Four Reviews Coming in Publishers Weekly on Monday, March 10

-- Publishers Weekly, 2/28/2007

Reasons to Believe: How to Understand, Explain, and Defend the Catholic Faith
Scott Hahn. Doubleday, $19.95 (260p) ISBN 978-0-385-50935-9

Many times in its 2,000-year history, the Catholic Church was under tremendous scrutiny and even persecution, thus necessitating the faithful to provide a cogent and passionate explanation of doctrine to skeptics. These explanations developed into a formal branch of theology known as "apologetics." Hahn, an increasingly popular theologian, speaker and writer, has grabbed the doctrinal baton with books like The Lamb's Supper and Hail, Holy Queen. Here he presents a contemporary apologetics for those who feel a need to defend their faith in the postmodern world. Hahn certainly knows the Catechism, and his writing is concise and certain. He unabashedly declares the Catholic faith to be "the only Christian body that professes one faith, undivided, unchanged, throughout the world and throughout the ages." While some may be persuaded by this rhetoric, such phrases will come across to others as overly triumphalistic, especially since the history of the Church includes many doctrinal disputes and painful clashes over belief that Hahn glosses over. Readers wrestling with doubts about their faith may not find much solace in Hahn's work, but Catholics who feel the need to articulate their viewpoint to fellow believers and non-believers could benefit from Hahn's clear explanation of doctrine.(May)

Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar
Alan Morinis. Trumpeter/Shambhala, $22.95 (224p) ISBN 978-1-59030-368-9

Morinis, director and founder of the Mussar Institute, summarizes the practice of Mussar "in the phrase tikkun ha'middot ha'nafesh—improving or remedying the traits of the soul"—while emphasizing that it is not self-help. Rather, "it means working on yourself, but not for the sake of yourself...but...to bring the soul to wholeness and holiness." Each of us is born with an inner soul that is irrevocably pure, but the outer layers constantly engage in the age-old struggle between good and evil. By determining our soul curriculum, or "issues that repeatedly challenge [us]," we can strengthen our souls and therefore every aspect of our lives. Specifically, he addresses 18 soul traits: humility, patience, gratitude, compassion, order, equanimity, honor, simplicity, enthusiasm, silence, generosity, truth, moderation, loving-kindness, responsibility, trust, faith and yirah (a combination of fear and awe, without a true English counterpart). In most cases the explanations are clear and delightfully illustrated with colorful Talmudic tales, though occasionally some traits, like moderation and generosity, seem at odds with each other. Early on Morinis explains that a Mussar book should be read "slowly, in little segments, so the material can be thoroughly absorbed and digested." So too, should readers of any religion take their time with this engaging tome of wisdom, lore and suggested practice. (May)

The Religious History of American Women: Reimagining the Past
Edited by Catherine A. Brekus.Univ. of North Carolina, $59.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-8078-3202-1; $19.95 paper ISBN –5800-4

University of Chicago historian Brekus (Strangers and Pilgrims) brings together 12 innovative and engaging essays about women and religion in U.S. history. Several authors treat Catholic women and race: Emily Clark introduces nuns who evangelized slaves in 18th-century New Orleans, and Amy Koehlinger contextualizes white nuns' Civil Rights activism in the story of the postconciliar reform of religious orders. Many essays make methodological or theoretical points that have broad applications to historical scholarship. Janet Moore Lindman looks beyond churches to find women's spirituality, arguing that women's letter writing, good works, and attendance at funerals are meaningful acts of piety that historians may miss if they keep their eyes trained on "the meetinghouse." Susanna Morrill, in a fascinating piece on Mormon women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, reads popular literature as a key to women's theological discourses. A few of the essays are less original—Pamela Nadell's article on women in American Judaism, for example, makes the uncontroversial claim that it is important to "emphasize women's agency" and to see women as "historical actors" in their own right. The academics and students who will likely make up this volume's main audience are in for a treat.(Apr. 23)

I Sold My Soul on eBay: Viewing Faith through an Atheist's Eyes
Hemant Mehta.WaterBrook, $13.99 paper (224p) ISBN 978-1-4000-7347-4

Mehta, an atheist, once held an unusual auction on eBay: the highest bidder could send Mehta to a church of his or her choice. The winner, who paid $504, asked Mehta to attend numerous churches, and this book comprises Mehta's responses to 15 worshipping communities, including such prominent megachurches as Houston's Second Baptist, Ted Haggard's New Life Church in Colorado Springs, and Willow Creek in suburban Chicago.(Mehta ranks Willow Creek as the church most likely to draw him back.) Mehta, who grew up Jain, offers some autobiographical context, then discusses nonreligious people's approach to topics such as death and suffering. But all that is just a preamble to Mehta's sketches of the churches he attended. He doesn't find much community in churches; families sit far apart from other families, and people race "out the front doors to their cars" as soon as the service ends. Churches earn high marks for Mehta when they offer great speakers and focus on community outreach, but they also do many things wrong, including singing repetitive songs and alienating non-Christians by ubiquitously proclaiming them to be "lost." Mehta's musings will interest Christians who seek to proselytize others and who want to identify their evangelistic mistakes. (Apr. 17)

A Starred Review Coming in PW on Monday, March 10

The Organic God
Margaret Feinberg. Zondervan, $16.99 (224p) ISBN 978-0-310-27244-1

An emerging popular writer for culture-savvy evangelicals, Feinberg challenges twentysomethings and older Christians to trade in their current relationship with God for an "organic" one. In a word, Feinberg describes her former understanding of God as "polluted," while today she longs for closeness to the creator as characterized by all that is "natural, pure, and essential." Throughout these introspective spiritual musings, Feinberg (What the Heck Should I Do With My Life? and God Whispers) is engaging and thoughtful as she pairs the mysteries of the divine-human relationship with everyday wonders found in the material world. Thematically laid out, the book shares Feinberg's personal recollections from childhood on to present day experiences while pointing to various aspects of God's character; Feinberg's God is bighearted, beautiful, wise, talkative, infallible, generous, stubborn, kind and mysterious. In one particularly transparent story, Feinberg shares how God nudged her to bestow generosity by giving away a beloved sweater, a pair of gloves, and some gourmet treats. Feinberg resisted, only to ruin the sweater, lose a glove, and find the treats uneatable within a 24-hour period. She learned that "the Organic God doesn't just want me to give until it hurts, but rather to give until it feels good." Feinberg's quirky personality shines forth on every page, making her text a delectable treat. (May)