PETER STEINFELS:
A Loyal, Yet Troubled Catholic
As an active Catholic and religion reporter, it was natural for Peter Steinfels to develop critical views about the Roman Catholic Church, but as a professional journalist, he was always able to keep those views in check. As with most strong opinions, however, they couldn't be held back forever. "As a reporter, I had to take a certain detached attitude about some things," he says. But after a while, he was "ready to boil over."
With his reporting days over—though he still sometimes writes the "Beliefs" columns for the New York Times—Steinfels has finally let his opinions fly in A People Adrift: The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America (S&S, Aug.).
Steinfels started to write the book in 1997, well ahead of the current sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. From 1988 until then, he was a senior religion correspondent at the Times. "I really left the full-time staff to undertake this project," he says. But around the same time, he was invited to become a visiting professor at Georgetown University, which delayed the book. "I naively thought I could work [teaching and writing] together while Georgetown paid my medical benefits," he says.
Steinfels grew up in a religious family. His father was an artist who often enlisted his family in helping with murals and mosaics for churches. "In the Catholic Church, people often call doing the Stations of the Cross 'making the stations.' Well, we actually made the stations," he says. Steinfels began his career as a religion writer in 1964, when as a Columbia University graduate student he joined the staff of Commonweal, the lay Catholic opinion journal. He left Commonweal in 1972 to join the Hastings Center, a research center for bioethics. While at Hastings, he continued as a columnist for Commonweal and in 1978 rejoined the staff as executive editor and later editor. In 1988, he was hired to cover religion at the Times.
At the Times, Steinfels covered the last explosion of sex abuse accusations in the Catholic Church, in the late 1980s. "It's amazing to me how people have forgotten all about that," he says. Watching it unfold then "gave me perspective on the current crisis," which prompted Steinfels to resume writing A People Adrift. Despite the scope of the Church's current problems, there is only one chapter dedicated to sex abuse, although it is touched on in others. Still, the crisis "was a major preoccupation in my finishing [the book] this last year."
Steinfels says the crisis he had in mind when he began the book, and the one referred to in the subtitle, is one of leadership. The predicament the Church finds itself in today is serving as an intense catalyst for the change that has been brewing for many years. "The crisis has magnified and accelerated processes that were already underway," he says. He defines those processes as two "intersecting" transitions in Church leadership.
The first, says Steinfels, is in Church leadership moving from priests and nuns to lay people, while the second transition is the movement away from conservative, pre—Vatican Council II control toward the more liberal leanings of post—Vatican Council II thought. "I think the Church is facing a window of decision-making that will pretty much set the terms on which it operates in the 21st century," he asserts.
Victoria Meyers, Simon & Schuster's executive director of publicity, calls A People Adrift "a critique from within" the Catholic Church, by "one of the country's most important Roman Catholic laymen. It's radical stuff from a loyal Catholic." Signings are planned for Boston, Chicago and New York, among other cities. -- Ted Howard
F.E. PETERS:
Explaining Islam
Islam is a hot topic in publishing these days—in the past 16 months, a flurry of books on the religion and its practitioners have appeared on store shelves—but that's not why F.E. Peters wrote his upcoming book. "I've been doing this all my life," the professor of Middle Eastern studies and religion at New York University tells PW. "Only now the New York Times is doing it too, so I have competition."
After more than 40 years of studying and teaching about Islam, Peters certainly has a leg up on his new competition. His latest work, Islam: A Guide for Christians and Jews, is set to be released in May by Princeton University Press. It continues Peters's work in the field of comparative religion, which includes The Children of Abraham (1982), Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (1990) and The Monotheists: Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Conflict and Competition (set for a September 2003 release), all published by Princeton. But this book has something different: "This is me," Peters says. "With Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, my contribution was the commentary between the [religious] texts. But I had a lot more to say. This book is more of my own voice."
Peters aims "to remove the alien quality from Islam," and his years of teaching and lecturing have sharpened his understanding of how to do that. "I can tell what the problems of comprehension are." His strategy with Islam: A Guide is to present the faith biblically, "using Muhammad's own approach," he says. "There are tons of introductions to Islam, but none takes the reader through this particular door."
