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.
Enjoy a trailer about the book and short documentary that has been produced and directed by Jody Hassett Sanchez.
In honor of John and Howard’s friendship, the following writings have been curated from Howard’s blog and 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 and Land Use
A Conference Held to Honor my Father, Howard F. Ahmanson Sr.: “WWHD – What Would Howard Do?” (2018)
Do We Have Something to Offer Working Class Whites? An Open Letter to the CCDA Leadership (2016)
Earned Success (2011)
Renting as Borrowing (2010)
Politics, Law, and Christianity
Ronald J. Sider (1939-2022): On a Most Conscientious Believer (2023)
What Can We Do About Polarization? (2022)
The New Southern Democrats (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)
What Christian Reconstruction Gave Me (2018)
The Theonomization of Anabaptism (2018)
A Manifesto: Important Events That Shaped My Political Views (2016)
Michael Lind’s New Paradigm, and the ‘End’ of Social Conservatism (2014)
A Strategic Political Realignment for Evangelicals? (2013)
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)
Nationalism and “The West”
Why I Am Not a ‘Christian Nationalist’ (2024)