Do Not Judge Anyone: Desert Wisdom for a Polarized World (Paperback or Softback)

2026 Association of Catholic Publishers First Place Award in Spirituality

2026 Catholic Media Association First Place Award, Adult Spiritual Development

2026 Catholic Media Association Third Place Award, Religion in the Public Square

A monastic approach to everyday living that applies Jesus’s teaching of radical non-judgement as a balm for the polarized environment commonly found in the Church and the world today.  
 
Too often Christianity has been hijacked by the superego and the good news of grace has been compromised by fear and the rationalization of violence. In “Do Not Judge Anyone” Cistercian monk Isaac Slater reflects on the desert fathers’ teachings and practice of not judging with a focus on contemporary life. Interweaving sources from East and West, ancient and modern, Slater finds profound points of contact between the first monks and figures like Dostoevsky and Simone Weil, and in the teaching and witness of Pope Francis. “Do Not Judge Anyone” offers a radical, refreshing, and deeply hopeful vision of the gospel for the twenty-first century. 
 
Following closely Jesus’s injunction to “Stop judging!” the first Christian monks strongly emphasized the practice of not judging others as central to the gospel ethos. Through captivating and sometimes enigmatic sayings and stories of the desert fathers, Slater shares a monastic approach to everyday living that applies Jesus’s teaching of radical non-judgement as a balm for the polarized environment commonly found in the Church and the world today.

Isaac Slater, OCSO, a monk of the Abbey of the Genesee, received a licentiate in historical theology from The Catholic University of America. His articles have appeared in journals including Literature and Theology, Cîteaux, and Cistercian Studies Quarterly. He has published two collections of poems, Surpassing Pleasure (Porcupine's Quill, 2011) and Lean (Grey Borders, 2016), along with a co-translation of poems by Hafiz of Shiraz, The Tangled Braid (Fons Vitae, 2010).