New Book: Soul Cries Now Available!

To buy Soul Cries, click in left-hand column 

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John Fountain's latest book

here is an American tragedy. A tale of two cities. One ugly. One pretty. It is the story of life and also loss on the other side of the tracks. An American story. One being written daily by news media but often only cursorily as stories of murder, poverty and social decay. But it is more complex story for those who dwell behind the invisible walls of the American Mainstream in neighborhoods where life is fragile and violence an intractable squatter. A place where life can be hard and plain. Where bullets too often rain but where life, love and hope form a wellspring.

Theirs is a story of joy and pain. It is a soul’s song—told in this book through the lens of John W. Fountain, a Chicago native son and veteran journalist who grew up on the West Side, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his family once lived during his campaign to help the poor.

"My soul cries. It quivers, sometimes like the human body too long exposed to the cold..."

Now Available - New Book: The Lord Will Provide: The Life & Times of Rev. William H. Copeland

“The Lord Will Provide: The Life & Times of William H. Copeland Jr.” is one pastor’s story. A personal human journey about the sacrifices, struggles, triumphs and what it truly means to be a pastor, to love the people of God. It is an American story of a do-something faith rooted in tenacity and in the audacity of hope that reminds of a time when being a pastor was not a vocation but a calling.

PASTOR. THERE ONCE WAS A TIME when that word alone was held sacred. A time when being a pastor was not a vocation but a calling. Not so much a profession as a confession of the faith and purpose held by those divinely called to the ministry of servant leadership.

“The Lord Will Provide: The Life & Times of William H. Copeland Jr.” is a reminder of those times. A reminder of the men—and women—who embraced that sacred calling at a time in America when the role of pastor, particularly in the African-American community, entailed wearing the hat of community leader, public servant, spiritual counselor, social advocate and being the unflinching face and voice that spoke truth to power. It was a weighty and perhaps unenviable mission—regarded as both sacred and monumental.

The Soul Cries Experience...

Join: "A Conversation with John W. Fountain"

A Conversation with Award-Winning 
Chicago Sun-Times Columnist 
John W. Fountain

"Our Stories Matter"

7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 20

Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies at

Northeastern Illinois University

700 E. Oakwood Blvd.

Chicago, Illinois

773-268-7500

John Fountain Discusses New Book -- No Place For Me: Letters to The Church In America

John was interviewed live on Intellectual Radio this week on his new book.

www.intellectualradio.com

Special Guest:

John W. Fountain

Award-Winning Columnist, Author, Journalist & Professor

THIS IS A MUST SEE SHOW - Hosted by Jan & Shamel

The Moment When One Finally Realizes It's Time To Move On

This is an excerpt from John Fountain’s forthcoming book: 

“No Place For Me: Letters to the Church in America"

John Fountain (Back row, third from left) is pictured here with his siblings and cousins and their grandparents, the Reverend George A. and Missionary Florence G. Hagler at their True Vine Church circa 1970s,

By John W. Fountain

It wasn’t that I disagreed with the whole idea of “separation of church and state.” For it is difficult for the “political voice” and the “prophetic voice” to coexist. Indeed I have long believed that speaking truth to power requires a certain distance from the established social and political powers that be. That if a preacher ever climbed into bed with politicians he was well soiled before he climbed out. And that once you had been politically tainted you were likely to develop social laryngitis because more than likely you had been bought with a price.

In my eyes, the affairs of faith--even if sometimes connected to the affairs of “the state”--needed a degree of immunity from political corruption and the trappings of politics: money, power, influence.

The “uncompromising man of God,” that I perceived “Reverend Pastor” to be was what helped draw me temporarily from the waters of religious brokenness to the shores of “Resurrection Church.”

"His words blew me away. It wasn’t his words alone but the sum of my experience with organized institutional Christianity."