A More Perfect Union: A New Vision for Building the Beloved Community
America is at a pivotal crossroads. The soul of our nation is at stake and in peril. A new public narrative is needed to unite Americans around common values and to counter the increasing discord and acrimony in our politics and culture. The process of healing and creating a more perfect union in our nation must start now. The moral vision of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Beloved Community, which animated and galvanized the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, provides a hopeful way forward.
In A More Perfect Union, Adam Russell Taylor, president of Sojourners, reimagines a contemporary version of the Beloved Community that will inspire and unite Americans across generations, geographic and class divides, racial and gender differences, faith traditions, and ideological leanings. In the Beloved Community, neither privilege nor punishment is tied to race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or economic status, and everyone is able to realize their full potential and thrive. Building the Beloved Community requires living out a series of commitments, such as true equality, radical welcome, transformational interdependence, E Pluribus Unum (""out of many, one""), environmental stewardship, nonviolence, and economic equity. By building the Beloved Community we unify the country around a shared moral vision that transcends ideology and partisanship, tapping into our most sacred civic and religious values, enabling our nation to live up to its best ideals and realize a more perfect union.
Earn by promoting books
Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program.
Become an affiliate
Rev. Adam Russell Taylor is president of Sojourners, an ecumenical Christian organization that works to advance justice and peace. He previously led the Faith Initiative at the World Bank Group, served as Vice President of Advocacy at World Vision U.S., was cofounder and executive director of Global Justice, and was selected as a White House Fellow under the Obama administration. A graduate of the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, and the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology, Taylor is ordained in the American Baptist Church and the Progressive National Baptist Convention and serves at the Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia.
"America stands on a knife's edge. If we are to survive this moment, with its pitfalls and perils, we have to figure out how to be together differently. Rev. Adam Russell Taylor offers a path forward to making real the Beloved Community--a new consensus--for our time. Together, let us get about the hard work of building a new America." --Eddie S. Glaude Jr., author of Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own
"When we relaunched the Poor People's Campaign in 2018, we stood on the National Mall and said this movement must be a national call for moral revival. This book explores the rich moral vision of Beloved Community. Read it and join the long struggle for a more perfect union in this land." --Bishop William Barber II, president of Repairers of the Breach and author of We Are Called to Be a Movement
"In a toxic world filled with bold dreamers, Adam Russell Taylor offers affirmation of dreams past and present, and accompaniment into what can be a world that sustains us in Beloved Community." --Rev. Traci Blackmon, Associate General Minister, United Church of Christ
"An old and deep vision that needs to be rediscovered to make our union more perfect. Adam Russell Taylor is one of the leaders who will help us restore and rekindle it. This essential book reframes and renews the vision." --Jim Wallis, founder and ambassador of Sojourners, and New York Times bestselling author
"There are books that are worth reading, and then there are books like this one that desperately need to be read, and by as many people as possible." --Rev. Michael B. Curry, presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church and author of Love Is the Way and The Power of Love
"This book is a powerful and desperately needed message for our nation. At a time when the United States is anything but united, Adam Russell Taylor offers a sober diagnosis and a compelling prescription for a way forward by envisioning the Beloved Community in which all people can flourish." --Richard Stearns, president emeritus of World Vision US and author of The Hole in Our Gospel and Lead Like It Matters to God
"An urgent and eloquent volume. Adam Russell Taylor invokes history, theology, and organizing experience to make clear that the idea guiding the witness of Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis should be our North Star in leading toward redemption, renewal, and social reconstruction." --E. J. Dionne Jr., author of Our Divided Political Heart and Code Red
"With a deep commitment to reimagining an America where all can breathe free, Adam Russell Taylor brings light to powerful traditions often made invisible by a nation at times afraid of the music and stories birthed by people who sing the blues and simultaneously preach the gospel. A More Perfect Union is a call to fight for a nation that is not yet but will be if we listen to this prophet in our midst." --Otis Moss III, senior pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Illinois
"Adam Russell Taylor offers a relevant, practical, and contemporary strategy for realizing the dream and vision that counter the polarizing politics of our day. Moving from a truthful diagnosis of our nation's mistruths and polarizing toxicity into the building blocks of a reenvisioned Beloved Community, Taylor leaves no stone unturned and no lie unaddressed. A must-read for all who are fatigued by the divisions and injustices that bombard us daily and are losing hope of a way forward into a more just and inclusive nation." --Howard-John Wesley, senior pastor at Alfred St. Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia
