Active subcategories in religion have always mirrored contemporary concerns in ways that are both reflective and predictive. The past few years have brought periodic rumblings under certain topics, and four of these faultlines promise to produce full-blown quakes -- or at least emphatic tremors -- in the next few years.
Books on Life's End Multiply
Moving into the new millennium, the demographic realities of an aging population offer every indication that the subcategory of books about death and dying, grief and mourning -- many, not surprisingly, from a religious point of view or with a spiritual bent -- will continue to grow, carried along by a strong current of reader interest.
Since Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's groundbreaking On Death and Dying, published in 1969, the number of books on the topic for the general trade has ebbed and flowed. Tuesdays with Morrie (Doubleday, 1997), Mitch Albom's elegant elegy for his teacher, has been parked on bestseller lists for two years, with the latest group of such books following in its wake. Like Albom, many of these writers study life's lessons by focusing on the final test: death.
Anita Diamant, author of Saying Kaddish: How to Comfort the Dying, Bury the Dead and Mourn as a Jew (Schocken, cloth 1998, paper 1999), says, "We boomers are very good at talking about what's going on in our lives." Diamant, who is 48, lost her father four years before she wrote the book. She pinpoints the factors she sees fueling the current death-and-mourning books boomlet: educated middle-aged adults have the habit of acquiring information by reading, and many in this demographic group may not have been schooled in the rituals religion and culture provide for death and dying. Diamant sees a need for "remedial education," especially for American Jews who may not have observed or even learned their own traditions.
Nonobservant Jews are not the only ones who have a need for such remedial education, according to bereavement educator and author Alan Wolfelt. "We live in the world's first death-free generation," explains Wolfelt, founder and director of the Colorado-based Center for Loss and Life Transition. "We haven't had a lot of experience with death." The clinical psychologist writes books -- for adults, for and about children and for professionals in the field -- which are published by Companion Press, the publishing arm of his facility with trade distribution handled by Book World. Wolfert cautions against reducing life's final passage to some 10-minute-manageable event. "It's a journey we don't need to fully understand," says the author, whose newest work, Creating Meaningful Funeral Ceremonies -- A Guide for Families, was released in October. "We can't intellectualize a spiritual journey."
Not intellectualizing is a theme strongly sounded by author N. Michael Murphy. His new The Wisdom of Dying: Practices for Living (Element Books, Sept.) attempts to restore soul into the process of dying. Not surprisingly, the book's foreword is written by Thomas Moore (Care of the Soul, HarperCollins, 1992). "If we stuff souls into soulless hospitals, it's a disaster," says Murphy, an English-born family-practice doctor who founded a pioneering hospice in 1979 in Albany, N.Y. Murphy says that intimate caring relationships are missing from the contemporary medical model of death. Death's real lesson, and not coincidentally the book's subtitle, is how to live, a theme resonating throughout current books on the topic. "Dying is a great wake-up call: What the hell is the meaning of life? What are you doing? If you stay with that, and take the lessons from that," Murphy tells PW, "you really can change your life."
Joyce Rupp, a Catholic author of nine books, several of which deal with grief and loss, is also aware of the heightened current focus on the topic. "It is a wave," she agrees. "I think people are going deeper." Rupp, who has counseled and prayed with the dying and their families in hospices, also notices that among the new wave are many little books stemming from an author's personal experience with the death of a loved one. Short books suit the purpose of comforting a mourner especially well. "[People in grief] can't use a big book very well," Rupp explains. She wrote prayers and co-author Joyce Hutchison wrote stories in May I Walk You Home? Courage and Comfort for Caregivers of the Very Ill, a 160-page spring 1999 release from Ave Maria Press.
Next year, the wave is likely to swell. Television journalist and cultural seer Bill Moyers is now at work on On Our Own Terms: Moyers on Dying in America, a four-part PBS series scheduled to air in fall 2000. The series aims ambitiously at "beginning a national conversation" on end-of-life care, a conversation that has already begun through a newsletter and Web site (www.thirteen. org/onourownterms).
-- Marcia Z. Nelson
Buddhism's Appeal
Keeps Growing
With two works by the Dalai Lama solidly ensconced on the bestseller lists, Buddhism is currently hot for curious Americans. Yet this 2600-year-old religion is hardly an overnight sensation, nor is the publishing of books about Buddhism anything new. Three veterans in the field -- themselves surprised and grateful that an ancient traditionis now attracting so many readers -- speculate about what the near future holds for publishing about Buddhism.
