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Wrestling with God

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Religion in America? There’s a Whole Lot of Wrestling Going On

Religion in America? There’s a Whole Lot of Wrestling Going On

Last updated on: July 22, 2015 at 1:20 pm by Barbara Falconer Newhall

Religion in America? There’s a Whole Lot of Wrestling Going On 2015-07-22T13:20:04-08:00 Barbara Falconer Newhall

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Don Lattin. Photo by Deanne Fitzmaurice

Apparently I’m not the only one wrestling with God. In his foreword to my new book, Wrestling with God: Stories of Doubt and Faith, veteran religion reporter Don Lattin asserts that Americans everywhere are doing some wrestling with the divine.

Don writes, “If you believe what you see on TV or the World Wide Web, modern civilization is under attack by forces of narrow-minded, intolerant religious fundamentalists—all the way from Fallujah to Florida. The real story, at least in the United States, is less alarming and more interesting. We are not really falling into fundamentalism, nor are we finally coming to our senses and embracing a new atheism.

“We are, in fact, wrestling with God.”

Don goes on to describe how Americans are struggling with traditional ideas about God and religion – while at the same time opening themselves up to new ways of experiencing the spiritual. For example:

A recent Pew study found that 70 percent of people affiliated with a religion agreed with the statement that “many religions can lead to eternal life.”

A Gallup poll found that one third of Americans now say that they are “spiritual but not religious.”

In the 1950s – when Don and I were growing up – only one in 25 Americans reported leaving the religion or the denomination of their childhood. A few decades later, that percentage had shifted radically: one of every three Americans had turned to a different religion or denomination.

Don says lots of nice things about Wrestling with God in his foreword, but I’m most flattered by his assessment that I managed to avoid snarkiness.

I agree with Don that, “true believers—whether they are in the ‘New Age,’ evangelical Christian, or Islamist movements—are easy to parody, but we do so at the risk of our own understanding.”

We also do it at the risk of deepening the already perilous divides that exist between the “uses” and the “thems.”

Don Lattin is a wonderful writer, by the way. For years he held down the religion beat at the San Francisco Chronicle. And over the years he’s applied his reporting skills and intuitive understanding of the American religious landscape to a number of books, including:

The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America

Distilled Spirits: Getting High, Then Sober, with a Famous Writer, a Forgotten Philosopher, and a Hopeless Drunk.

Check him out.

Barbara riffs on life, family, books, writing, and her rocky spiritual journey at BarbaraFalconerNewhall.com, . More about another writer you might enjoy at “Huston Smith — Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian.” Barbara’s interfaith book from Patheos Press is Wrestling with God: Stories of Doubt and Faith.

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american religious landscape

belief and doubt

don lattin

fundamentalism in america

religion in america

wrestling with god

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