Ragamuffin Gospel

A Ragamuffin Gospel I chose to read A Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning. It is a more open minded book. Manning describes throughout the book that people go about the wrong way to try to earn salvation and God’s grace. Brennan Manning was known for being a priest and an author. Manning was from New York and after high school he joined the US Marines as a sports writer for the US Marines newspaper. After returning he started to study journalism at the University of Missouri but only lasted a semester. In the 1960’s, he joined a religious institute called “Little Brothers of Jesus of Charles De Fouclaud. Throughout the years he traveled to the different institutes around the world working as an assistant working on the properties doing jobs such as fetching water using donkey carriages and being a dishwasher in France. He then went Switzerland where he was imprisoned by choice and then transported to live in a cave for six months, (why it doesn’t really go into further detail). At the beginning of the 1970s, when Manning was in his 40’s, he returned to the United States and began his writing career. During these times were when he realized that he had a drinking problem and started turning his life around for the better. Over the next three or four decades, Manning published over twenty different books, all of which reflect on his views of Christianity, other religions and all the things that come with the daily lives of being a Christian. Ragamuffin Gospel is by far his most well known work. He traveled and preached around the world encouraging people to let God in their hearts and accept the unconditional love of Jesus Christ. On April 12, 2013, Brennan Manning died at the age of 78 after a few years of his declining health. Ragamuffin Gospel to me was a breath of fresh air. So many people now a day’s think in order to receive God’s love you must work for it, when that isn’t necessarily true. Manning used this book to explain to people that Jesus