God's long summer

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The summer of 1964 in Mississippi was in many ways the peak of the civil rights movement, culminating in the murder of three civil rights workers. Marsh, who directs the Project on Theology and Community at Loyola College in Baltimore, revisits the summer of '64 by exploring the ways that each of the key players in this racial drama were motivated by their religious claims that God was on their side. Marsh chronicles the stories of Fannie Lou Hamer, the famous black activist who said she "worked for Jesus" in the struggle for civil rights; Sam Bowers, the Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of Mississippi, who understood that his elimination of blacks was God's calling for him to purge heretics from the Christian ranks; William Douglas Hudgins, a white Southern Baptist minister whose messages to his congregation at the beginning of the civil rights movement, according to Marsh, focused on personal piety and not on social justice; Reverend Edward King, the white chaplain at all-black Tugaloo College in Jackson, Miss., who believed that his religious vision as a Christian demanded that he work for social justice in practical ways like voter registration campaigns; and Cleveland Sellers, an SNCC staff member whose Christian vision of nonviolence was changed by his encounter with the spirituality of black nationalism under Stokely Carmichael. Marsh traces the growth and development of each of these leaders, and he shows the ways in which their religious visions of racial change and racial justice came into often violent conflict in the hot Mississippi summer of '64. Marsh's slice of history is imperative reading for understanding the religious foundations of social movements. (Oct.)

Library Journal

Theology professor Marsh Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer: The Promise of His Theology, Oxford Univ., 1994 argues that both the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and its Southern adversaries derived their power from religious ideas. Recounting the stories of five active participantssome militant, some nonviolent, but each with an eloquent apologia for either racial segregation or integrationhe relates their ideological commitments to their religious beliefs. The history and internal politics of the Civil Rights Movement and of the groups defending white-controlled segregation come alive in these detail-filled narratives, but ironically Marsh's finely wrought discussion of theology in each story is the weakest part of the book; it is sometimes hard to follow, and it often obscures rather than illuminates the historic struggles Marsh so effectively describes. Even if readers may not understand the cohesion of the religious beliefs depicted here, they will be left with an indelible impression of five committed individuals including Fannie Lou Hamer who knew what they believed in, acted on their beliefs, and made history.Jack Forman, Mesa Coll. Lib., San Diego

The Times Higher Education Supplement

A work of humane engagement and dispassionate scholarship.

Washington Post Book World - Jonathan Yardley

Original and uncommonly thoughtful. . . . This is a comprehensive, imaginative, fair-minded and perceptive book, a significant contribution to our understanding of those men and women who fought those terrible wars in what seems so long ago but was, in fact, only yesterday.

Christianity Today - Randy Frame

With vivid description and chilling analysis, Marsh evokes the violence and oppression in the South of the civil-rights era.... Many will find the results haunting.... Marsh's work speaks directly to the development of our own moral lives.

Jerusalem Post - Nachman Spiegel

Through Marsh's heartfelt and incisive chronicle, the turmoil and acrimony that were abundant in the U.S. more than three decades ago lend a revealing perspective to numerous current situations of racial and ethnic discord.

Christian Century - Gary Dorsey

Marsh describes the faulty logic and errant principles of most of the actors . . . with compassion and remarkable restraint. . . . He presents a fresh and inspiring story of faith in action and, perhaps, a view of God's hand in human history.

"The Times Higher Education Supplement n White

A work of humane engagement and dispassionate scholarship.

Washington Post Book World

Original and uncommonly thoughtful. . . . This is a comprehensive, imaginative, fair-minded and perceptive book, a significant contribution to our understanding of those men and women who fought those terrible wars in what seems so long ago but was, in fact, only yesterday.
— Jonathan Yardley

Christianity Today

With vivid description and chilling analysis, Marsh evokes the violence and oppression in the South of the civil-rights era.... Many will find the results haunting.... Marsh's work speaks directly to the development of our own moral lives.
— Randy Frame

Jerusalem Post

Through Marsh's heartfelt and incisive chronicle, the turmoil and acrimony that were abundant in the U.S. more than three decades ago lend a revealing perspective to numerous current situations of racial and ethnic discord.
— Nachman Spiegel

Choice

The history and internal politics of the Civil Rights Movement and of the groups defending white-controlled segregation come alive in these detail-filled narratives. . . .

Christian Century

Marsh describes the faulty logic and errant principles of most of the actors . . . with compassion and remarkable restraint. . . . He presents a fresh and inspiring story of faith in action and, perhaps, a view of God's hand in human history.
— Gary Dorsey