Amy Hertz, executive editor at Putnam's Riverhead imprint, edited both The Art of Happinessand Ethics for the New Millennium, the Dalai Lama's bestselling titles. Hertz tells PW that while the success of the books d sn't surprise her, the scale d s. She herself has been wondering what's next. "I don't have an answer yet, but I just keep asking the question," says Hertz, who's been acquiring and editing books about Buddhism for almost a decade. She thinks Buddhism is solidly in the culture and is now beginning to evolve a distinctive American shape.
Arnold Kotler, editor-in-chief and founder of Berkeley-based Parallax Press, agrees emphatically that Buddhism has taken root in American soil and, historically adaptable as ever, is assuming an indigenous form here. "What we do is different than what Buddhists in Asia do," says Kotler, who founded Parallax in 1985. "The things that move our hearts are different." So books about Buddhist ideas and practices -- living and, literally, breathing the teachings -- are likely to keep coming as Americans continue their spiritual explorations and seek ways to apply the wisdom. "Books are a very important dharma [teaching] door," notes Kotler. Publishing companies like his have played a key role in the dissemination of the religion. Parallax's books have opened the door for Americans to discover Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese monk with more than 35 books and a Nobel Peace Prize nomination among his credentials.
Samuel Bercholz's name is also high on the short list of people who have helped Buddhism take root in America and in American publishing. Shambhala Publications began as a modest bookstore in San Francisco in the late 1960s. Now the Boston-based house produces 80-plus titles a year, a quarter of them Buddhist-oriented. Bercholz, chairman and editor-in-chief at Shambhala, had simple reasons for starting what may be the premier firm in Buddhist publishing in the West. He wanted to read Tibetan Buddhist classics in English.
So much of Buddhism has arrived in the West that a number of countries outside of Asia, America among them, now have their own contemporary Buddhist teachers writing commentaries and texts. Bercholz points to his house's topselling author, Pema Chodron, a native New Yorker whose When Things Fall Apart has sold more than 150,000 copies in hardcover.
Demographics also support the continuing strength in Buddhist publishing. Aging baby boomers -- a number of whom have always been interested in Buddhist thought -- are facing the recognition of their mortality, which provides a compelling reason to seek Buddhist wisdom. "Buddhism has a very good way of dealing with death," says Bercholz. "Sickness and old age are what Buddhism deals with best."
Buddhism also has a good way of dealing with its present popularity, Bercholz adds wryly. "One of the important teachings of Buddhism is impermanence," he notes, "and being in vogue is totally impermanent." -- Marcia Z. Nelson
Gay Believers:
Outcasts No More?
Authors and observers agree that the gay and lesbian community, after years of shunning anything spiritual, is seeking and finding a sense of the transcendent. As these seekers adjust to a new spiritual life, and some traditional religious institutions learn to be more comfortable and accepting of them, publishers are offering titles that explore the past, present and future of gay and lesbian spirituality, and help make room in the church and synagogue for this once-excluded group.
In the recent Coming Out Spiritually: The Next Step (Tarcher), Christian de la Huerta explores the historic role of homosexuals in various religions, finding that, despite the condemnation of today's conservatives, homosexuals in the past were far from invisible. De la Huerta, founder of Q-Spirit, an international organization of gay and lesbian spirituality, writes, "An analysis of historical research yields clear indication that throughout many epochs and widespread across different cultures, hom rotically inclined and gender-variant individuals have directly fulfilled spiritual functions." Now, de la Huerta tells PW, they are "the last group that it is in many cases socially and religiously acceptable to oppress." On the other hand, he notes, "there's definitely a spiritual awakening and spiritual renewal going on in the gay and lesbian community. There's so much hunger and thirst for it."
Taking another historic -- yet deeply personal -- look at homosexuality and religion is Gad Beck, author of An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin (Univ. of Wisconsin Press, Oct.). Born to an interfaith couple, Beck, who until his recent retirement was director of the Jewish Adult Education Center in Berlin, discusses the near-simultaneous embrace of both his Jewish and his gay identities in the most unlikely of settings: a Nazi Germany that was intent on eliminating both groups. Beck responded by joining a resistance group, becoming an ardent Zionist and living active and fulfilling sexual and spiritual lives despite the horrors of the war. An Underground Life, written with Frank Herbert, was originally published in German, and the English version, translated by Allison Brown, is part of the press's Living Out series. University of Wisconsin Press acquisitions editor Raphael Kadushin says the book will be of interest to gay people not only because of its historical narrative, but because of Beck's insistence on embracing the various parts of his identity despite the danger.
