Faith is a Verb

Faith is a Verb is both an account of the author’s five years of volunteering with Habitat for Humanity, the non-profit home-builder, and a history of the organization, which Goodrich sees as a model institution founded on grassroots, Jeffersonian principles. The reader looks over his shoulder as Goodrich helps restore a burned-out drug den to its Victorian glory in Bridgeport, Connecticut; understands the yawning gap between the rich and poor as he straightens nails with an impoverished teenager in the Dominican Republic; senses the importance of volunteer work as he watches, while laying a stone foundation in Paraguay, the Twin Towers fall on 9/11.

Goodrich traces Habitat’s history back to an unsung American hero, Clarence Jordan, who in the 1940’s founded a Christian community in south Georgia, Koinonia Farm, dedicated to social and economic justice. Millard Fuller, a millionaire businessman, arrived at Koinonia during a spiritual crisis in the early 1970’s, but under Jordan’s guidance realized he was a "money-holic," gave away his forture, and in 1976 founded Habitat for Humanity. Goodrich shows how Fuller's Southern Baptist, Friday-night-revival personality helped turn Habitat into the world’s largest non-governmental home-builder, his inspirational leadership greatly abetted by the support of former president Jimmy Carter. Even Carter couldn't prevent Fuller from being fired by Habitat, however, in early 2005 over allegations of sexual harrassment, a crisis the author describes in a postscript written just as Habitat completed its 200,000th house.