cover image Congregation: 2the Journey Back to Church

Congregation: 2the Journey Back to Church

Gary Dorsey. Viking Books, $24.95 (400pp) ISBN 978-0-670-83776-2

With some of the verve of the investigative reporter that he is, Dorsey (The Fullness of Wings) began a yearlong, midlife pilgrimage to get to understand the ``scut work of day-to-day religious life.'' His immersion in the Congregational community of First Church in Windsor, Conn., is chronicled with wry observations of parish life, as well as a growing admiration for the variegated spirituality of the small-town congregants. As the liturgical seasons change, Dorsey records his jousts with a charismatic minister, gossip at church suppers, quasi-mystical encounters, even a trip to England in search of the church's pre-Colonial roots--all in a format shaped by inquiry, humor and affection. Still modernly skeptical, he has an epiphany in a personal crisis that threatens his marriage and experiences the network of belief that is church. This modern pilgrimage ends not in conversion but in the satisfaction of the desire to belong. (Apr.)