God Talk in America. This item is unavailable.God Talk in America

From the well-known religious editor, this is a wide-ranging celebration of religion in America and its future in the face of new technologies and the Internet.

God-Talk in America argues that there is an emerging new understanding of who and what God is, and of what religion must do. Tickle, former religion editor at PW, argues that religion is being created in the streets, cafes, bedrooms and kitchens of America rather than in its seminaries and cathedrals. With her rapier wit and lucid insights, Tickle argues that today's spiritual revolution is taking America into an unprecedented religious reformation. Actually, Tickle has written two valuable books in one. The first two thirds of this book include chapters that address the development of religious expression, from its role in early American history through its impact on cyberspace. These chapters are filled with gentle accounts of episodes in religious history by a woman who loves to tell stories. Buried in the stories, though, are the razor-sharp observations that have made Tickle the undisputed expert on American religion: 'Despite the fact that we are the developed world's most theologically illiterate and morally obsessed society, we are also its most religious one.' The last third of the book is notes, pages of meaty research Tickle has mined from varied and extensive sources. This section alone is worth the price of the book. Overall, this is an essential work for anyone concerned with the development of religion in America. --Publishers Weekly

Tickle (My Father's Prayer, LJ 5/1/95) describes her writing style as that of a dance where movement as well as conversation is important. She shows that in this technological age religious beliefs in the United States are not dying but flourishing and transforming as society transforms, especially with the advent of the Internet. She speaks about the democracy of theology, arguing that the forms and functions of religion are now being defined by the common, everyday 'God-talk' of people seeking spirituality in these chaotic times. She covers a vast amount of territory very quickly; people such as Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung pop up, then vanish; ideas are thrown around; and, to emphasize the connectiveness of all religious information, the author has 'spun off' extensive commentaries and asides as notes of the book. This interesting, amusing, and enlightening work can be difficult to read unless one understands the dance. For public and theological libraries. --- Glenn Masuchika, Chaminade Univ. Lib., Honolulu