Three Reviews Coming in PW on Monday, July 14:

-- Publishers Weekly, 7/9/2008

Footprints in the Snow: The Autobiography of a Chinese Buddhist Monk
Sheng Yen. Doubleday, $24.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-385-51330-2

The author is a master of Chan Buddhism, the Chinese antecedent of Zen Buddhism that is not nearly as well known as Zen and other Buddhist schools that have migrated to the West. The Chan master's story is less Buddhist dharma and more history of his homeland. Born in 1930, he had a ringside seat for China's Communist revolution. In 1949, he left his Buddhist schooling to join Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist army, spending more than 10 years in military intelligence. That experience was but one of many teachers along his spiritual path, along with a few bizarre Chan masters. Sheng Yen has also traveled, spending some time teaching in America. His efforts, however, have been concentrated in Taiwan, where he has developed the fourth-largest Buddhist organization in that area. This book is timely, given that China is opening to the West this year on account of the Olympics in Beijing. China is also becoming more open to religious practices, especially its own distinctive Buddhism. This son of China is a distinguished teacher with a revealing, simply told story. (Oct. 21) 

What Americans Really Believe: New Findings from the Baylor Surveys of Religion
Rodney Stark. Baylor Univ., $24.95 (200p) ISBN 978-1-60258-178-4

Sociologist Stark has been surveying and observing American religious beliefs and practices for 40 years. This broad experience is reflected in the breadth of questions used to characterize contemporary American religious attitudes; from the Bible to Bigfoot, denomination to Da Vinci Code, beliefs are measured and correlated with oodles of demographics. Stark provides evidence for his overarching theme that some fundamental American religious practices and ideas have remained both stable and diverse as a result of religious competition. The book's numbers will spark lively discussion and questions about inferences drawn from statistics and the ways in which questions were posed. Why, for example, are Catholics not considered a "strict" church that makes demands of members? Why is belief in miraculous physical healing considered mystical and not paranormal? Some will say that snarky snipes (calling other researchers "careless" and disparaging National Public Radio) have no place in data-driven sociology; others will relish a statistics-slinging fight among academics. Regardless, all who find in statistics precise food for thought, as well as articles, more surveys and books, owe Stark and his colleagues at Baylor gratitude. (Sept.) 

Quitting Church: Why the Faithful Are Fleeing and What to Do About It
Julia Duin. Baker, $17.99 (192p) ISBN 978-0-8010-6823-2

Duin brings two kinds of experiences to bear in this engaging little jeremiad: as religion editor for the Washington Times, she is in her element marshaling statistics, interviewing authors and clergy, and commenting on the trend of faithful evangelicals who increasingly vote with their feet by leaving their churches. But she's also a self-described born-again evangelical herself, coping with the personal pain of not having a viable and permanent church home. Drawing heavily on research by pollster George Barna, Duin diagnoses a widespread dissatisfaction among evangelicals, who feel their churches do a decent job with new Christians but fall far short with mature believers. In particular, Duin shows, women and singles are leaving churches in ever-greater numbers. (As a single woman herself, she discusses her own experiences with being marginalized while successfully evoking a larger context through research and polls.) Duin has some prescriptions to help with these problems, including meatier sermons that address real issues; house churches and micro-churches that foster more genuine community; and even in-church matchmaking services to help singles who want to find a mate. (Sept.) 

A First Look at the Stars: Two Starred Reviews Coming in PW on Monday, July 14:

The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia
Philip Jenkins. HarperOne, $26.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-06-147280-0

Revisionist history is always great fun, and never more so than when it is persuasively and cogently argued. Jenkins, the Penn State history professor whose book The Next Christendom made waves several years ago, argues that it's not exactly a new thing that Christianity is making terrific inroads in Asia and Africa. A thousand years ago, those continents were more Christian than Europe, and Asian Christianity in particular was the locus of tremendous innovations in mysticism, monasticism, theology and secular knowledge. The little-told story of Christianity's decline in those two continents—hastened by Mongol invasions, the rise of Islam and Buddhism, and internecine quarrels—is sensitively and imaginatively rendered. Jenkins sometimes challenges the assertions of other scholars, including Karen Armstrong and Elaine Pagels, but provides compelling evidence for his views. The book is marvelously accessible for the lay reader and replete with fascinating details to help personalize the ambitious sweep of global history Jenkins undertakes. This is an important counterweight to previous histories that have focused almost exclusively on Christianity in the West. (Nov.) 

My Jesus Year: A Rabbi's Son Wanders the Bible Belt in Search of His Own Faith
Benyamin Cohen. HarperOne, $24.95 (220p) ISBN 978-0-06-124517-6

Raised as an Orthodox Jew, mostly in Atlanta, Cohen, editor of Jewish Life in America magazine, obsessed over the church across the street from his childhood home—a home onto which his father, a rabbi, added a place of worship for Orthodox services. Struck by a crisis of faith, and not long after marrying the converted daughter of a Baptist minister, he decided to see if Jesus couldn't lead him back to Judaism. Each week, mere hours after celebrating the Jewish Sabbath, he'd attend Sunday services. He visited myriad denominational churches, Faith Day at Turner Field, Winter Jam at the Georgia Dome and even the home church of Ultimate Christian Wrestling. After 30-odd years of speculating that the sun shines brighter on the church side of the street, and 52 weeks of an Oz-like journey, his yarmulke turned out to have the same power as Dorothy's red shoes. A delicious olio of guilt, longing, surprise, wonder, unease and of course humor, Cohen's quest has universal appeal. One need not be Jewish, Christian or even a seeker to enjoy this wonderful loop around the Bible Belt. (Oct.)

You Saw It Here First: An Original RBL Review 

Wake Up: A Life of the Buddha
Jack Kerouac. Viking, $24.95 (148p) ISBN 978-0-670-01957-1

In 1958, Kerouac published his groundbreaking novel The Dharma Bums, which met with great acclaim and has since been heralded as the opening salvo of an indigenous American Buddhism. This fall, Viking is repackaging that novel in a 50th-anniversary edition while also releasing Kerouac's unsung and long-forgotten tale of the Buddha's life, published in book form for the first time. The titular theme of "wake up" is rehearsed throughout Kerouac's story of Prince Siddartha Gotama, who left an indolent but meaningless life of riches to embrace asceticism and enlightenment. Drawing on multiple sutras and accounts of the Buddha's life, Kerouac focuses on Gotama's renunciation of worldly things by repeating that trope with several other wealthy characters who forsake riches in favor of nirvana. The prose is as meandering as it is beautiful, with Kerouac's Buddha spouting memorable sayings about sensation, illusion, emptiness and suffering. If there is an almost evangelistic zeal to this loose collection of axioms and Buddhist conversion stories, Kerouac at least states that openly: "The purpose is to convert," he explains at the outset. (Sept. 22)