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Edited by Ken Chitwood (Bloomsbury, 2026)

The founder of the largest gang intervention, rehabilitation and prison reentry program in the world is a mystic, a Jesuit priest who does not believe that God has a plan for your life. Having buried 260 young men and women, Father Greg Boyle rejects the idea that it is God’s plan that anyone should die of a gang member’s bullet.

The USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture celebrates the long and productive career of its co-founder Donald E. Miller upon his retirement from the center.

The hero image of religious saints involved in humanitarian work warrants examination. I have come to this conclusion in the process of leading a global project on “spiritual exemplars” at USC’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture.

William James was the inspiration for our project on “spiritual exemplars” at the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture. James, a philosopher and psychologist, believed that one learns more from what he called “religious geniuses” than from surveys of ordinary people.

What has more emotional salience, an abstract moral principle such as love or justice or a good story of someone whose life commitments exemplify these values?

There is a great boom in psychotherapy these days. Especially among a younger generation, people are lonely, anxious about the environment, insecure financially—fearful they will not achieve the same standard as their parents—and burdened with choice, about their gender, vocation and life commitments.

Working with several dozen freelance journalists around the world, my team at USC has identified and profiled 104 “spiritual exemplars” who are engaged in notable humanitarian work inspired by their faith, representing 13 traditions from 42 different countries. 

If being happy were his motivation, Tom’s often grueling life would not be fulfilling. But the joy he derives from doing hard, meaningful work as an expression of his faith fulfills him and touches the lives of those around him.