In Profile
-- 3/27/00
Authors talk about their latest books and the inspiration behind them
JIM WALLIS:
An Active Faith
In his 30 years at the forefront of the battle against poverty, preacher/activist Jim Wallis has stood up to America's leaders and demanded the poor be treated with compassion and charity. Crying out for a politics based on faith, his voice has resonated within the Christian community. Editor of Sojourners magazine and the founder of Call to Renewal, a coalition of religious groups engaged in fighting poverty, Wallis's message is heard widely in these prosperous times, a fact he thinks is signaling change in America's cultural environment. He sees that change in the eyes of the students who flock to his lectures, and he hears it in the voices of the policymakers who seek his advice.
There's a hunger for "spiritual renewal of democracy itself," Wallis tells PW, a sense that in spite of a vigorous economy, all is not well. "If democracy is to be renewed in our time, if the poor are to be included in the mainstream of our society and treated more fairly around the world, and if the middle class is to find a purpose deeper than shopping, we will need to change the wind and alter our moral framework," Wallis writes in Faith Works: Lessons from the Life of an Activist Preacher (Random House, Mar.). The book is his prescription for accomplishing that goal. The author of The Soul of Politics : A Practical and Prophetic Vision for Change (New Press, 1994) and Who Speaks for God?: An Alternative to the Religious Right--A New Politics of Compassion, Community, and Civility (Delacorte, 1996), Wallis says he believes "we are on the verge of a new movement" to fight poverty. "Rising inequality in the face of rising prosperity is a religious issue," he asserts. "The poor are being left behind, and the churches are coming together to do something about it."
Part manifesto, part policy proposal and part personal memoir, Faith Works is an attempt to stimulate the growth of that movement. The book is imbued with the main message of Wallis's life and career: involvement in social action will result in personal healing. Citing Isaiah 58:10 ("And if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness and your gloom will become like midday"), Wallis says, "If you're looking for healing, don't spend all your time at Barnes & Noble in the self-help section. Reach out to your brother and sister." Each chapter of Faith Works focuses on crucial lessons such as "Trust Your Questions" and "Listen to Those Closest to the Problem."
Susanna Porter, Wallis's editor at Random House, encouraged him to include a generous sprinkling of personal anecdotes, and she promises that Faith Works will "entertain and amuse, and not just preach." Perhaps the most poignant story opens the book, as Wallis recounts the birth of his niece and the death of his mother--events that took place just minutes apart in the same hospital. Not having a strong religious background herself, Porter says she made sure the book was completely accessible to people with no religious knowledge. First printing is 30,000; a 19-city tour is planned. --Michael Kress
ANDREW GREELEY:
Imaginative Priest
Statues and stained glass. Rosaries and religious medals. The Virgin Mother and votive candles. Beneath all the external paraphernalia that distinguishes Catholics from Protestants lies what Father Andrew M. Greeley terms "the Catholic imagination"--a sense that the objects, events and people of daily life are revelations of God's grace. "When you mention saints and angels and the Mother of Jesus, everyday Catholics know what you're talking about," says Greeley. "We are captured by these images, stories and metaphors early in life and they never let go."
Probably best known for his popular romance and mystery novels, Greeley is wearing his sociologist's cap in his latest book, The Catholic Imagination, to be released in April by the University of California Press. In it, the 72-year-old priest describes the Catholic worldview and explores what makes it distinctive. "The Catholic imagination emphasizes the presence and immanence of God, while an Islamic or Protestant imagination tends to emphasize the absence or transcendence of God," explains Greeley, who is a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago and the University of Arizona, as well as a research associate at the National Opinion Research Center in Chicago.
That imagination is reflected in Catholic art, Greeley notes, and he examines everything from Graham Greene to Bernini to Scorsese to distill seven central themes of Catholic culture, among them sacrament, community and erotic desire. He then analyzes survey data to uncover how these themes have affected Catholics' lived experience. He finds, for example, that Catholics are more likely than Protestants to participate in the fine arts, and the more they attend church, the more likely they are to be art patrons. Greeley would like to see more emphasis on this imaginative side of Catholicism--as opposed to the "rules approach" currently embraced by the institutional Church. "I think Catholicism is, above all, a religion of beauty," he says. "Beauty tries to illumine reality with new insights so you can take them back into the world."
That's what Greeley has tried to do in his 30-plus novels, the most recent of which is Irish Eyes (Forge, Jan.). Often controversial for their sex scenes or critiques of the Catholic hierarchy, Greeley's fictional works are infused with the very Catholic imagination he examines in his new nonfiction book. Also released within the last year is Furthermore! Memories of a Parish Priest (Forge, Dec. ), an update of the autobiography published in 1983. The prolific author says he is working on his next book, another mystery starring Father Blackie Ryan.
