In the Company of the Poor: Conversations with Dr. Paul Farmer and Fr. Gustavo Gutiérrez

Farmer, a co-founder of the international nonprofit health care provider Partners in Health, may be one of the world’s best-known physicians. Gutiérrez, Peruvian priest, theologian, and author, is not a household name though well-known in theological circles as an exponent of liberation theology. What the two men share is delightful mutual regard, profound “moral imagination,” and decades living among those locked outside the gates of the global economy. Editors Griffin and Block draw readers into a conversation between two extraordinary men with uncommon dedication to serving the world’s poor. For Farmer, Gutiérrez’s seminal 1971 work, A Theology of Liberation, transformed the doctor’s passion for public health into a mission to address poverty as “structured evil.” For Gutiérrez, Farmer’s medical clinics in Haiti, Peru, Rwanda, and elsewhere embody the stubborn, consistent love that undergirds a Christian theology. With the proportion of Americans living in poverty either increasing or flatlining for 11 of the last 12 years, this timely dialogue provides, as Gutiérrez says, a desperately needed “hermeneutic of hope.” (Nov.)