Praise for "Saints As They Really Are"

Now Featured at the Patheos Book Club
Saints As They Really Are
Voices of Holiness in Our Time
By Michael Plekon

Praise for the Book

"This is the third in a progression of books by Michael Plekon that have served to expand our understanding of saints and holiness. In this new book, he has taken yet a further step in relating holiness to ordinary or everyday life by showing the contours of grace, or the harmonics of holiness, revealed in the Christian journey of a number of contemporary Christian memoirists. He shows how the gospel story of death-resurrection is written in the journey of ordinary Christians."
—Robert Ellsberg, author of All Saints

"In this profoundly engaging and moving book, Michael Plekon looks at a range of contemporary writers who have charted their own paths in 'holy living' in the context of a fast-changing church and world. He introduces us to the three-dimensional reality of some of those who have explored God's ways with us in recent decades and distills a great deal of significant theological and spiritual wisdom. And, above all, he boldly argues that what he has been describing is seriously good news about the future of Christian discipleship in the supposedly secular North Atlantic world. This is a book to unsettle us and inspire us: that is, it is a Christian book."
—Archbishop Rowan Williams

"Actual saints, Michael Plekon reminds us, don't come with ready-made halos. They struggle and fail just as we do, endure bitter disappointments, and are at times nailed to the cross by the church itself. One of Plekon's main themes is the problem of dysfunctionality in religious institutions. Too often those entrusted to lead 'poison our hunger for God, discourage our desire to serve God and the neighbor, even disorient our vision of human relationships.' Even so, saints--few of them formally canonized--continue to arise, partly thanks to the church, partly despite it. Plekon's book challenges the reader's very idea of sanctity."
—Jim Forest, author of All is Grace: A Biography of Dorothy Day