University of California Press plans a 5,000 first printing for The Catholic Imagination, with advertising in scholarly and religious publications. Publicity manager Amy Torack believes Greeley's well-known style and candor will also make the book attractive to the general trade. The author will do some select interviews with national media. --Heidi Schlumpf
JOHN SHELBY SPONG:
Still Speaking Out
BishopJohn Shelby Spong--whose name is almost always preceded by the adjective "controversial"--expected his memoir, Here I Stand: My Struggle for a Christianity of Integrity, Love, and Equality (Harper San Francisco, Mar.), to be his last book. But even while on tour for that work, the 68-year-old retired bishop is toting in his briefcase the manuscript for his next book.
If his many critics were hoping that Spong's retirement from the Episcopal Diocese of Newark--and the publication of his life's story--meant one of the country's most outspoken voices for liberal Christianity would finally be silenced, they were wrong. In Here I Stand, Spong reflects on an eventful career in the church, including his crusades against racism, sexism, anti-Semitism and, most recently, discrimination against gays and lesbians. "If your life story is worth writing, it's because you've participated in movements bigger than you are," Spong tells PW. "In a sense, the history of American Christianity is one of ups and downs, and I've kind of lived in all of them. There are some people who think I caused them."
Indeed, Spong is best known for stirring the pot. His earlier books have questioned the literal interpretation of scripture, the virgin birth, Jesus' physical resurrection and traditional Christian sexual ethics. He regularly makes headlines, most recently for his stand on gay rights at the Anglican Church's international Lambeth Conference.
The memoir puts his more recent notoriety in context, with plenty of personal information about the events that shaped his life, including the early death of his alcoholic father, his upbringing in a fundamentalist family and the mental illness and death of his first wife. Here I Stand--which takes its title from the words Martin Luther nailed to the door of the Wittenburg church when he posted the theses that launched a revolution in the Church--includes an appendix with Spong's own "Twelve Theses" from his earlier book, Why Christianity Must Change or Die. That "manifesto" calls for an end to theism, traditional Christology and reward-and-punishment morality.
Spong's alternative vision is more fully explored in his next book, which will be drawn from a series of lectures he is giving this month at Harvard University, where he is now teaching. "I had done more deconstruction than construction. Now I'm trying to do the construction," he says. "It's very hard, because it's very difficult to use words to communicate non-theism." Still, just because Spong now refers to God as "Ground of All Being" it d sn't mean he has lost his faith. "I do believe God is real. And I believe I meet God in a unique way in Jesus of Nazareth," he says. "But I don't believe a God who needs to be protected is much of a God. I think a lot of people believe more in believing in God than they actually believe in God. And I often appear to disturb their belief in believing."
Harper San Francisco is heavily promoting Here I Stand (first printing: 25,000) with national advertising, a 25-city national radio campaign, print features and author appearances in several cities, including Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. --Heidi Schlumpf
JOHN DOMINIC CROSSAN:
Getting a Personal History
Careful readers of John Dominic Crossan's controversial studies of the historical Jesus might notice a trend: in his later scholarly work, the author is more inclined to write about his own background. In The Historical Jesus (1992) Crossan says almost nothing about himself; in Who Killed Jesus? (1995), he's a little more self-revealing; and The Birth of Christianity (1998) is peppered with autobiographical references. Now those who want the full story can pick up Crossan's memoir, A Long Way from Tipperary: What a Former Irish Monk Discovered in His Search for the Truth (Harper San Francisco, Aug.), which follows Crossan from his Irish family home to boarding school, to the monastic order where he spent 19 years, and finally to his career as an academic superstar who has popularized the scholarly quest for the historical Jesus.
Crossan says he wrote the memoir not because "anyone should be interested in me just in myself," but because "I've been speaking about the historical Jesus for a decade, and the questions I get from the audience are not about Jesus, but about me." Scholars, often pressing Crossan about his Irish upbringing, want to know what biases and prejudices color his reconstruction of Jesus' life. "They often say, 'You're from Ireland, perhaps that's why you dislike empires and why you think
Jesus might have disliked empires,' " Crossan tells PW. "So the book is an attempt to look at my own life and see where it has influenced my reconstruction."
Crossan admits that his Irish upbringing shaped his scholarly interests. "I don't think I make Jesus into a peasant resister to Roman oppression simply because I knew about people like that in Ireland--but I do think growing up in the first post-colonial generation in Ireland was part of why I was interested in Jesus. I think that did make me look at someone who was crucified on an imperial cross."
