Table of Contents

Preface

ONE: Journeying by Faith

TWO: The Christian Mind

THREE: The Church Year

FOUR: How to Be a Christian

Conclusion

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

About the Author

Jay Parini is a poet, novelist, and biographer who teaches at Middlebury College. His six books of poetry include New and Collected Poems, 1975-2015. He has written eight novels, including Benjamin's Crossing, The Apprentice Lover, The Passages of H.M., and The Last Station, the last made into an Academy Award-nominated film starring Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer. His biographical subjects include John Steinbeck, Robert Frost, William Faulkner, and, most recently, Gore Vidal. His nonfiction works include Jesus- The Human Face of God, Why Poetry Matters, and Promised Land- Thirteen Books That Changed America.

Reviews

“Accessible and engaging, Jay Parini’s The Way of Jesus is a cross between a memoir and a travel diary, except the landscape he is exploring is his own soul. The compelling spiritual narrative that results is informed by insight, personal reflection, and wide reading. In his own words, it is all about resurrection—now.”
—The Right Reverend Robert Atwell, Bishop of Exeter

“For two millennia, the figure of Jesus has haunted the imagination of spiritual seekers around the world, including many great writers, philosophers, and theologians. It might seem there could be nothing fresh to say about him. Yet in each generation, thoughtful observers find new meaning in his life and teachings, as Jay Parini does in this compelling account. A poet as well as a scholar, Parini delves into the history of the faith he espouses and into the mystery at the core of existence. ‘Jesus was first and foremost a teacher,’ he tells us. The same could be said of the man who wrote this lucid, candid, eloquent book.”
—Scott Russell Sanders, author of Earth Works: Selected Essays

“Jay Parini’s The Way of Jesus is at once learned and down to earth; rueful at one moment and joyous at the next. Above all, this is the author’s own story—dispatches from an authentic, ongoing quest for a more vital and spirit-filled life. Its most memorable elements, for me, are its eloquent meditations on the ecclesiastical year and its culmination in an arresting reading of Eliot’s Four Quartets.”
—John Elder, author of Reading the Mountains of Home