Reclaiming the Great World House - REVIEW

Reclaiming the Great World House - The Global Vision of Martin Luther King Jr.

Edited by Vicki L. Crawford and Lewis V. Baldwin

The Morehouse College King Collection Series on Civil and Human Rights

A global context for understanding the intellectual and sociopolitical legacy of MLK in the twenty-first century. The burgeoning terrain of Martin Luther King Jr. studies is leading to a new appreciation of his thought and its meaningfulness for the emergence and shaping of the twenty-first-century world This volume brings together an impressive array of scholars from various backgrounds and disciplines to explore the global significance of King - then. now, and in the future.

Employing King's metaphor of "the great world house," the major focus is on King's appraisal of the global-human struggle in the 1950s and 1960s, his relevance for today's world, and how future generations might constructively apply or appropriate his key ideas and values in addressing racism. poverty and economic injustice, militarism. sexism, homophobia, the environmental crisis, globalization, and other challenges confronting humanity today. The contributors treat King in context and beyond context, taking seriously the historical King while also exploring how his name, activities, contributions, and legacy are still associated with a globalized rights culture.

The University of Georgia Press and Morehouse College's Martin Luther King Jr Collection are pleased to announce the Morehouse College King Collection Series on Civil and Human Rights Series, a new collaborative book series. Using the 13,000 papers of the King Collection as a foundation, books in the series will offer new scholarship that provides insightful overviews and analyses of Dr. King's intellectual, theological, and activist engagement with a variety of broad themes.

These themes include (but are not limited to) poverty, nonviolence, the Vietnam War, capitalism, racial discrimination, education, and civil rights. Along with the thematically focused works, the series will include brief critical studies on King's involvement with specific campaigns, such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott of1956-57 and the Poor People's Campaign of 1968. Though scholarly in nature, the books are intended to be accessibly written, relatively brief (50,000-70,000 words), and engaging for general readers, offering overviews of King's life and legacy through a twentieth-first-century lens.

Vicki L. Crawford is the director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Collection at Morehouse College and general editor of the Morehouse College King Collection Series on Civil and Human Rights. She is a co-editor of Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941-1965 and the author of numerous scholarly articles.

Lewis V. Baldwin is a professor emeritus of religious studies at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of many books, including Make the Wounded Whole: The Cultural Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.; Toward the Beloved Community: Martin Luther King Jr. and South Africa; and Behind the Public Veil: The Humanness of Martin Luther King Jr.

RECLAIMING THE GREAT WORLD HOUSE
The Global Vision of Martin Luther King Jr.
Edited by Vicki L. Crawford and Lewis V. Baldwin
Paperback 978-0-8203-5604-4
Hardback 978-0-8203-5602-0
University of Georgia Press
www.ugapress.org

The Myth of Equality: Uncovering the Roots of Injustice and Privilege by Ken Wytsma

Is privilege real or imagined?

The story of race and privilege in America is only picking up speed. More and more people are anxious and desire to go deeper to understand more specifically why America is the way she is and, more importantly, what we can do to intentionally promote unity and equality, starting with the church.

It's clear that issues of race and equality have come to the forefront in our nation's consciousness. Every week yet another incident involving racial tension splashes across headlines and dominates our news feeds. But it's not easy to unpack the origins of these tensions, and perhaps we wonder whether any of these issues really has anything to do with us. Ken Wytsma, founder of the Justice Conference, understands these questions. He has gone through his own journey of understanding the underpinnings of inequality and privilege. In this timely, insightful book Wytsma unpacks what we need to know to be grounded in conversations about today's race-related issues. And he helps us come to a deeper understanding of both the origins of these issues and the reconciling role we are called to play as witnesses of the gospel. Inequality and privilege are real. The Myth of Equality opens our eyes to realities we may have never realized were present in our society and world. And we will be changed for the better as a result.

“There is a lot of confusion around issues of race and privilege,” say Ken. “Far too often, people, in the dominant culture or evangelicals, either don’t understand the complexity of race, their complicity in the systems and structures that have oppressed others, or their biblical responsibility with regard to their neighbors.”