God's Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights

Charles Marsh brings a fresh perspective to the Civil Rights movement. As well as thoroughly exploring the Christian language and symbolism used by African Americans in fighting for desegregation, Marsh offers Christian language and symbolism used by white Americans fighting for segregation. This book is essential to understanding the Civil Rights movement from both perspectives.

There's a lot of in-bickering within the intellectual community as to the primary motivation for any particular event. People who have majored in political science will argue that politics is always the key. People who have majored in sociology will argue that it's social change that's the key. People, like myself, who have majored in religion will always seem to find that religion is the key. Perhaps that's why I like this book so much. Marsh undertakes an exhaustive study of various figures in the struggle for (and against) Civil Rights. Perhaps my favorite chapter is actually the one about the Grand Imperial Wizard of the White Knights in Mississippi, Sam Bowers. It's rare to see much study devoted to the opposition and I value the effort that Marsh has put into it. Furthermore, the man is note-crazed. He has upwards of 100 footnotes for each chapter, all indexed in the back with killing accuracy. If nothing else, the bibliography he employed is fantastic enough to warrant buying the book. I can understand, though, how people who are not students of religion would be turned off by this work. He argues the point until he's blue in the face, leaving the reader possibly a bit shocked and overwhelmed. Reading this, you're guaranteed to learn more about Bible doctrine and faith-based initiative than you perhaps ever really wanted to know. I love it, but I can certainly understand how others may not. I strongly suggest this book for students of religion and students of Civil Rights history. I also recommend it for those who wonder "what the other side thinks" if they are curious about how religious scholars attribute everything to faith. It's a really great book and I love Marsh's clean and thorough style of writing. It's uncluttered and his organization is brilliant.

Highly recommended account of the role of "faith" in the lives of five prominent figures in Mississippi during the civil rights movement. Saints (Fannie Lou Hamer, Edwin King, Cleveland Sellers) and sinners (Sam Bowers and Douglas Hudgins) are both represented. Hudgins and other Jackson elites come off nearly as loathsome as Bowers. Marsh's prose is brilliant, providing for a lively and inspiring read.

Marsh's book is a truly poignant view of real Southern people during the civil rights movement. He is able to capture each of the five individual's quite different understandings of God and His actual place in their lives during this time of great struggle. Marsh takes you on a journey of different Christian imaginations as he examines the beliefs of an outstanding woman fighting for her rights as a black woman, an ex-headmaster of the Ku Klux Klan, a black militant leader, a middle-of-the-road preacher, and a white minister who managed to "cross-over" racial lines and fight for freedom. These are wonderful and heartfelt stories being presented by Marsh, and must be read by anyone who has lived through the time of the civil rights movement.

Marsh clearly has his saints and his villains, but anyone with a scintilla of compassion who lived through the age would be hard-pressed to disagree with his judgments. He brings his subjects to life and dissects their Christianity (or their perversion of it). When you finish the book you will be all the happier for the vindication of Fannie Lou Hamer and all the more repulsed by the enduring power of cowardly and hypocritical clergymen.One cavil: For a book published by a school as distinguished as Princeton University, it has an alarming number of typographical errors.