Authors' Favorite Folk Singer; Padre Pio's Body Exhumed; Langum Prize Awarded; HarperOne's Easter Special

by Lynn Garrett, Religion BookLine -- Publishers Weekly, 3/12/2008

What musical taste do authors Parker Palmer (The Courage to Teach), Phillip Gulley (Front Porch Tales), Jim Wallis (God's Politics), Brian McLaren (A New Kind of Christian) and Barbara Kingsolver (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle) have in common? They're all fans of Quaker singer-songwriter Carrie Newcomer, who played to a sold-out crowd at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music this past Sunday as part of the tour for her new CD, The Geography of Light (Rounder Records). Like these authors, Newcomer's work is infused with her faith, and it speaks above the clamor of the religious right to ask what it should mean to be a Christian in today's world. Newcomer has toured with Alison Krauss and Union Station, and her song "I Should Have Known Better" was recorded by Nickel Creek on their Grammy-winning album This Side. Palmer's book, Let Your Life Speak, inspired one of the new songs ("The Clean Edge of Change") and he cowrote another of the CD's tunes ("Two Toasts") with Newcomer. Quaker pastor and fellow Hoosier Gulley wrote the liner notes. Ten percent of the CD sales proceeds from the tour will go to support the American Friends Service Committee.

Last week Monday (March 3) the body of Padre Pio, the Roman Catholic saint who died in 1968, was exhumed by the Vatican from his tomb in the Santa Maria delle Grazie church in Puglia, Italy. Padre Pio was renowned for showing the stigmata (Christ's crucifixion wounds) on his hands and feet, and for the ability to foretell the future, among other miraculous powers. According to press reports, there are some 3,000 Padre Pio Prayer Groups with three million members around the world. The Church's action will allow it to display his body in a glass-topped coffin beginning April 24 for the estimated seven million pilgrims who visit the tomb each year. Reuters reported that Church officials say the body and especially the hands are in "fair condition" and the face will be conserved to be recognizable. The newest book on the popular saint comes from Paraclete Press (Words of Light: Inspiration from the Letters of Padre Pio, Feb.). Other recent titles include Padre Pio: An Intimate Portrait of a Saint Through the Eyes of His Friends (Twenty-Third Publications) and Praying with Padre Pio (Word Among Us), both published in 2007.

The David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Legal History was awarded to The Battle over School Prayer: How Engel v. Vitale Changed America by Bruce J. Dierenfield (University Press of Kansas, 2007) this past Saturday (Mar. 8) at the Central Branch of the Birmingham Public Library in Birmingham, Ala. Funded by the Langum Charitable Trust, the awardcarries a $1,000 prize. It is presented annually to "the best work of American legal history or American legal biography published by a university press, which is accessible to the educated general public, rooted in sound scholarship, and with themes that touch upon matters of general concern to the American public, past or present." The Langum Charitable Trust also presents the Langum Prize in American Historical Fiction, which will be awarded separately for the first time this year, during the Centrum Foundation's Port Townsend Writers' Conference in July.

HarperOne is offering an "Easter special"—a free online sampling of The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus's Final Days in Jerusalem (2007) by Jesus scholars John Dominic Crossan (Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography) and Marcus J. Borg (The Heart of Christianity). Beginning March 5 and continuing through the Easter holiday, readers can access the full text of book. They can then follow a link to buy the book from the retailer of their choice. The offer is part of HarperCollins's "Full Access" program [make this a link to www.HarperCollins.com], which allows consumers to sample selected books online for a limited time. According to HarperOne, "The Last Week is a day-by-day account of Jesus' final week in Jerusalem—from his triumphal entry on Palm Sunday to the executioner's march to the cross—that offers a new way of understanding the Passion Week and its monumental events."

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