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Baylor BU English Faculty Publications The Prodigal
  • Publications
    • Literacy in a Long Blues Note
    • Modernity, Community, and Place in Brian Friel's Drama
    • A Fire to Light Our Tongues
    • Hollow Palaces
    • Haunted Property
    • American Literary Cultures
    • Sacred Rhetorical Education in 19th Century America
    • Modernism in the Green
    • A Long, Long Way
    • Hope and Aesthetic Utility in Modernist Literature
    • The Courage to See
    • The Evil Twins of American Television
    • Harvest Bells
    • Letters of a Long Name
    • Constructing Nineteenth-Century Religion
    • Reforming Women
    • Thomas Hoccleve
    • Mark Twain Under Fire
    • Building Natures
    • Understanding Marilynne Robinson
    • Living with the Living Dead
    • The Life Group
    • Then Winter
    • Building Jerusalem
    • The Divine Face in Four Writers
    • Seamus Heaney: An Introduction
    • Imagined Spiritual Communities in Britain's Age of Print
    • Housework and Gender in American Television
    • The Boke of the Cyte of Ladyes
    • Entertaining Judgment
    • Seamus Heaney's Regions
    • Elegy on Kinderklavier
    • Tracing Southern Storytelling in Black and White
    • Mapping Christian Rhetorics
    • The Tulip-Flame
    • The Glyph and the Gramophone
    • The Prodigal
    • Beyond the Pulpit
    • The Reconstruction of Mark Twain
    • Sylvia Plath's Fiction

The Prodigal

A Ragamuffin Story

Brennan Manning and Greg Garrett, Professor of English

From the inspirational author of The Ragamuffin Gospel and the critically acclaimed novelist of Free Bird comes a powerful contemporary retelling of the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

Jack Chisholm is "the people's pastor." He leads a devoted and growing megachurch, has several best-selling books, and a memorable slogan, "We have got to do better." Jack knows how to preach, and he understands how to chastise people into performing. What he doesn't know is anything about grace.

This year, when it comes time for the Christmas sermon, the congregation at Grace Cathedral will look to the pulpit, and Jack will not be there. Of course, they will have seen plenty of him already—on the news.

After an evening of debauchery that leads to an affair with his beautiful assistant, Jack Chisholm finds himself deserted with chilling swiftness. The church elders remove him from his own pulpit. His publisher withholds the royalties from his books. Worst of all, his wife disappears with their eight-year-old daughter.

But just as Jack is hitting bottom, hopeless and penniless, drinking his way to oblivion, who should appear but his long-estranged father, imploring his prodigal son: "Come home."

A true companion piece to The Ragamuffin Gospel, The Prodigal illustrates the power of grace through the story of a broken man who finally saw Jesus not because he preached his greatest sermon or wrote his most powerful book, but because he failed miserably. Jack Chisholm lost everything—his church, his family, his respect, and his old way of believing—but he found grace. It’s the same grace that Brennan Manning devoted his life to sharing: profound in nature and coming from a God who loves us just as we are, and not as we should be.

Zondervan, 2013

ISBN 9780310339007


“A wonderfully written story that is as entertaining as it is thought provoking.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Manning and Garrett do a wonderful job bringing to life the downfalls of a superficial form of contemporary Christianity, while dramatizing struggles readers can easily relate to. This story of love found and grace extended will bring hope to everyone who reads it." —Booklist

English

College of Arts & Sciences

Carroll Science 106

Department of English
One Bear Place, #97404
Waco, TX 76798-7404

(254) 710-1768
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Baylor BU English Faculty Publications The Prodigal
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      • Degree Plan
    • Linguistics
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      • Career Possibilities
      • Courses Offered
      • Degree Plan
      • Resources
    • Professional Writing & Rhetoric
      Back
      • Courses Offered
      • Degree Plan
      • Internships
    • Creative Writing Minor
    • Scholarships
    • Student Awards
      Back
      • Past Winners
  • Graduate
    Back
    • M.A. Policies and Procedures
    • Ph.D. Policies and Procedures
    • Certificate in Literature & Religion
    • English Graduate Student Association (EGSA)
    • Graduate Opportunities
      Back
      • Past Winners
    • Graduate Travel Funding
  • Faculty
    Back
    • Publications
      Back
      • Literacy in a Long Blues Note
      • Modernity, Community, and Place in Brian Friel's Drama
      • A Fire to Light Our Tongues
      • Hollow Palaces
      • Haunted Property
      • American Literary Cultures
      • Sacred Rhetorical Education in 19th Century America
      • Modernism in the Green
      • A Long, Long Way
      • Hope and Aesthetic Utility in Modernist Literature
      • The Courage to See
      • The Evil Twins of American Television
      • Harvest Bells
      • Letters of a Long Name
      • Constructing Nineteenth-Century Religion
      • Reforming Women
      • Thomas Hoccleve
      • Mark Twain Under Fire
      • Building Natures
      • Understanding Marilynne Robinson
      • Living with the Living Dead
      • The Life Group
      • Then Winter
      • Building Jerusalem
      • The Divine Face in Four Writers
      • Seamus Heaney: An Introduction
      • Imagined Spiritual Communities in Britain's Age of Print
      • Housework and Gender in American Television
      • The Boke of the Cyte of Ladyes
      • Entertaining Judgment
      • Seamus Heaney's Regions
      • Elegy on Kinderklavier
      • Tracing Southern Storytelling in Black and White
      • Mapping Christian Rhetorics
      • The Tulip-Flame
      • The Glyph and the Gramophone
      • The Prodigal
      • Beyond the Pulpit
      • The Reconstruction of Mark Twain
      • Sylvia Plath's Fiction
  • Organizations
    Back
    • 19CRS
    • 20CRS
    • House of Poetry
    • Linguistics Club
    • Literary Society
    • MRRS
    • Professional Writing & Rhetoric Organization
    • Sigma Tau Delta
    • The Phoenix Literary Magazine
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