Mobilizing Hope: Faith-Inspired Activism for a Post-Civil Rights Generation - Softcover

"Adam Taylor makes a powerful case for a new chapter of activism for the common good, and he provides practical guidance for those who heed the call. Taylor treasures his heritage; he also understands the hopes and fears of a new generation about civic engagement. By candidly and perceptively addressing these matters, Taylor creates a new conversation and points toward a better day."--Melissa Rogers, director of the Center for Religion and Public Affairs, Wake Forest University Divinity School

"From now on, whenever I meet those eager and seeking young people who want their faith and their lives to make a difference in the world, I have a book to recommend. And I commend it to you. It could change your life."--Jim Wallis, from the foreword

"I'm proud to see the struggle to build God's beloved community continue through the creative maladjustment of a committed minority of transformed nonconformists highlighted in these pages."--Congressman John Lewis, from the afterword

"In recent years, there has been an evangelical resurgence in social concerns. This renewed interest has resulted in a new generation of believers seeking to live out the biblical call for social justice. Adam Taylor is an individual that has engaged on all levels of biblical social justice. This theologically reflective and historically thoughtful book is the result of an embodied life of justice. Mobilizing Hope reveals the very best of what the next evangelicalism can be. Passionate about Jesus with a deep sense of God's heart of justice for the world, Adam's work challenges all of us to live an authentic spirituality and a lived theology for the sake of the gospel and the world."--Soong-Chan Rah, Milton B. Engebretson Associate Professor of Church Growth and Evangelism, North Park Theological Seminary

"Adam Taylor is a true prophet of our time. From the halls of Harvard to the West Wing of the White House to the streets of Zimbabwe, he has been a consistent voice for justice and righteousness. His message echoes the Old Testament prophets who were unafraid to speak truth to power. But Taylor's secret is he knows movements don't start in the halls of power, they end there. In Mobilizing Hope, Taylor shares how our generation can birth a new Spirit-led movement for justice."--Aaron Graham, lead pastor, The District Church

"In Mobilizing Hope, Adam Taylor challenges Christians to embrace St. Paul's call not to conform with the ways of the world but to be people of conviction and action and hope. The book offers practical examples and ideas for putting our faith to work on behalf of the poor and oppressed."--Richard Stearns, president, World Vision, U.S., and author of The Hole in Our Gospel

"Adam Taylor's Mobilizing Hope: Faith-Inspired Activism for a Post-Civil Rights Generation will likely be one of the prompts that we've long needed to calibrate our moral compasses and the spark we've needed to refocus our attention on reconciliation and justice in the post-civil rights era. This book speaks to the new generation of leaders, as well as the vanguard, about what it takes to transition from service to activism and what each of us needs to do to find a voice that is clear and truthful in the twenty-first century."--Robert Franklin, president, Morehouse College

"With this inspiriting first work, Adam Taylor calls his own generation to meaningful action, deftly locating them in the continuum, rather than the malaise, of the post-civil rights generations. He offers the young Christian reader a practical methodology for social activism rooted in the teachings of Christ and informed by the examples of Martin Luther King Jr., Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the apostle Paul. Taylor challenges and upends the pervasive notion that narcissism and cynicism define his contemporaries, and provides a comprehensive field guide for their burgeoning hope."--Paul Farmer, M.D., Ph.D., Presley Professor, Harvard Medical School

"Adam Taylor has written a beautiful, inspiring book. The message is pure and true: faith transforms people, and transformed people can transform the world. For me, reading the book was itself a transformative experience, a necessary reminder of how my own faith inspires and commands me to change injustice into justice, callousness into compassion, conflict into cooperation."--Eboo Patel, American Muslim leader, and founder and executive director, Interfaith Youth Core

"I highly recommend Mobilizing Hope to men and women who are crazy enough to believe that our faith should lead to action, and that our action offers hope for a transformed society. Adam is a dynamic young leader with much wisdom to offer those of us engaged in the complexities of seeking justice."--Noel Castellanos, CEO, Christian Community Development Association

"Adam Taylor is a movement-builder and hope-mobilizer. In this inaugural book he dares us to nonconformity, for it is the duty of every Christian and person of conscience to disobey ungodly laws and to interrupt unjust systems and to live in ways that do not compute to the patterns of this world that are out of line with God's upside-down kingdom. May it inspire you to live with imagination and to do something with your life that moves this broken world a little closer to God's vision of beloved community."--Shane Claiborne, author, activist and recovering sinner (www.thesimpleway.org)

"In Mobilizing Hope, Adam Taylor issues a most compassionate, compelling and courageous call for a new generation of transformed kingdom-focused nonconformists and activists committed to social and economic justice as the saving grace of America. He draws upon his own homegrown roots as a student of the 1960s civil rights movement's messages and methods. Yet he recognizes that today's young leaders will frame strategies that fit new times. His bottom line, and that of God's people of diverse backgrounds, must be to ignore society's seductive call to conform and answer the gospel call to dismantle injustice wherever it is found."--Dr. Barbara Williams-Skinner, president, Skinner Leadership Institute, and former executive director, Congressional Black Caucus

"This inspiring book clarifies the call for Christians to join with God in restructuring societal institutions so that justice will pervade the earth and the oppressed will enjoy deliverance. I give this book two thumbs up!"--Tony Campolo, Professor Emeritus, Eastern University

"Adam Taylor's daring manifesto calls a new generation of faith leaders to become Christ-centered activists for love and justice. Inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream, Taylor's Mobilizing Hope offers a bold, vivid vision that energizes and equips Christians to live into a prophetic, intercultural future."--Peter Goodwin Heltzel, author of Jesus and Justice

courageous call for a new generation of transformed kingdom-focused nonconformists and activists committed to social and economic justice as the saving grace of America. He draws upon his own homegrown roots as a student of the 1960s civil rights movement's messages and methods. Yet he recognizes that today's young leaders will frame strategies that fit new times. His bottom line, and that of God's people of diverse backgrounds, must be to ignore society's seductive call to conform and answer the gospel call to dismantle injustice wherever it is found."--Dr. Barbara Williams-Skinner, president, Skinner Leadership Institute, and former executive director, Congressional Black Caucus

generation of leaders, as well as the vanguard, about what it takes to transition from service to activism and what each of us needs to do to find a voice that is clear and truthful in the twenty-first century."--Robert Franklin, president, Morehouse College

"Recommend Mobilizing Hope especially to college students, campus ministers, parachurch ministry leaders, and youth directors."--Daniel Johnson, CBA Retailers Resources, October 2010

"Adam has become my friend, kindred spirit and younger soulmate in the movement to put faith into action.Mobilizing Hope is . . . a manifesto for this generation which is such a sign of hope for me."--Jim Wallis, from the foreword

Jim Wallis is an author, activist, preacher, teacher, and pastor. He is a bestselling writer, convener of faith-inspired movements for justice and peace both outside and inside politics, public theologian in a secular culture, renowned speaker in the United States and abroad, and international media commentator on ethics and public life. He is the founder and leader of Sojourners, a publishing platform, organization, and global network whose mission is to put faith into action for social justice. Wallis has written more than ten books, including "The (Un)Common Good "and the "New York Times" bestsellers "God's Politics" and "The Great Awakening". He has written for major newspapers, does regular columns for top digital news networks, and appears frequently on a wide variety of television and radio networks. Wallis also teaches at Georgetown University and has taught at Harvard University. He is husband to Joy Carroll, one of the first women to be ordained a priest in the Church of England, father to two teenage boys, Luke and Jack, and a decades-long Little League baseball coach.