Shifting Margins: From Fear and Exclusion Toward Love and Belonging

“You will find out that the margins are God’s favorite place to hang out.”Rev. Dr. Cari Willis, Chaplain to those on death rowThrough lived stories, Bishop Kenneth Carder candidly shares lessons learned from his experiences with people on the margins of society, including his own formation as the son of Appalachian tenant farmers and textile workers. By entering his life and ministry from poverty to privilege, from provincialism and segregation to beloved community, and from a religion of fear to a theology of liberating love, the reader is invited to widen the margins of their own relationships and perspectives.The reader accompanies the author as he struggles with economic exploitation and disparity, racial segregation and white privilege, ministry with those in prisons, and the heart-wrenching loss of his wife and his own aging.The road map of Carder’s journey includes:Birthed and Nurtured on the MarginsEarly Movement from Poverty to PrivilegeA Whole New World and a Radical ShiftTransition Back Home and a Changed WorldPoverty, Privilege, and MinistryConfrontation with Personal and Institutional Racism“I Was in Prison. . .”Dementia and Diminishment: Gifts from the Forgetting and the ForgottenMargins Keep ShiftingWhat Readers are Saying aboutShifting MarginsBishop Ken Carder is the consummate storyteller. These stories of his life will draw you into the broader narrative where you will not only be with Ken as he is living on the margins of society, but you will find out that the margins are God’s favorite place to hang out as well.Cari WillisChaplain to those on death rowIt is a memoir of God’s faithfulness toward a preacher whose integrity, patience, and love for family, the church, and the penitent remind us of the divine grace that abounds in the places, spaces, and faces we encounter and experience daily.Read, laugh, and cry. Be encouraged. Then go and do likewise.Robin DeaseBishop, North Georgia Conference of The United Methodist ChurchCarder’s gentle storytelling reflects the heart of a sage. His childhood