In the middle of the turbulent 1960s Malcolm Boyd's Are You Running With Me, Jesus? appeared on the scene and broke the mold from which devotional texts had previously been made. Boyd's prayers engaged traditional Christian themes with a decidedly contemporary voice-honest, direct, insightful-while at the same time taking on issues of everyday concern: personal freedom, racial justice, sexuality. Billed by its original publisher as a collection of "prayers for all of us today who are finding it harder and harder to pray," this landmark book has influenced generations of Christians and seekers. This fortieth anniversary edition promises to celebrate its impact and make it available to further generations.
Malcolm Boyd was ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1955 after a successful career in advertising and television. Time Magazine dubbed him "the coffeehouse priest" in the sixties when he read his prayers accompanied by some of America's best-known musicians. Boyd has long served the cause of civil rights, commencing with a Freedom Ride in l96l. He has served parishes and college chaplaincies in Indianapolis, Colorado, Detroit, Washington D.C., and Santa Monica, Calif. He currently resides in Los Angeles with his life-partner of 2l years, author, editor, and therapist Mark Thompson. The author of numerous books, Boyd is now poet/writer-in-residence at the Cathedral Center of St. Paul in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.
Boyd's prayers are in a conversational tone, centered upon Jesus Christ as a compassionate Savior to whom one can pray about anything, lofty or trivial. A true devotional classic, highly recommended for all Christians. The Bookwatch At once informal and literate, these prayers are also deeply personal... Their eloquence comes from the personal struggle they contain-a struggle to believe, to keep going, a spiritual contest that is agonized, courageous and not always won... A very moving book. -- Eliot Fremont-Smith The New York Times Malcolm Boyd has written a book which captures the spirit of our age and speaks to our times. St. Louis Post-Dispatch Boyd is a prophet for our times. All that is required of the reader is the ability to read-and the rudiments of a conscience. The Christian Century The prayers are very personal, very modern, sometimes poetic. They talk about sex and the bomb and civil rights and the movies and all the things that bug Malcolm Boyd and the alienated generation that has adopted him as its spokesman. The Review of Higher Education Malcolm Boyd really can write a prayer-he is to prayer what Shakespeare is to the sonnet. -- Frank Deford This is prayer in the raw, with the last varnish gone-human life, in all its warmth and lovelessness, laid bare before God. -- Bishop John A. T. Robinson, Author of Honest to God
