In this book, Susan Holman looks at how the Christian tradition, ancient and modern, has contemplated the subject of poverty and encourages the reader to reflect on the social issues of injustice and need. She alternates images from late antiquity and the patristic period with stories from contemporary American life. She builds three broad paradigms: sensing the poor, sharing the world, and embodying the kingdom of heaven. Holman's embrace of the historical perspective will prove useful in interdenominational and ecumenical dialogue on religious responses to social welfare needs.

Susan R. Holman is an academic research writer and editor at the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard School of Public Health. She is the author of The Hungry are Dying: Beggars and Bishops in Roman Cappadocia.

• 1.: God Knows: Empathic Remembering


• 2.: Remembering as Personal Story


• 3.: Engaging Paradigms: The Shape of Early Christian Need


• 4.: On Living and Telling: Crossing the Gap


• 5.: Poverty and the Gendering of Empathy


• 6.: Maria's Choice


• 7.: On Living Crunchy and Doing Right(s)


• 8.: Embodying Sacred Kingdom