God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time [Paperback]

Desmond Tutu (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 26, 2005

Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu has long been admired throughout the world for the heroism and grace he exhibited while encouraging countless South Africans in their struggle for human rights. In God Has a Dream, his most soul-searching book, he shares the spiritual message that guided him through those troubled times. Drawing on personal and historical examples, Archbishop Tutu reaches out to readers of all religious backgrounds, showing how individual and global suffering can be transformed into joy and redemption. With his characteristic humor, Tutu offers an extremely personal and liberating message. He helps us to “see with the eyes of the heart” and to cultivate the qualities of love, forgiveness, humility, generosity, and courage that we need to change ourselves and our world.

Echoing the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., he writes, “God says to you, ‘I have a dream. Please help me to realize it. It is a dream of a world whose ugliness and squalor and poverty, its war and hostility, its greed and harsh competitiveness, its alienation and disharmony are changed into their glorious counterparts. When there will be more laughter, joy, and peace, where there will be justice and goodness and compassion and love and caring and sharing. I have a dream that my children will know that they are members of one family, the human family, God’s family, my family.’”

Addressing the timeless and universal concerns all people share, God Has a Dream envisions a world transformed through hope and compassion, humility and kindness, understanding and forgiveness.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Reading this book is like having a long, and somewhat homiletical, afternoon tea with former Archbishop of Cape Town and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Tutu. Four years after No Future Without Forgiveness, Tutu's reflection on his role as Chairman of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, comes this deeply personal book that Tutu calls "a cumulative expression of my life's work." Each chapter begins "Dear Child of God," and goes on to reflect on vulnerability, transfiguration and the human condition with winding anecdotes from Tutu's personal and public life, stories he delivers with his trademark humor and a deceptive simplicity. For example, when Tutu says we are all one family, what emerges is not some churchy optimism, but a highly developed theology of relationship, what Tutu has earlier called ubuntu ("a person is a person through other people"), with political as well as interpersonal implications. This book is highly readable, perhaps because, like other Tutu books, it is culled in large part from lectures and sermons delivered in Tutu's very public life. That this book aims for more than an afternoon tea becomes clear at its close: we are God's partners, Tutu exhorts. We are humanized or dehumanized in and through our actions toward others. Tutu grounds this appeal most concretely, ending with a list of Web sites from organizations that need more partners for their outreach.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Admired throughout the world for grace, generosity of spirit, honesty, and humility, Archbishop Tutu has witnessed much evil, particularly in his native South Africa, and has been threatened with death. He has also seen much good, and here he emphasizes that. Many find his dream that the world's people will realize they are all members of one family--God's family--rather utopian, but he heartily disagrees. He believes in the genuine possibility of his dream, and he uses the Feast of the Transfiguration to express the goodness--the power of God's transformation--that undergirds the world and that has already made the cross, once an instrument of death, the source, for Christians, of eternal life. No one is beyond God's love and grace, the archbishop assures. He also discusses the nature of evil and goodness (one cannot exist without the other), free will, moral responsibility, individualism, capitalist culture, sexism, racism, forgiveness, suffering, and mortality. Goodness will prevail, he believes, and his small, inspiring, empowering book will make others believe that, too. June Sawyers
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Image (April 26, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385483716
• ISBN-13: 978-0385483711
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.4 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #84,107 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Relevant and valuable, March 23, 2004

By 

S. R. Gelman (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time (Hardcover)

It is nothing short of extraordinary that Nobel Peace Prize-winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu has managed to pack so much genuine spirituality, empathy, wisdom, humor and pragmatic advice into such a small, readable volume. His words just resonate, penetrating gently to the core, and his style is so friendly and self revealing, it feels like you are sitting around with a close friend, who happens to be exceptionally wise. There were many passages that were so powerful, so simply true, I had to stop reading and just take them in. He possess a remarkable perspective -- simultaneously visionary and practical, sweeping and intimate -- of the world and of humanity. I believe this book will speak to people of every religion, nationality, race and sexual orientation. This is a great gift from one of the world's greatest and most humble souls. In my view it is, perhaps, the most valuable and relevant spiritual book of our time.

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Beacon of Light and Hope for Humanity. 10 Stars!, April 13, 2004

By 

Barbara Rose (BornToInspire.com) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time (Hardcover)

Nobel Peace Prize recipient Archbishop Desmond Tutu brings humanity the words and path to take into our hearts for inner peace, and peace on Earth.
His breathtaking messages help to break down the walls in order to unify us all, as one race - humanity.

We are all One, and for humanity to "see through the eyes of the heart" is my dream, your dream, and God's dream for us all.

Take this Divine gift of wisdom into your heart, and BE a living example of living with compassion, understanding, generosity of spirit, strength and integrity in the face of adversity that this breathtaking book paves with golden insight.

Desmond Tutu has brought us all a poignant, moving, and extraordinary message. If only our political parties would read this, we would all unite for the common good of all. There is no bias or religious dogma in this book, it is for all of humanity, and is needed now more than ever.

This profound book truly demands 10 Stars. Highly Recommended!

Barbara Rose, Ph.D. author of Know Yourself: A Woman's Guide to Wholeness, Radiance & Supreme Confidence and Stop Being the String Along: A Relationship Guide to Being THE ONE

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Breath Of Hope, May 26, 2004

By 

Barbara G. Mcgarey (Duncan, OK United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time (Hardcover)

I believe what Jimmy Carter wrote on the inside cover, "that this book could change history." Remember the first picture of the earth from space? This book is a visionary view of the earth from the heart of a truly heroic insightful soul. Do not let the number of the pages fool you into thinking it is a quick read...it is rather to be savored and pondered. You will want to read it out loud to be sure others hear these words.
This writing brings perspective in a world that currently seems off center. Balance is what we need most as humankind faces all the days ahead. It will make you smile, laugh, sigh and perhaps cry, but you will be the richer for it all.