GOD'S LONG SUMMER : Stories of Faith and Civil Rights
review by Pete Hammond
Charles Marsh
Princeton Unversity Press, 1997
Paperback 276 pages

Marsh was the young son of a Baptist pastor in Laurel, MS during the summer of 1964. He reflects on what was happening around him with an excellent portrayal of five leaders who were either in or impacted by the revolutionary civil rights movement: African-American Mississippi native and civil rights leader Fanny Lou Hamer; Klu Klux Klan leader Sam Bowers; the senior pastor of Jackson’s mega-church 1st Baptist Douglas Hudgins; United Methodist maverick and activist Ed King; and the MS SNICK leader from South Carolina Cleveland Sellers. Marsh does some very good work analyzing the various spins on the Christian faith that impacts each of these major players. The book is respectful, candid and very well researched. The writing style is personal, theologically reflective and very readable as he takes his readers into the personal journey of each subject. I found it to be somewhat unique in the flow literature of the movement because of Marsh’s roots, his theological abilities and his whiteness.

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From The Marketplace Annotated Bibliography, used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515, USA. www.ivpress.com
Read the Introduction.