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The U.S.A. seems to be increasingly godless, yet polls show that most Americans believe in God, many say they go to church, and an astonishing number of them hold to traditional religious beliefs. How can this be?  Are we just a nation of hypocrites who say one thing and do another?

One answer comes from Phyllis A. Tickle, whose role as contributing editor in religion for Publisher’s Weekly and editor-at-large of its Religion Bookline gives her extensive exposure to books of every stripe which fall into the “religion” category.
She is in a unique position to know what people in America are saying about God in print.  Tickle is also up on TV and movies, radio talk shows, even Internet “chat rooms” where amazingly heavy theological discourse takes place. Tickle offers her analysis of the foment and developments in our nation’s religious life from what is surely the “cutting edge.”

Here are two quotes to give you a taste of this book. (The first is from the Forward; the second is the book’s concluding sentence.) Comparing her book to a folk dance, Tickle says,

“.. most of all, this book was written for those of my fellow Americans who are dancing in their own spaces on the floor and would like for a few minutes to see the
whole pattern of which they are a part.”

And “. . . faith in America today and the god-talk that is its most audible expression are …a constellation of millions of shining parts, each an integer in its own right and each the luminous guardian of its own light.”

A warning: don’t let the folksy title or cover illustration fool you. Tickle has a brilliant mind, and she can’t resist long and/or unusual words. Her rich insights are well worth the scramble to keep up with her, but scramble most readers will!

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.

God-Talk In America argues that there is an emerging new understanding of who and what God is, and of what religion must do. As always, religion is being created in the streets and cafes and bedrooms and kitchens of real America, rather than in the seminaries or cathedrals. Author Phyllis Tickle listens in those ordinary places and shows why a sea-change in religion, theology and spirituality is underway. In showing the reader “snapshots” of religion in America from the 1930s to the present day, God-Talk In America is both a map of the present and a compass to the future. Articulate, informative, insightful, and persuasive, God-Talk In America is engaging, thoughtful reading for Christians of all denominations and backgrounds.

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 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 m 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 oil” 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.