John Coverdale’s Uncommon Faith: The Early Years of Opus Dei (1928-1943) highlights Escrivá’s efforts to spread the message of lay holiness to the poor and the wealthy, to industrial workers and university students — even amid the terror and uncertainty of the Spanish Civil War.
Coverdale explains how Josemaría Escrivá overcame substantial obstacles in his mission to spread a message of lay holiness that anticipated Vatican II's teachings by thirty years. The author puts the events in the life of Opus Dei in their broader religious, social, political and economic context. He devotes entire chapters not only to the Civil War but also to the events that led up to it and followed it. Sixteen pages of photographs, most of which were previously unpublished, complement the narrative.
Coverdale has a Ph.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School. He is a former clerk for Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and is now a Professor of Law at Seton Hall University. He is the author of The Basque Phase of Spain’s First Carlist War (1833-1835) (Princeton University Press) and Italian Intervention in the Spanish Civil War (Princeton University Press). He worked with Blessed Josemaría in Rome from 1961 to 1968.
The book is published by Scepter Publishers in New York (link at right).
