For the benefit of the skeptical would-be faithful (dubbed here
"neoagnostics"), journalist Gallagher offers an autobiographical,
selectively bicoastal look at liberal religious experience in
America today. Gallagher (I.D: How Temperament and Experience
Create the Individual, 1996) updates Immanuel Kant's classic
formulation of humanity's three principal questions (What can I
know? What ought I do? What can I hope?) to: What is real? What do
I feel?, What are my choices? The update reflects the influence of
what Gallagher calls millennial religion, by which she means those
experiential, nonjudgmental, pluralistic ways of being religious
that characterize the spiritual life of some, mostly urban,
Americans. ("Millennial" is an unfortunate coinage for this use,
since for traditional Christians it implies apocalypse, while for
religious non-Christians, who measure time otherwise than from
Christ's birth, it has little currency at all.) Casual and breezy
language characterizes much of this self-consciously journalistic
romp between such diverse religious centers as Congregation B'nai
Jeshurun (a popular synagogue in New York City), the Cathedral of
St. John the Divine (also in New York), and the Sonoma Mountain Zen
Center (California). Gallagher's book comprises recountings of
worship, meditation, and study experiences she has had at these and
like religious institutions, as well as interviews with their
respective leaders and flocks. The focus primarily on Judaism,
Christianity, and Zen Buddhism reflects the author's confessed
status as a Catholic-bred, meditation-practicing spouse of a Jewish
man. The casual style breeds some errors, as in the retelling of
the biblical story of the burning bush (which Moses turns toward
initially, not away from, as Gallagher narrates), or the medieval
Jewish reaction to Maimonides (who in his own lifetime never faced
a serious threat of excommunication, as Gallagher implies). But the
author has a good ear for the memorable remark, as of the
contemplative nun who said of her life, it "is sheer faith most of
the time. Very sheer." An occasionally successful attempt to
capture in journalistic prose some varied depths of (post) modern
religious experience. (Kirkus Reviews)
Millions of Americans are finding it more and more difficult to apply the traditional demands of organized religion to their lives, and yet a complete absence of spirituality leaves them uneasy. Working on God is a book for and about such intelligent, independent people, who are seeking to reconcile their spiritual yearnings with their skeptical intellects. Winifred Gallagher, a behavioral-science reporter, began her investigation of religion in our postmodern age with research and interviews and soon discovered a vast, quiet revolution under way among ordinary men and women grappling with the sacred. Both Gallagher's brilliant journalistic inquiry and her very personal journey unfold over time spent in a Zen monastery and a cloistered convent, in small-group discussions and healing rituals, in a Conservative synagogue that shares spaces with a Christian church, and in the birthplace of the New Age. Written with humor, empathy, and a rigorous curiosity, Working on God breaks new ground in depicting the broad-based spiritual movement that is transforming many lives.
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