Living Faith: How Faith Inspires Social Justice

What a challenging yet inspiring read. I was left with much to ponder and a hope that perhaps the vision of these three mystic-activists could still come to fruition. Powerful book!

This is the most comprehensive and inspiring book I've read to date that deals with how persons of faith live their faith. Dr. DeYoung is an awesome prophetic and timely professor of reconciliation studies for the 21st century. I will be recommending this book to others in my faith community, sharing it with my friends who are practicing Jews and Muslims, as well as using it as a primary text in courses I teach in the future.

This is one of the very best books I have ever read on the relationship between faith and social justice. Through the lives of Bonhoeffer, Malcom X, Aung San Suu Kyi and many others, this book shows how a spirited belief in a better world for all can be a foundation for lives of justice. It is in plain english and very readable. It has short sections in each chapter, so it can be a great source for daily reflection.

This is something I needed a clear reminder for what I am on this earth for. Your predecessors are your history, what they leave you is your guide along with the "All Mighty". When you see your faith being tested even minutely read this book,especially the Malcolm X section. You will be moved by the real social justifiers.

This was an excellent book. DeYoung uses 3 people of different faith to illustrate how one lives out their faith. I loved it.

good book and thank you!

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn about themselves through other peoples challenges in life. Very inspiring.

Therapist have an insatiable habit of attempting to bring the one being counseled to a point where they revisit the primary emotion behind the secondary emotion that tipped them into therapy. In this same vein Curtiss De Young points one on a path of discovering faith that inspires social justice by illuminating the deepest passion that drove three mystic-activist, in three different eras, on three different continents to be agents of reconciliation for social justice. De Young defines mystic-activist as the person who sees clearly the causes and implications of injustice and oppression, and combined with their compulsive quest for the divine, their activism makes its way into the world as a by-product of their deep faith.De Young uses the metaphor of spirit of revolution to weave the stories of Suu Kyi, Malcolm X, and Bonhoeffer together. Aung San Suu Kyi envisioned a "spirit of revolution" where human rights would be set free. Malcolm X claimed that the proper solution to world governments that abuses power by debilitating the spirit and soul of humanity is to give birth to governments guided by a "religion of the spirit." Also, Bonhoeffer, who dealt specifically with the plight of the Jew, based his "revolution" on a reconfigured view of God the Son, the second person of the trinity, saying, "An expulsion of the Jews from the west must necessarily bring with it the expulsion of Christ. For Jesus Christ was a Jew."With ample story and narrative interpretation De Young leaves the reader spellbound, awaiting the next compelling story of faith inspiring social justice. In the epilogue De Young challenges "those who seek to link the worlds of activism and contemplative faith to build more bridges of reconciliation across the chasm of religious division." Such an embodiment of reconciliation "may be our only hope for greater peace in the world."Ultimately the commonality in these three stories is the focus on the primary concern of any who seek to do social justice - human rights. May we have the resolve to be as pointed in our efforts at recognizing from the bottom up that every human being has inalienable rights, that the revolution required to unleash these rights is a revolution of the spirit, and the duty of all humanity is treating oneself as another.