Building Beloved Community in a Wounded World

“Between the voices and concerns of two prophetic pragmatists and a retired Lutheran minister, the beloved community comes to life in these pages. The theme is presented and developed in reflective conversation that digs deeply into a rich variety of traditions and concerns. Attentive readers will face a kind of altar call to begin the hard work of joining and serving the community they seek.”


—Roger Ward, Georgetown College





“This text provides a kaleidoscope on Josiah Royce’s felicitous concept of ‘the beloved community,’ which was most powerfully elaborated in the life, work, and rhetoric of Martin Luther King Jr. . . . Bridging the academy and the pulpit, the contributors harmonize around the cries of the wounded within a wounded world. Its human, all-too-human deficiencies notwithstanding, Goodson, Stone, and Kuehnert focus on what a beloved community demands of us who have the ears to hear.”


—William David Hart, Macalester College