In February 2025, Cascade Books released the book, Called to be Friends, Called to Serve, by Paul Marshall. This book is the first-ever-told story of the friendship between theologian and advocate John M. Perkins and philanthropist Howard F. Ahmanson Jr.
From the publisher’s description:
In an age defined by hyper-polarization comes a story of an unlikely and surprising friendship between two individuals with radically different backgrounds and histories who find each other because they were found by God . . . Their story is a journey of hope through differences, tracing Perkins’s and Ahmanson’s distinct and overlapping biographies, vocation, leadership, and the significance of their emerging friendship for the good of others.
Read Rick Warren’s Foreword to the book and enjoy reflections from John and Howard about their ongoing friendship.
Watch a trailer about the book and a free short documentary that has been produced and directed by Jody Hassett Sanchez.
In honor of John and Howard’s friendship, the following pieces have been curated from Howard’s 500+ writings over the last 15+ years. They are organized in light of themes that evoke some of John and Howard’s distinct and overlapping interests.
Christianity
Bringing Back the Great Commission? (2023)
Individual Responsibility in Ezekiel (2020)
More on Christian Faith and Land Use: The Issue of Profiling (2020)
What My Christian Faith Brings to My Views on Land Use (2020)
Three New Testament Roots of Economic Liberty (2019)
The Real Significance of the Tithe (2019)
A Letter about ‘Freedom’ and Christianity (2018)
The Sin of Entitlement (2018)
Did Jesus Give Us Our Individualism? (2017)
Jesus Did Not Teach Universal ‘Acceptance, Tolerance, and Inclusion’ (2017)
The New Spirituality of ‘Connectedness’ (2012)
Creeping Lutheranism? (2009)
Economy, Class, Urbanism, and Land Use
The Fall and Rise of the Cigar, and the Two Gilded Ages (2026)
Why Christian Faith Led A California Philanthropist To The YIMBY Movement (2021)
On the Urbanist Classic, Crabgrass Frontier, by Kenneth T. Jackson (2020).
A Conference Held to Honor my Father, Howard F. Ahmanson Sr.: “WWHD – What Would Howard Do?” (2018)
Reno vs. Sirico: A Debate on Economic Justice (2017)
Do We Have Something to Offer Working Class Whites? An Open Letter to the CCDA Leadership (2016)
The Upper Middle Class Versus the 1% (2015)
Rich Kid at Work: Interview with Howard Ahmanson, Jr. (2015)
“Spoiled Rich Kids” and “Ghetto Gangsters” (2014)
What Kevin Starr Doesn’t Get About Small Towns (2014)
Earned Success (2011)
Renting as Borrowing (2010)
New Urbanism: Not Suitable for Large Families (2010)
Politics, Law, Culture, and Christianity
If You Don’t Like Evangelicals, Don’t Blame the South (2026)
The Political Mistake I Think I Made (2025)
Ronald J. Sider (1939-2022): On a Most Conscientious Believer (2023)
Hayward on “Extremism and Moderation” (2023)
The Link Between Sports and Democracy (2023)
What Can We Do About Polarization? (2022)
The New Southern Democrats (2020)
Wherein I am Disappointed in My Political Guru, Francis Fukuyama (2020)
The Adams Map: A Different Spectrum, A Challenge that Still Speaks to Us (2020).
Vigen Guroian on Politics vs. Witness (2020)
I am a ‘Social Conservative’ but Not a ‘Christian Nationalist’ (2020)
The Police and the Mental Health People (2020)
The Gerontocratic Democracy of Old Africa, and Gerontocracy in Our Own Time (2020)
Insights from Francis Fukuyama on the Problem of Crony Capitalism (2020)
Things You Don’t Have to be Libertarian to Believe (2019)
Romans 14 and the Political Divisions of the Church (2018)
What Christian Reconstruction Gave Me (2018)
The Theonomization of Anabaptism (2018)
An Addendum to the Manifesto: My Youth as a Deficit Hawk (2016)
A Manifesto: Important Events That Shaped My Political Views (2016)
The Parallel Structures of Criminal and Civil Law, and the Hole in the Bill of Rights (2016).
Michael Lind’s New Paradigm, and the ‘End’ of Social Conservatism (2014)
A Strategic Political Realignment for Evangelicals? (2013)
Stealth Democracy: A Summary of the Thesis of John R. Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse (2012)
Why I am Not a Communitarian (2012)
‘Donorcracy’ and ‘Patrimonialism’ (2011)
Learning from Francis Fukuyama (2011)
Race and Discrimination
The End of the Myth of the ‘Conservative White Gene’ (2024)
What Being against ‘CRT’ and ‘Wokeness’ Should Not Mean (2023)
If We Want to Celebrate National Emancipation, There’s a Better Alternative Than Juneteenth (2021)
Anti-White Racist Remarks are Tolerated Because of White Privilege (2020)
Nationalism and “The West”
Why I Am Not a ‘Christian Nationalist’ (2024)
Was It Early Medieval Catholic Family Law That Made The Western World Unique? (2023)