Sacred America: The Emerging Spirit of the People

Housden, a British author and leader of spiritually oriented tours, here narrates his personal journey through the religious landscape of the United States. His tour--a clockwise circle from Billings, Mont., to San Francisco--does not claim to be exhaustive. He does not seek out conservative Christians, Mormons or Hasidic Jews (although he does meet a man expelled from the Lubavitcher rabbinate for promoting LSD). Housden's sacred America embraces instead the mystics, seekers and individualists of American religion. Many are like himself: New Age entrepreneurs making a living through inspirational speaking or corporate retreats. Others have started nonprofit organizations to bring prayer to prisons or introduce troubled youths to Nobel Peace Prize laureates, or have founded meditation retreats along the continuum between Thomas Merton and D.T. Suzuki. Still others are ordinary people possessed by a passion for Rumi or a conviction that God is working through them. Housden's account is brisk and readable but short on context and analysis. The distinctive qualities of different confessions blend together, although the reader may not be convinced that Housden has observed a single national ""spirit."" Framed by his very personal response to everything he encounters (at one Midwestern meditation center he weeps for the death of Princess Diana), the book reads like an unedited travel diary of a likable, curious, slightly starry-eyed visitor. (Nov.)