Adventures in Saying Yes: A Journey from Fear to Faith
Carl Medearis with Chris Medearis (Bethany House Publishers)
Medearis, an expert in Muslim–Christian relations, moved his family to Beirut in 1992, when wounds from Lebanon’s long civil war were fresh. Adventures in Saying Yes recalls the many risks he has taken traveling across the Middle East to promote religious and political reconciliation between long-standing enemies. But Medearis avoids portraying himself as a hero. His book urges all believers to free themselves from the grip of comfort and take bold steps for the gospel. “Feeling safe and secure is a good thing,” he writes, “until . . . it isn’t. Stop for a moment and think of all the things that your need for security might actually stop you from doing.”
Rage to Redemption in the Sterilization Age: A Confrontation with American Genocide
John Railey (Cascade Books)
Railey, a veteran journalist, reported for North Carolina’s Winston-Salem Journal in 2002, when the paper shed new light on the state’s 20th-century sterilization program, one of the nation’s most aggressive and enduring. As editorial page editor, he has energetically sought out the program’s victims and lobbied the government to make amends. (In July 2013, state officials approved $10 million in victims’ compensation.) In Rage to Redemption, Railey centers this ugly history on the ordeal of Nial Cox Ramirez, who was diagnosed as “feeble-minded” and sterilized at age 18. “Nial,” he writes, “found her redemption through her fight for justice, roaring back against the system. . . . And she’d found it through her God, who had freed her of most of her hatred of the whites who had sterilized her.”
Talking with Catholics about the Gospel: A Guide for Evangelicals
Chris Castaldo (Zondervan)
As an evangelical pastor who regularly writes and speaks about his conversion from Catholicism, Castaldo often fields questions about whether Catholics truly have saving faith in Jesus. “Many Catholics,” he answers, “don’t seem to know Christ (of course, this is true of many Protestants). Such people may possess certain pieces of Christian tradition, but they have not personally appropriated the gospel. . . . Among such people, we are compelled to share the Good News.” How to do so, with grace and kindness, is the subject of this book. Castaldo (author of the memoir Holy Ground: Walking with Jesus as a Former Catholic) takes readers through Catholicism’s history and doctrines, addressing recurring questions and common misunderstandings.
