Happy Are They: Living the Beatitudes in America

Christian Century, July 30, 1997 by Gary L. Phillips

How do we achieve happiness? Jim Langford provides a straightforward answer: we become happy by giving ourselves to others. He provides examples of 12 people who are doing this. Langford, director of the University of Notre Dame Press and assistant professor in the university's arts and letters division, is cofounder with his wife Jill of There Are Children Here, a program serving needy children in Lakeville, Indiana.

Using the Beatitudes as a framework, the book examines the teaching of Jesus that we live most fully by investing ourselves in others. The return on the investment is the happiness of the giver and the increased well-being of the receiver.

The book profiles people like Lois Mason of the Cornerstone Academy of Excellence, who tries to deliver very young mothers and their babies from their lives of pain to redemptive living. Each of the figures Langford describes exemplifies one of the Beatitudes. Together these folk work to resolve conflict and decrease violence, promote just business practices, aid those trapped in poverty, provide health care to the indigent and shelter to families in crisis, and organize communities to help themselves.

Despite these inspiring profiles, the book's thesis is not entirely convincing. Does happiness so reliably and easily result from service to others? And should we expect it as a reward for doing good? It would be more accurate to say that we can find meaning, purpose and fulfillment in living out the Beatitudes, rather than that happiness will necessarily follow.

I also question Langford's assertion that millions of people are living the kinds of lives described in the book, and that their behavior is ushering in a new age -- that they are "heralds of the coming of the kingdom." but despite the book's exaggerated claims, it presents lives of real worth and invites us to emulate them.