America may be the most religious country in the world, if you consider that most of us say we believe in God. But we are a nation made up of many different faiths. Making sense of this spiritual melting pot isn’t easy, but Phyllis Tickle manages to do just that as she takes an engaging look at the fast-moving and diverging trends in our religious life today, maintaining all the while that it is ordinary people who continue to be the most vital force in shaping our views of God.

In this “essential work for anyone concerned with the development of religion in America” (Publishers Weekly), this noted religious commentator examines the relationship between our nostalgia for traditional rituals and the lure of electronic media (you can now convene your own prayer group) and traces the prevailing desire for “sacred places” and our longing for feminine energies, as exemplified by the reemergence of the term “Mother Church.” Throughout, she weaves beautifully written “interludes” that tell of her personal experiences with the mysteries of religious life: A statue of Kali, which she has kept to this day, called out to her from a closet shelf when she was a child, and in her 60s, she underwent an epiphany in a Roman temple.

“If you want to keep up with what is being said and written about religion… read Phyllis Tickle,” says Richard Elliot Friedman, author of The Disappearance of God.