Adds Peters, "My approach has always been comparative. The way into one is through the other two. The comparison between Judaism and Islam in particular is a very rich one. Just open the Qu'ran at random—you'd be surprised to see these familiar names, like David and Solomon and Jesus."
Peters first encountered Islam as a member of the Jesuit order. (His 1981 memoir, Ours: the Making and Unmaking of a Jesuit is his favorite of all his books, he says. "It's the only thing I've written that I can really bear to reread.") While studying medieval philosophy, he noticed the Arab philosophers were translated into Latin. "You knew they were Muslim, and they were studied in Paris and Oxford." Then, after picking up T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Peters became enchanted with "the romantic, British version" of the Middle East.
"I was reading Seven Pillars of Wisdom instead of The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. That's probably why I didn't stay with the Jesuits," Peters says with a laugh. Instead, he left for Princeton to study the classics. When he found there was no one on the faculty with whom to study his chosen field of Byzantine history, he walked across the hall to the department of Oriental studies. Peters had just started studying Arabic. "I thought maybe I could do translations of Aristotle into Arabic," he says. He ended up with a Ph.D. in Islamic studies, awarded the same year that the movie Lawrence of Arabia came out.
While Peters has a scholarly following and Islam: A Guide seems bound for use as a college text, the book isn't aimed at academics. "I don't really make much distinction between college classes and regular folks," Peters says. Princeton is targeting its marketing to college bookstores as well as major trade stores and independents. "The book is definitely written for the general reader, but Peters is a well-known scholar in the field—thus the sales approach," says publicist Kathryn Clanton. Promotional efforts will include an extensive radio campaign.
Meanwhile, Peters continues his writing and teaching. "The thing about religion is everybody has questions about it. When kids get to college, they love religion classes," he says. "You're really dealing with a subject that means something to people." -- Heather Grennan
DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF:
A New Look at Judaism
What was the first "open source" movement? It wasn't in technology, where unpaid geniuses and do-gooders combined to develop the Linux computer operating system. It actually might have started in the Mideast about 3,000 years ago, when several Semitic tribes got together to try to make the world a better place. It was the beginning of Judaism.
So says Douglas Rushkoff, author of Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism (Crown, Apr.). Rushkoff, a media theorist and social commentator, likes to think of himself as a travel writer, because he takes readers on journeys of exploration. Writing Nothing Sacred was no different. This time the trip began as study of the open source movement in technology, where techies have open access to computer code. Further exploration led to a similar study of the media, which in turn led to a broader view. "I started looking for predecessors to the open source movement," he tells PW. "Then I started thinking about the codes by which we live." Finally, Rushkoff asked, "What are the processes by which we believe in stuff?"
Because he is Jewish, Rushkoff focused his research on Judaism. He immediately saw a problem in some of the Jewish codes. What Rushkoff says he found was that today's Jews have wandered from the path of the religion's original intent. In the beginning, Judaism was "a modern, anti-superstitious, anti-tribal, non-racist and very intellectual pursuit," which even the Greeks were inspired to engage. Today Rushkoff sees something different. "Jews are under the false assumption that they're part of a separate race; that they're some kind of chosen people—that Jews are somehow better or somehow worse than other people or that God loves them more than others." In fact, he asserts, they are part of a great idea.
Rushkoff's route to media theorist and social commentator and now religion critic is a varied one. He is the author of books on new media and pop culture—Cyberia (HarperCollins, 1995), Media Virus (Ballantine, 1994) and Coercion: Why We Listen to What "They" Say (Riverhead, 1999—a columnist on cyberculture, a TV and radio personality, a lecturer, a communications professor, a film and documentary director and, according to his Web site, Rushkoff.com, a certified stage fight choreographer. And if that were not enough to occupy his time, he also plays blues piano and guitar.
But through all these varied mediums, Rushkoff says, "I'm really helping people understand, or return to, the core meaning of whatever it is they're involved in. In a sense, I've been writing one book in the 10 books [I've written]." Whether on religion or culture or the Internet, "I'm just throwing the same set of insights against a different backdrop."
