The Bible is for Living
Focused on Southern California, the goal of Makarios is to encourage ongoing, life-long education by recovering the Bible as the shared language of Christians, a powerful resource for addressing pressing societal and community issues, and indispensable for our collective life.
How does the Bible shape our community’s life to be a source of healing and blessing for our neighbors?
How does the Bible’s wisdom guide us to build the inter-generational peace it envisions, and that we all need in order to live?
Makarios?
A Greek word, pronounced /mak-ar'-ee-os/
The Bible uses the word Makarios to indicate those who are blessed.
At The Makarios Institute, we help people recover the Bible as a means of real blessing.
“Blessed are those whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
and who meditates on his law day and night.
That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.”
Psalm 1
“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.”
Matthew 5
At Makarios we resource leaders to wrestle patiently with the Bible, to know how its wisdom addresses difficult theological issues and guides our communities to become sources of real blessing.
What We Do.
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Christians often read the Bible only sporadically and alone, if at all, and listen to only short bits of it in the liturgy or before a sermon, leaving us with a fragmented understanding of the Bible. As the foundation of what we do, Makarios works to restore our familiarity with Scripture and promote biblical literacy through the Public Reading of Scripture, a practice of gathering regularly with others over food to listen to Scripture at length.
Not only does this practice reclaim a familiarity with the whole of Scripture, but allows the Bible to reweave Christian community as well. As we sit quietly with those who may strongly disagree over interpretations of the Bible, we receive Scripture as our common memory and common language, joining us as descendent’s of Abraham’s promise.
Click here to hear more about Public Reading of Scripture, and feel free to join us in Pasadena, CA. Everyone is welcome!
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With so much information out there and so much noise, Makarios helps facilitate spaces to help the wisdom of books cut through the busyness of life.
From “Just Show Up” Book Clubs (where we listen to books together), to Dialogue Book Panels (where we bring authors to discuss their books with a community), we want to help you successfully wrestle with good books, which includes meeting with people (sometimes the books’ authors) to discuss what you've read.
Çontact us to help you find a reading group, arrange a dialogue with an author, and to keep you reading and discussing good books together.
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Seminary is great, but it isn’t for everyone. Makarios offers a number of short-term classes for you to grow with others in your community in the knowledge of something important to you, especially as it relates to the Bible. We offer classes of different lengths, such as 4-week or 8-week long topical classes.
Makarios’ short-term classes are led by experienced teachers who are skilled at connecting the Bible to life, while also stirring and guiding needed conversation for your community.
Contact us for a menu of Makarios’ offerings, which we customize to meet the pressing concerns of your community.
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You might be ready for a more intensive and sustained learning community that will gather over one year or two years.
The Fellowship is an application only program and provides a stipend for a cohort of fellows to work with the Bible for the needs of their communities. It consist of monthly gatherings of motivated people, weekend retreats, and weaves a space for trust amid difference.
Facilitated by one of our teachers, moving through a curriculum of biblical interpretation, theological pedagogy, and critical issues that animate Jews and Christians here in the Los Angeles area.
Makarios wants to invest in you as a teacher, writer, and communicator in your community. The next application deadline is November 1st, for the 2026 Fellowship year. More details to come soon.
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Makarios Alumni form a web of leaders from different communities who come together to think hard, theologically and biblically, about the issues facing our communities. We feature work from our alumni, and other trusted and diverse thought-partners, writing and creating knowledge to resource community needs.
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There is a chasm between the abstract concepts and helpful theories of academia and the pressing concerns of living communities. Makarios bridges that gap, bringing together writers to publish essays and books that respond to urgent issues of our day.
For a sense of the kinds of writing we find compelling, see the following list of highly recommended essays and books below. These are some of the books and essays we gather reading groups around, some of which also feature in our short-term classes and long-term cohorts:
Christianity Is Lost in the Bible: This Book Is an Intervention, by Tommy Givens with Michael Stone and Barnabas Lin
The Fire Next Time, by James Baldwin
Outline of a Theory of Practice, by Pierre Bourdieu
The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study
Art of the Commonplace, by Wendell Berry
The Body of Faith: God in the People of Israel, by Michael Wyschogrod
Plurality and Ambiguity: Hermeneutics, Religion, Hope, by David Tracy
The Star of Redemption, by Franz Rosenzweig
The Sabbath, by Abraham Joshua Heschel
The Widening of God's Mercy, by Christopher Hays and Richard Hays
Tastes Like War: A Memoir, by Grace Cho
Truth and Method, by Hans-Georg Gadamer
Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture, by Ellen Davis
Debt: The First 5000 Years, by David Graeber
Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire, by William Cavanaugh
The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader
The Selected Works of Audre Lorde
"Thirteen Ways of Seeing Nature in L.A.," by Jenny Price
"Why I Oppose the War in Vietnam," by Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The Body Politics of Eucharist," by Andrea Bieler and Luise Schotroff
"The Politics of Interpretation," by Denise Kimber Buell and Caroline Johnson Hodge