The moral here: Spirituality can transcend religion, but stick with the right accessories.
Directed by self-admitted “deep whim,” novelist (Zombie, 2000, etc.) and biographer (City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara, 1993) Gooch profiles Americans seeking personal spirituality apart from mainstream denominational options.
From the Urantia Book (supposedly dictated by extraterrestrials to a 1920s Chicago businessman) to high-profile Hinduism, ascetic Catholic monasticism, breakaway gay congregations, and new followers of Islam, Gooch delves into today’s more exotic worshipful styles. He lets his interviews reveal searches for a personal connection to God that begin (and often end) with a certain quality of ritual, postulating that mainstream Judeo-Christian denominations don’t provide it anymore. Departure from the Latin mass and other Catholic modernizations lumped under the rubric “Vatican II,” abandonment of the King James Bible, and similar efforts by denominational leaders to make institutional religion more accessible have instead made personal contact with God seem more remote to many, states the author. Thus the trappings of the guru and the furnishings of the ashram are essential in attracting the kind of high-media-profile, cash-contributing converts who will underwrite the flourishing of Eastern styles of mysticism as envisioned by, say, Deepak Chopra in America. Having written for Out magazine, Gooch is hypersensitive to gender-orientation triggers. Particularly while visiting monks in a Trappist monastery near Bardstown, Kentucky, he asks straightforward questions about their lives and gets at least some frank answers. In his view, the gay congregations who now support the burgeoning Metropolitan Community Churches, including the grand-scale Cathedral of Hope planned for Dallas, may despise the conservative faithful but still fervently embrace the faith. Of his own search, Gooch notes from his diary, “I chanted with the Sufis on Friday and was back on Sunday morning taking Communion at St. John’s in the Village.”
The moral here: Spirituality can transcend religion, but stick with the right accessories.Pub Date: April 9, 2002
ISBN: 0-679-44709-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2002
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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