cover image Women Who Changed the Heart of the City

Women Who Changed the Heart of the City

Delores Burger. Kregel Publications, $10.99 (160pp) ISBN 978-0-8254-2146-4

Over the past 200 years, women like Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa have played significant roles in bringing Christianity into the squalor of the inner city. In these biographical sketches, Burger explores the lives of 18 women and one man whose lives were inextricably bound up with the City Rescue Mission Movement. Fanny J. Crosby, for example, established schools for the poor in New York City from 1867 to 1915. This movement, which originated in Scotland in 1826, began in America in 1873. Each sketch depicts a life of faith and devotion characterized by enduring sacrifice and dedication to bringing the love of Jesus through establishing schools, orpanages and soup kitchens to those who most needed it. Today, these women and their heirs will feed and shelter over 30,000 men and women in inner-city rescue missions. In histories of American religion, the City Rescue Movement is relegated to a footnote, if it is mentioned at all. Burger's accessible prose tells an untold story in a compelling fashion. (Jan.)