused the staunch disagreement of another late-19th and early-20th century Anglican luminary, Charles Gore. I found Spencer's discussion of Temple and ecumenism especially fascinating; if Anglicans are to cohere, it may end up only occurring at the *necessary* expense of Temple's legacy on this issue.

Stephen Spencer's short volume is an excellent addition to the library of every self-respecting Anglican, whether lay or in holy orders. Temple was a great man, even if flawed on some matters; his sense of the coherence of reason and revelation both validates and further encourages the longer history of Anglican beliefs in the harmony of nature and grace. Temple is an Anglican saint well worth knowing; Spencer's volume is one that is well worth owning.