While the risks are entirely different, there also is undeniable pressure in many of today's religious denominations for gay and lesbian people to deny their sexual identities. Some conservative evangelicals attempt to convince gay Christians to abandon their homosexuality for heterosexuality. The recent Homosexuality and Christian Faith: Questions of Conscience for the Churches (Augsburg Fortress), edited by Walter Wink, takes the church to task for its treatment of gay and lesbian believers. "A lot of us who are not gay haven't done enough to help our brothers and sisters who are," says Wink, a professor at New York's Auburn Theological Seminary. Wink tells PW the book's goal is to help well-meaning Christians understand how they can embrace gay people without being unfaithful to the Bible. As with slavery and the treatment of women, Wink continues, "sometimes we have to reinterpret the Bible in light of new information." In this case, the biblical authors had no concept of a homosexual identity and therefore assumed homosexuality to be a perversion of heterosexuality. Today, Wink says, there is among most people an understanding that gay people cannot simply change their sexual orientation, and Christians must accept and embrace homosexuals as they are. -- Michael Kress
Organized Religion Adapts to New Challenges
It has been a rough century for organized religion. Traditional belief and practice have been under seemingly constant assault since the advent of modernism. More recently, churches, synagogues and mosques have had to contend with a culture hungry for a "spirituality" that excludes formal religious structure -- and with a society changing so rapidly that the printed page sometimes seems obsolete, ideas or institutions only a few years old seem ancient. But America's religious leaders are not conceding or surrendering. They -- or at least those that are managing to thrive -- are adapting to new realities and learning to present timeless messages in fresh ways.
Spiritual Manifestos: Visions for Renewed Religious Life in America from Young Spiritual Leaders of Many Faiths, edited by Niles Goldstein (Jewish Lights/SkyLight Paths, Nov.) records the experiences and advice of 10 writers, representing the gamut of Judeo-Christian denominations, from Orthodox Judaism to National Baptist to Unitarian Universalist. One Zen Buddhist author also is included. Jon Sweeney, associate publisher for SkyLight Paths, says, "Religion today has been destabilized and decentralized, and these authors say that is good."
Many also discuss the call for new rituals -- or for new meanings to be attached to old rituals -- to combat the seeming irrelevance of many traditions. For instance, the Conservative Jewish contributor, Rabbi Sara Paasche-Orlow, calls for "a departure from the male-centered, urban Judaism that has focused on the survival of the Jews" in order to address concerns of "feminism, ritual meaningfulness, environmentalism and social activism." She describes a set of new rituals designed to imbue Judaism with contemporary meaning, such as celebrating the New Moon every month as a feminist festival and enacting rituals for baby girls that will welcome them into the covenant as circumcision d s for boys.
According to Leonard Sweet, dean of the Drew University School of Theology, religion must learn to cope with a whole new world, one in which the old language, metaphors, symbols and priorities have all been replaced. Sweet has authored three books to help Christian leaders and laypeople understand and adapt to this new world. Last spring's Soul Tsunami: Sink or Swim in New Millennium Culture (Zondervan) presents an overview of the issues and challenges; July's Aqua Church: Essential Leadership Arts for Piloting Your Church in Today's Fluid Culture (Group) offers advice to church leaders; and spring 2000's Soul Salsa: The Art of Living Soulfully, or How Not to Become a Pew-Sitting Toad (Zondervan) is geared toward laypeople. Sweet says the basis for understanding the major cultural shift is grasping the idea that our controlling metaphors have changed from those that are land-based to water-based: a landscape has turned into a seascape, as an ever-changing fluid culture has replaced the fixed notions of the past. The key, Sweet says, is not getting swept away by the fluidity of the culture. "Without a fixed point, you'll be lost."
Division and in-fighting have been a part of Christianity since even before Judas betrayed Jesus, and the late 20th century has not avoided this plague. Seeking to help heal wounds, Richard G. Hutcheson Jr. and Peggy L. Shriver have co-authored InterVarsity Press's The Divided Church: Moving Liberals and Conservatives from Diatribe to Dialogue (Oct.). The authors represent different ends of the ideological spectrum: Hutcheson, a former Navy chaplain, is an evangelical; Shriver, assistant general secretary of the National Council of Churches, is a mainline liberal. They wanted to produce a book whose dual authorship would "cause people from both perspectives to consider reading it," according to Shriver. The pair interviewed various church leaders and members to find "ways to cope with differences in order to hold the church together," she adds. Despite the polarizing rhetoric of people at both ends of the ideological spectrum, the authors found that most church members are moderates whose views are much more similar to one another than it might seem at first.
That d s not mean, however, that the church is out of danger. "Division is a very intractable issue," Hutcheson points out. The key, he says, is personal encounters between people who disagree. In spite of the challenges, Hutcheson and his co-author, as well as Sweet and the contributors to Spiritual Manifestos, are optimistic, believing that the future of traditional religion is much more assured than today's casual observer might perceive. -- Michael Kress
