Author explores nun’s path to martyrdom

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On Thursday, Dec. 4, 1980, the bodies of four women were found in a shallow roadside grave in El Salvador. It became clear after the autopsies that two of them had been raped before being murdered. There were over 8,000 murders that year in El Salvador, but these four victims stood out because three of them were Catholic nuns, the fourth was a lay missionary and all of them were Americans.

"A Radical Faith" tells the story of the eldest victim, Sister Maura Clarke, who was a Maryknoll nun. She had been in El Salvador only four months, but she had been a missionary sister serving in Nicaragua for 20 years.

Insightful look at 'radicals' shows link between faith, social action

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Today as racism, sexism and electoral politics divide millions of Americans, the distinguished religious scholar Albert J. Raboteau offers moving accounts of seven 20th-century activists whose commitment to social justice is exemplary.
"American Prophets: Seven Religious Radicals & Their Struggle for Social and Political Justice" demonstrates how Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, A.J. Muste, Dorothy Day, Howard Thurman, Trappist Father Thomas Merton, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Fannie Lou Hamer all were compelled by "a deeply felt compassion for those suffering injustice."
Through their social activism, which included writing, speaking, organizing and picketing and other kinds of demonstrating, they changed Americans' views toward the wrongs inflicted by war, racism and poverty.