Readers who are simply looking for a good yarn will also enjoy A Long Way from Tipperary, in which Crossan portrays the monastic life as an adventure. He joined a monastic order (the Servites) in 1950, expecting to become a missionary to Africa, but his superiors decided to send Crossan to graduate school instead. "The adventure shifted from monastery and mission to scholarship and biblical studies. I saw scholarship as an adventure, too," Crossan explains. But in 1969, he left his order because he wanted to get married and because he wanted to explore scholarly avenues that might challenge church teachings. "I didn't want to spend the rest of my life fighting with their agenda or looking over my shoulder."
Given the popularity of recent bestselling Irish memoirs, Harper SF, which also has published Crossan's historical work, hopes that readers will find in A Long Way from Tipperary not a bleak, depressing tale, but an inspiring and optimistic look at how an Irish boy from a fairly ordinary family went on to become the most controversial--and arguably, most successful--Jesus scholar of his day. The author, on the other hand, hopes that readers will find his memoir not just an end in itself, but a light on his work about Jesus: "As a historian, I reconstruct Jesus as a peasant with an attitude," Crossan says, "and as a Christian I believe his attitude to be the attitude of God." Harper plans a print run of 30,000 copies, national advertising and author appearances in Washington, D.C., Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Orlando and San Francisco. --Lauren Winner
JOSEPH TELUSHKIN:
Living Compassionately
No one is perfect, not even Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, says the scholar, author and spiritual leader whose newest work, The Book of Jewish Values: A Day-by-Day Guide to Ethical Living (Bell Tower, Mar.), enumerates steps to more compassionate and ethical living. Intending the book for all faiths, Telushkin draws from the Bible, the Talmud and other Jewish sacred writings to find ways of living a more decent life in a morally complex world.
As an example, Telushkin offers an episode from his own life. While talking with a friend on a Manhattan street, he became aggravated by the blaring noise of an approaching ambulance. "An intimate conversation was shattered by the passing ambulance, and my first reaction is annoyance,'' he tells PW. "I know that is inappropriate, and my friend suggested that next time that happens, I am to stop what I'm doing and make a prayer. And one possibility is the prayer that Moses makes for his sister Miriam: 'Oh God, please heal her.' After that, I stopped feeling annoyance. I had something to do. I started practicing 'love your neighbor as yourself,' even though I didn't know my neighbor.''
Ethics, not only in the Jewish community but in others, "have become marginalized,'' Telushkin explains. "It's as though ethics have become an extra-curricular activity. But it's not enough to try to be an ethical person--you have to study to know the right thing to do.'' Denominational fragmentation within the Jewish community has shifted focus away from the issues most important to the religion, Telushkin says. "There's a saying that it d sn't matter what denomination you belong to in Judaism, as long as you are ashamed of it, as none of them have fulfilled their mission of tikkun olam, meaning 'perfecting the world.' " He adds, "If we restore ethics to their central role instead of focusing on ritual, it has the benefit of unifying Jews."
Telushkin is the author of one of the most widely read books on Judaism, Jewish Literacy (Morrow, 1991), which deals with the important things to know about the Jewish religion, its people and history. His Words That Hurt, Words That Heal (Morrow, 1996) led to the 1996 Senate Resolution #151, attempting to establish a "Speak No Evil Day'' throughout the United States. Telushkin also heads the Synagogue for the Performing Arts in Los Angeles and is a senior associate of CLAL, the national Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. He recently wrote a script for the television series Touched by an Angel, integrating the patient prayer he has learned to say when an ambulance rushes by.
The Book of Jewish Values is organized into an ethical activity for each day of the year. It touches on everything from tipping to helping someone laugh, not making unrealistic demands on others, judging the whole of a person favorably and gossiping. He even offers an ethical test, suggesting readers go for 24 hours without saying anything unkind about or to anyone. "Some of the worst pains you may have suffered in life likely came from words used unfairly against you,'' Telushkin believes. "Excessive anger and ugly nicknames--we underestimate their significance. It is not possible to become a morally decent human being without learning how to speak fairly of and to others.''
Toinette Lippe, Bell Tower editorial director, says, "Although Joseph may be speaking from the perspective of Judaism, the book is for anyone interested in living a life of plain decency, goodness and kindness, just as the Dalai Lama's book on ethics wasn't just from and for Buddhists." With initial print runs totaling 23,500, author appearances are planned for Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and New York. The book will be advertised in several Jewish weeklies. --Lori Rotenberk
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