Sterling M. McMurrin lectures on religion and culture Book

To read this book is like being given permission to exhale, to let go of the various furies that religious extremism can engender in us, and look instead at the vast middle ground in which faith is discussed, wrestled with, and applied among the majority of the world's peoples.

Krisat Tippett is the anchor of NPR's Speaking of Faith, a show she proposed to Minnesota Public Radio in an attempt to model conversation about religion - actual conversation, with a lot of listening involved, in partnership with individuals practicing every faith imaginable. This book is a reflection of that - a distilling down of Tippet's impulse to create such a show, her goals in sustaining it, and the ways that conversation about ethics, spirituality, and religion has created change in her life.

There's a great deal of wisdom in this book - common, everyday wisdom from people doing common, everyday things - and equally, a wholesale rejection of anyone or any practice that would suggest religious practice or spiritual belief can be reduced to dogma, to simplistic rules. Instead, