About the Book and Authors

Now Featured in the Patheos Book Club
Not Just Good, but Beautiful
The Complementary Relationship between Man and Woman
by Pope Francis and other contributors

About the Book

In an unprecedented interreligious conference in November 2014, Pope Francis and four hundred religious leaders and scholars from around the world met in Rome to explore what their diverse faiths teach about marriage and "the complementarity of man and woman."

This book contains sixteen representative presentations at that closely followed event, Humanum: An International Interreligious Colloquium,which included Catholic, Evangelical, Anglican, Pentecostal, Eastern Orthodox, Anabaptist, Mormon, Jewish, Muslim, Jain, Buddhist, and Hindu delegates. Contributors bring the wisdom of their various faiths and cultures to bear on this timely issue, examining, celebrating, and defending the natural union of man and woman in marriage as a universal cornerstone of healthy families, communities and societies.

With broad global representation, Not Just Good, but Beautiful uses fresh language and images to highlight the beauty and benefits of marriage. Contributors do not represent political parties, but speak from their religious, intellectual, and cultural knowledge and experiences.

About the Authors

Pope Francis is the leader of the Catholic Church. Before he was elected to the papacy on March 13, 2013, he was Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina. He is the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas, and the first to take the name Francis, inspired by Saint Francis of Assisi, whom he has called "the man of the poor, the man of peace, the man who loved and cared for creation."

"To reflect upon complementarity is nothing less than to ponder the dynamic harmonies at the heart of all Creation.… It is not just a good thing, but it is also beautiful."

Rev. Rick Warren is founder and senior pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California. His bookThe Purpose Driven Life has sold thirty million copies and is the second most translated book in history, after the Bible. He hosted the Civil Forum on the Presidency (August 2008) with candidates McCain and Obama and gave the invocation at Obama's first presidential inauguration (January 2009). He initiated the P.E.A.C.E. Plan with the goal of involving Christians from every church in serving people in the areas of the greatest need globally. This work includes a major initiative to combat AIDS in Africa.

"Our culture has accepted two lies: that if you disagree with someone's lifestyle you must hate them or are afraid of them, and that to love someone means that you must agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense."

Rt. Rev. N.T. Wright is professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Wright was bishop of Durham in the Church of England from 2003 until his retirement in 2010. Among his many writings are his Christian Origins and the Question of God series and the For Everyone series, a commentary on the New Testament, completed in 2011. Wright received DPhil and DD degrees from Oxford and taught New Testament studies for twenty years at Cambridge, McGill, and Oxford Universities.

"The biblical picture of man and woman together in marriage is not something about which we can say, 'Oh well, they had some funny ideas back then. We know better now.' The biblical view of marriage is part of the larger whole of new creation, and it symbolizes and points to that divine plan."

Jacqueline C. Rivers, PhD, the director of the Seymour Institute for Black Church and Policy Studies, earned her doctorate in African-American Studies and Sociology at Harvard University. She is a doctoral fellow in the Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality & Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. She was the founder and executive director of MathPower, a leading community-based nonprofit in Boston for mathematics education reform in urban schools. From 2001 to 2004 she served as executive director for the National TenPoint Leadership Foundation.

"God has called us, the church, to a sacred duty to defend the innocents and the disadvantaged, the children and the poor.… We in the black church and all people of faith must exemplify strong, stable marriages founded on God's principle of holy matrimony between one man and one woman. And we must promote the same among the faithful. As we are true to this calling, God will move."