Dan Arnold, a Rockford, Illinois, businessman, enlisted Kurt Peterson to research and write Lincoln’s Land: The History of Abraham Lincoln’s Coles County Farm. Peterson is associate professor of history and chair of the History Department.
Arnold purchased four of the farm property’s 40 acres and wants to use it to promote a greater understanding of the former president. The 90-page paperback is intended for the general public, gathering information from previous scholarship. However, it does contribute new information about Lincoln’s ownership of the land, which heretofore was little known.
The book is about far more than property, however. History of the land also provides better insight into Lincoln as a person, says Peterson.
“I think historians overstated his relationship with his dad to make his rags to riches story more profound.”
For example, Thomas Lincoln paid $50 for the land in 1840, but was forced to sell a year later after suffering financial setbacks. Abraham Lincoln bought it for $200 – four times what his father paid – and gave his parents the right to use the property for the rest of their lives.
Although the relationship between the two men was difficult at best, Peterson says, “I think historians overstated his relationship with his dad to make his rags to riches story more profound.”
Lincoln never sold the property, and it remained in his family until the early 1900s when some was sold to the state and the rest to private owners.
In 2007, Arnold purchased his four-acre parcel, which is located next to the Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site, the site of Thomas Lincoln’s home. Arnold formed the non-profit Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Historical Farm. He is selling penny-sized portions of the land and funds will go largely to help that organization. For more information, click here.
Brent Laytham, associate professor of theology at North Park Theological Seminary, recently contributed a chapter and edited God Does Not . . . Entertain, Play Matchmaker, Hurry, Demand Blood, Cure Every Illness. Each chapter is written by a different theologian.
“The book deals with some of the distortions that creep into our understanding of how God works in the world,” Laytham says. “Clearing up false understandings should help us live more faithful lives.” Click here to purchase a copy online.
“Clearing up false understandings should help us live more faithful lives.”
The book is a follow-up to God Is Not: Religious, Nice, “One of Us,” An American, A Capitalist. Laytham says that book was in response to one of the first of the campus theme programs (the school focuses on a specific theme each year).
Discussions among planning committee members led Laytham to ask six friends to give lectures at the school on what “God isn’t.” Those lectures became chapters for the book.
“For the second book, I had six more friends to ask,” he says.
Understanding a different culture is the focus of the newest book edited by Paul De Neui, but it is not a travel guide. Communicating Christ in Asian Cities: Urban Issues in Buddhist Contexts is the sixth volume in a series produced from papers delivered during the annual SEANET Missiological Forum held in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
De Neui, professor of Intercultural Studies and Missiology, says that people doing evangelistic mission must be keenly aware of specific issues related to urban life among Buddhists, who reflect a myriad of complex cultures.
The book is divided into three sections with the first focused on foundational issues of ministry within the framework of Asian Buddhist cities. The second section includes four chapters addressing several contextual issues specific to peoples within Asian Buddhist cities. The final section includes three chapters on the topic of strategic means of evangelization found useful in specific Asian urban Buddhist contexts.
“. . . Although fasting may provide positive results, it really is the body’s response to grief . . .”
Scot McKnight addresses the cultural understandings – or misunderstandings – of fasting in his book, Fasting: The Ancient Practices.
McKnight, the Karl A. Olsson Professor of Religious Studies, places fasting within Judeo-Christian contexts throughout history. He expresses his concern that people today fast in order to get something, and thereby turn the practice into a technique. Although fasting may provide positive results, it really is the body’s response to grief over life’s circumstances and sin, he says.
McKnight is the author of more than 25 books and is considered an authority in historical Jesus studies. Fasting is the fourth volume in the Ancient Practices Series released by Thomas Nelson and edited by Phyllis Tickle.