And in promoting Nothing Sacred, the publisher is holding nothing back. "We're doing everything we possibly can to support the book," says Steve Ross, senior v-p and publisher at Crown. This includes a busy West Coast trip where Rushkoff will speak before 50 movie producers at a Creative Artists Agency luncheon and at several L.A. synagogues and bookstores. Ross says Crown will also "seed the market" ahead of the book's release by sending a letter from the editor to more than 1,000 Reform and Conservative rabbis nationwide.
"This book will likely to spark a lot of discussion—sometimes heated and sometimes controversial," Ross says. "It's going to shake things up and give people a new way of looking at Judaism." -- Ted Howard
MARY BLYE HOWE:
Some of My Best Friends
A funny thing happened to Mary Blye Howe when she went looking for insights about her Christianity. She found a deeper Christian faith through the unlikeliest of venues: Jewish houses of worship. She describes her journey in A Baptist Among the Jews (Jossey-Bass, July).
Growing up Southern Baptist, Howe says, "I pretty much accepted everything I was told." After joining a Cooperative Baptist congregation in her early 40s, she found a new way of looking at scripture that was more imaginative and thoughtful. "Before, I just had pat answers," Howe says. "And then, God came out of God's box."
That process accelerated five years ago when Howe went to an interfaith service that included some Jewish participants. As a student of anthropology and philosophy at the University of Texas in Arlington (Howe returned to school in midlife, graduating in 2001), she was intrigued. She decided to drop in on a group studying Jewish philosophy, and that was an epiphany. "I fell madly in love with the Jewish faith," Howe says. "The more I heard, the more I wanted to know."
That passionate curiosity took her to Judaism's many-faceted communities—Reform temples, Jewish Renewal home study groups, Hasidic synagogues. Everywhere Howe went, she was welcomed with open arms. "I imagine they were leery of me at first—I mean, I was a Baptist!" she says. "But I had absolutely no intention of trying to convert them. My sole purpose in being there was to expand my experience and vision of God."
Howe's book is a compelling account of these experiences and how they revitalized her faith, especially her literal view of the Bible. "My new church helped change that, but the Jews transformed it," Howe says. "They look much deeper into scripture, past the literal view and simple application. They have a wonder and an awe at all the intricacies. Now, when I approach the Bible, I see it as a book that's filled with mystery—and this is the same book that held no mystery for me before."
Howe is not afraid to laugh at her faux pas, whether it's talking during ritual silences, mispronouncing yarmulke, or trying to buy a Coke on Shabbat. Despite her missteps, her Jewish friends' loving acceptance and encouragement helped her grow in understanding. "Looking back, I can't believe I used to think I could tell you everything about God," Howe says. "Getting involved with Judaism has expanded my vision. "
The book boasts an impressive and diverse list of endorsements. Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman, the former president of the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion, shares blurb space with Dr. Jimmy R. Allen, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Christianity Today editor-at-large John Wilson wrote the foreword, and Lawrence Kushner, Rabbi-in-Residence at Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion, the afterword. Kushner calls the book "a kind of Lewis and Clark report of a mission of exploration" for Christians, adding that Howe "has acquired a remarkably clear vision of American Judaism."
The book will be officially launched at the Christian Booksellers Association's International Convention in Orlando, Fla., in July, and Jossey-Bass plans to advertise to both Christian and Jewish markets, according to publicist Sara Long. Howe will sign at the June Cooperative Baptist Fellowship conference, and Jossey-Bass also has nominated the book for inclusion in the Parable and Munce Marketing Group catalogues.
The book illustrates "the best impulse" of the Jossey-Bass Religion in Practice line, says editor Mark Kerr. "Our books tend to help nourish, sustain and direct those with spiritual hunger on their own journeys," Kerr says. "For Mary, it is a journey toward a deeper, more real understanding of God and the Bible through Judaism. I think we can all learn from Mary's hunger for God and from her honest spiritual quest." -- Cindy Crosby
