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| The Gospel of Father Joe: Revolutions and Revelations in the Slums of Bangkok | 
 enlarge | Author: Greg Barrett
Creator: Desmond M., Archbishop Emeritus Tutu
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $12.97
You Save: $12.98 (50%)
Buy New/Used from $11.60
Avg. Customer Rating:  (8 reviews)
Sales Rank: 208872
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 0470258632
Dewey Decimal Number: 261.832509593
EAN: 9780470258637
ASIN: 0470258632
Publication Date: March 28, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 6-8 of 8 | | « PREV | | |
 The Gospel of Fr. Joe: A book even for your atheist Uncle Bob April 13, 2008
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
People everywhere are in despair or at least in the maw of ennui .
The genius of Greg Barrett's "The Gospel of Fr. Joe" is that Barrett shows us, the privileged, a way to move from despair to joy by plunging into the counterintuitive. Like Barrett's protagonist, Fr. Joe, the secret is to embrace misery and do something, anything, to mitigate the misery of at least one victim.
The author achieves, a genuine miracle in his "Gospel of Father Joe". He shows us how to replace a deep feeling of impotence with hope and action. That hope and actions serve as the antidote for hopelessness and depression. This antidote helps readers ranging from religious believers to believers in atheism, like me.
How does Barrett pull off this miracle?
1) He focuses on a single question: how can a a hard-nosed, rebel priest, Fr. Joe, infuse tens of thousands of slum children in Thailand, even those dying of AIDS, with energy and joy?
2) Fr. Joe's example makes us Americans who profit from the neo-slave labor of Thais aptly ashamed of this injustice. But that's only 1% of the story. Fr. Joe's example makes us ashamed of what is our own petty suffering -- petty in comparison with the victims of Thailand.
3) Barrett provides what we scientists call an existence proof of the ability to work not only effectively, but with joy, amid the most bleak circumstances, including the horrors of Thailand's sex tourism industry. This "industry" is especially painful since credible evidence indicates that Thailand's sex tourism, staffed partly by children, is at collateral damage from the Vietnam war in which the Pentagon turned Thailand into a huge brothel (R & R) for our troops as well as a platform for the launching the massive bombing of the men, women, and children of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. (Note: the last sentence is my own evidence-based interpretation, not Barrett's. So if it offends anyone, blame me and the scholarly literature, not Greg Barrett.
4) Barrett, a master storyteller, shows us how an unblinking realist like Fr. Joe can seize the moment and inspire people of all ages and religions to seize the moment. Perhaps most powerfully, the courage of Fr. Joe's charges -- including those know they have only days to live use their remaining time to read books rather then cursing their fate.
5) Most of all, I recommend the "Gospel of Father Joe" for people in despair, because Fr. Joe provides a most meaningful way out of hopelessness. His lesson is to find someone bearing an infinitely heavier burden than yours and to help that person. I'm impressed enough to fly to Texas next week to try Fr. Joe's prescription.
6) I'll end with a request for Greg Barrett. Please write another compelling book which shows how to defeat despair by helping defeat something more abstract than the despair of individual children. Greg, please use your formidable talent to paint verbal pictures of the work of the Fr. Joes who battle further up the rivers generating human destruction.
Show us the people who are engaged in what public health calls primary prevention - preventing the child abuse and emotional and physical starvation that produces the billions of children doomed to lives so bleak that the noun "crucifixion" is more accurate than hyperbolic.
As urgent as the work of Fr. Joe is, even a million Father Joe's cannot eradicate the horrors befalling children unless the labor is supplemented by primary prevention.
This said, Greg Barrett's "The Gospel of Father Joe" in itself shows us the path to ending the "normal" atrocities of structural violence which kill or demolish children world wide and which, if left unchecked, will doom us all.
In conclusion, help your friends and even your enemies. Give copies of "The Gospel of Father Joe" to everyone in psychic pain -- believer, unbeliever or agnostic. All will thank you.
Oh, yeah. "The Gospel of Father Joe" will elicit tears unless your are a brick statue. The tears are well worth it.
Jean Coffey, NC March 22, 2008
10 out of 12 found this review helpful
This is a story that was destined to be told. Thankfully, it chose an author who could handle serious and often grim content with aplomb, resulting in a book that is very readable. Greg Barrett has clearly taken the cause of Father Joe Maier to heart, and through the Gospel of Father Joe, wants the reader to do the same. The slums of Bangkok are indicative of the unspeakable behaviors humans allow to happen to one another, and force upon one another. Sadly, Bangkok is not the only place we treat each other in reprehensible and shameful ways. So very fortunate are the women and children in this humanities-war torn area to have an angel in the form of a gruff and grumpy man named Father Joseph Maier, and his creation, The Mercy Center. Reader alert: Knowledge like this can never be conveniently unknown.
Gospel of Father Joe March 19, 2008
11 out of 13 found this review helpful
Straight arrow writing. Compelling subject. Our real heros are not the warrors or the great men or the mogols, but those who give themselves and get their hands dirty and give the rest of us a sturdy definition of compassion. Thanks to Mr. Barrett for spotlighting Father Joe.The Gospel of Father Joe: Revolutions and Revelations in the Slums of Bangkok
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