Goodnight Sweetheart: A Story of Faith, Hope and Love
Alan Johnston
Soncoast Publishing, 2021
Alan Johnston’s life took a sudden turn the moment he first caught sight of someone he describes as “the most stunning, gorgeous woman I had ever seen.”
Smitten by an enchanting woman identified to him initially only as “Judy,” he draws on familiar songs, oldies such as “Pretty Woman” and “Earth Angel,” to describe his reaction.
From the opening of his memoir on love and illness, “Goodnight Sweetheart: A Story of Faith, Hope and Love,” Johnston makes clear his future wife would be the love of his life.
Halfway into their 29-year marriage, however, their lives were jolted by a medical appointment that confirmed their worst fears. At age 54 Judy was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease. For the next 15 years Johnston remained a devoted and loving husband as he dealt with her progressive illness.
His deeply personal tale details his love and devotion to his late wife, and the grief he experienced while dealing with “a dark disease with no survivors.”
Clearly Judy was a special person, evidenced by reminiscences at the end of the book from those who knew and loved her.
A native of Alabama, Johnston lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and has spent his career in ministry and financial planning.
His book is available at Amazon.
The Southern Baptist Convention & Civil Rights, 1954–1995
David Roach
Pickwick Publications, 2021
David Roach has written a thorough history of Southern Baptist views on segregation and paints a detailed picture of how they shifted over the latter half of the 20th century.
The general belief in equality was not foreign to early Southern Baptists. Roach writes, “They called for evangelization of all races, Christian treatment of all races, and ministerial education for all races.”
Yet, he notes “at the same time, they were segregationists who did not recognize the conflict between their general beliefs and their specific beliefs regarding African Americans.”
Roach, pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church in Saraland, Alabama, details efforts to address segregation in Baptist churches and institutions, specifically in the era leading up to the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court decision that desegregated public schools and concluding with a resolution adopted at the 1995 SBC annual meeting repenting of past racism within the denomination.
Though there were social pressures at work in these shifts, Roach presents the case that churches were more likely to respond to the need for change when the issues were approached in alignment with conservative theology.
In a chapter on seminaries, for example, Roach notes discussions of race that “appealed to traditional evangelical doctrines such as creation in the image of God, the death of Christ for all, and the unity of the church” were more effective for Southern Baptists than appeals to social gospel.
Roach holds a doctor of philosophy degree in church history from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.
His book is available at Amazon.
Top 10 best-selling Christian books compiled and distributed by ECPA
- The Five Love Languages
By Gary Chapman (Moody)
- Jesus Calling
By Sarah Young (Thomas Nelson)
- Jesus Listens
By Sarah Young (Thomas Nelson)
- Find Your People
By Jennie Allen (Waterbrook)
- I Guess I Haven’t Learned That Yet
By Shauna Niequist (Zondervan)
- The Truth and Beauty
By Andrew Klavan (Zondervan)
- Get Out of Your Head
By Jennie Allen (Waterbrook)
- Embrace Your Almost
By Jordan Lee Dooley (Waterbrook)
- Life Makeover
By Dominique Sachse (Thomas Nelson)
- Prophetic Forecast
By Joshua Giles (Chosen Books)
Source: Christian Book Expo, May 2022
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