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The Way of Love
Mark M. Beckwith
Morehouse Publishing
Mar/2022, 208 Pages, Paperback, 5.5 x 8.5
ISBN: 9781640655188
A bishop and gun safety activist offers a way forward from opposing viewpoints.
Instead of dismissing those whose views and experiences are different from our own, the author argues that we must look directly at them and see the goodness that is inherent in all things. From the language we use to the imperative to understand and include, we have a duty to work through opposition and build community.
Bishop Beckwith describes it this way: "We are trained to think, yet the cultural emphasis on thinking has not be applied to our ability to see . . . We are not as well trained in seeing the world’s fullness—pain and joy, compassion and cruelty. We regularly receive glimpses of pain and joy, but they are often presented in such a way as to reinforce our thinking."
MARK BECKWITH is a renowned activist who has appeared on media including radio, podcasts print. He is the retired Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, where he served for twelve years. While there, he co-founded the Newark Interfaith Coalition for Hope and Peace, a network of religious leaders committed to reducing gang violence in the city. He co-founded Bishops United Against Gun Violence (2012), which has grown to a network of 100 bishops from across the church.
Since retirement, he has become part of the leadership team for Braver Angels, a movement that seeks to depolarize America by convening equal numbers of conservative and progressive people in workshops and actions that honor political and ideological difference and seek to find common ground. Bishop Beckwith lives in Jaffrey, New Hampshire.
“This book is two for the price of one. It gives us new things to see. It gives us a new way to see all things. This book helped me so much to see in my daily life the signals and possibilities of transcendence. If you want to grow in wisdom and vision, read it.”—David Blankenhorn, president of Braver Angels
“From organizing movements to shape communities dealing with the trauma of gun violence to being present among the poor in food lines, Mark seeks to discern those practical ways of becoming present to the other. In the name of Jesus, it is the other who looms large in this book and Mark’s passion for us to discover the other beyond our party lines and ideologies. Mark’s experience and insights around how this kind of Gospel life can work make this an important book in our dispirited and divided moment.”—Alan Roxburgh, author, Joining God, Remaking the Church, Changing the World
“Beckwith challenges us to see what we have previously missed, to understand what eluded us, and to act, in response, with compassion and faith. Employing a brilliantly crafted string of insights and illustrations, he powerfully calls us to experience life more fully through sharper vision coupled with deeper heart and soul.”—Paul Reville, Francis Keppel Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education, and former Massachusetts Secretary of Education
