In America, it is increasingly the case that the people who make, support, or protest military policy have no military experience. As Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer assert in this groundbreaking work, the gap between the "all-volunteer military" and the rest of us is widening, and our country faces a dangerous lack of understanding between those in power and those who defend our way of life.

In 1998, Frank Schaeffer was a bohemian novelist living in -Volvo driving, higher-education worshipping- Massachusetts with two children graduated from top universities. Then his youngest child, straight out of high school, joined the United States Marine Corps. Written in alternating voices by eighteen-year-old John and his father, Frank, Keeping Faith takes readers in riveting fashion through a family's experience of the Marine Corps: from being broken down and built back up on Parris Island (and being the parent of a child undergoing that experience), to the growth of both father and son...

Calvin is the son of a missionary family, and their trip to Portofino is the highlight of his year. But even in the seductive Italian summer, the Beckers can't really relax. Calvin's father could slip into a Bad Mood and start hurling potted plants at any time. His mother has an embarrassing habit of trying to convert "pagans" on the beach. And his sister Janet has a ski sweater and a miniature Bible in her luggage, just in case the Russians invade and send them to Siberia. His dad says everything is part of God's plan. But this summer, Calvin has some plans of his own ... Portofino is the...

By the time he was nineteen, Frank Schaeffer's parents, Francis and Edith Schaeffer, had achieved global fame as bestselling evangelical authors and speakers, and Frank had joined his father on the evangelical circuit. He would go on to speak before thousands in arenas around America, publish his own evangelical bestseller, and work with such figures as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Dr. James Dobson. But all the while Schaeffer felt increasingly alienated, precipitating a crisis of faith that would ultimately lead to his departure--even if it meant losing everything.

With honesty,...

Calvin Becker s family are good Bible-believing missionaries; it s their duty to spread the Word to everyone they meet. But now they face their greatest spiritual challenge right in their own home: Grandma. Foulmouthed, foul-tempered, and heathen through and through, she s staying in the spare room, recuperating from a broken hip and making it next to impossible for the Beckers to do the Lord s work.
Calvin s pious mom is determined to save Grandma s soul, even if she s doing it through gritted teeth. His father s spending more and more time in his room, blasting opera records to drown...

Frank Schaeffer has a problem with the New Atheists. He also has a problem with the religious fundamentalists. The problem is that he doesn't see much of a difference between the two camps. Sparing no one and nothing, including himself and his fiery evangelical past, and invoking subtleties too easily ignored by the pontificators, Schaeffer adds much-needed nuance to the existing religious conversation as he challenges atheists and fundamentalists alike.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Crazy For God... "And God Said 'Billy ' is laugh-out loud funny from page one. It's downright insightful throughout and takes readers deep into the shallow psyche of a sincere Charismatic-Evangelical whose God fails him. That failure turns out, through a hilarious series of tragic-comic reversals, to be - let's just say something close to miraculous. I love this novel." -- Brian D. McLaren, author/speaker/blogger. "Honest, humorous and sure to rankle those who believe that being human means being certain." -- Kevin Miller director of "Hellbound?"...