Planting Liberally

Shelby and I have some very exciting news: we're about to be published! A brief chapter we wrote on new media will be published in Dispatches from the Religious Left, due out in early October. The chapter is about how liberal religious organizations can use technologies like blogs, podcasting, and social networks to reach new audiences. The book includes a lot of leaders in the world of politics and liberal religion, including Dan Schultz ("PastorDan" at Street Prophets); Rev. Debra Haffner (Director of the Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing, and a leading Unitarian Universalist minister); Marshall Ganz, (community organizing guru and lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School); and Robert Edgar (former head of the National Council of Churches). The editor is Frederick Clarkson, who is a long-time scholar of the religious right, and the publisher is Ig Publishing, which is an up-and-coming progressive publisher that has also published Youth to Power and Framing the Debate (both written by progressive bloggers-turned-authors.) You can find the full list of authors on Frederick's blog, http://frederickclarkson.com/. It's quite humbling to be part of such esteemed company, and we feel very lucky to be included in the list! I haven't seen the other chapters, so I'm also excited to see what the other authors have to say. If you're interested, you can buy the book right now at Powells, at http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-9780978843182-0. There's also going to be a very brief "book tour" of sorts, including an event at Middle Collegiate Church on Oct. 14 and another event at Harvard Divinity School. More to follow on that. If you know anyone who might be interested in this topic, I'd certainly appreciate it if you let them know about the book and send this along. We're both very, very excited about the book, and we think it'll be a great read!