Happiness, Health, and Beauty

What are human beings created for? How can we experience the well-being made possible in Christ? What does it mean to love God and our neighbor wholly? These questions go to the heart of what it means to live the Christian life. Happiness, Health, and Beauty explores these questions by putting Wesleyan doctrine in conversation with voices from the wider Christian tradition: theologians, philosophers, social critics, scientists, and poets. The guiding themes for this inquiry into the nature of the Christian life are happiness--how we flourish together in the goodness of God; health--the intrinsic connection between bread and bodies in the Eucharist; and beauty--the disposition to benevolence that is the hallmark of our being fully human.

""As a chaplain on a college campus I regularly talk to students who say, 'All I really want in life is to be happy.' Here is a book that resurrects language of happiness, health, and beauty from the superficiality of the everyday to a flourishing vision of human life, one that will comfort and inspire young and old alike. Blessed are they who read it.""
--Craig T. Kocher, University Chaplain, University of Richmond, Richmond, VA

""Weaving together Scripture and tradition, Debra Dean Murphy wisely calls us into community where we hear the voice of Jesus describing the blessed life, and partake of his meal in the sacrament. This deep scriptural reflection is in dialogue with a sustained immersion in the Wesleyan tradition and a compelling cultural criticism. This work leads us to desire a happier, holier, and more beautiful life.""
--Ken Carter, resident Bishop, The United Methodist Church, Lakeland, FL

""Church pastors and educators looking for a challenging discipleship study will find Debra Dean Murphy's fresh treatise on the Beatitudes full of conversation starters! Exploring the Wesleyan doctrine of the nature of Christian life, she uses happiness, health, and beauty as central concepts for shaping ordinary Christian living. Drawing upon a breadth of Christian history and writers, she courageously embraces these topics that twenty-first-century church life avoids as too countercultural. This theological reflection gives bold insight into the ecumenical church living as whole, healthy, loving communities as the body of Christ.""
--Sara Webb Phillips, pastor, North Springs United Methodist Church, Sandy Springs, GA


Debra Dean Murphy is assistant professor of religious studies at West Virginia Wesleyan College. She is the author of Teaching That Transforms: Worship as the Heart of Christian Education.