Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship

By Gregory Boyle

Simon & Schuster     2017

210 pages     Spiritual

Father Gregory Boyle is a Jesuit priest and the founder of Homeboy Industries, a nonprofit organization in Los Angeles that works with gang members. It is the largest gang-intervention program in the world. His first book, Tattoos on the Heart, described the development of the organization, and this book, Barking to the Choir, fervently describes what Boyle has learned about faith, compassion, and the enduring power of radical kinship.

The key word to the entire book is “Kinship.” We learn early in the book that we are all kin; that even though our life experiences can be very different, at our core, we are very much the same. He says, “The moment one says, ‘This is what it was like for me’, a rebirth occurs. Locating our wounds leads us to the gracious place of fragility; the contact point with another human being. When we share these shards of excavation with each other, we move into the intimacy of mutual healing. Awe softens us for the tender glance of God, then enables us to glance in just the same way.”

Another important word is humor. Boyle tells story after story of people collapsing in laughter—sharing something silly, something stupid, or something ironic—while at the same time building community, building kinship. I was really struck by the glorious good humor by which Boyle faces the challenges of Homeboy Industries and the people who come to him wanting to make changes in their lives. He helps them facilitate change, but at the same time, he has to manage a very large operation with myriad numbers of volunteers as well as hundreds of participants. He has also had to bury over 200 participants who have died because of gang violence.

One thing he cannot tolerate is judgment. He says, “We must try and learn to drop the burden of our own judgment, reconciling that what the mind wants to separate, the heart should bring together. . . judgment, after all, takes up the room you need for loving.” He has been known to ask volunteers to leave if he sees them being too judgmental or exhibiting too much moral indignation.

Barking to the Choir is a great book for a church book club. It is easy to read, and full of relatable stories, quotable thoughts, and meaningful summaries to keep everyone talking. Additionally, I found that it followed very nicely two other books I have recently read, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas and The Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton.

Here is the website for Homeboy Industries and a link to a delightful article about a speaking engagement of Father Gregory Boyle’s in the Los Angeles Times when Barking to the Choir was released.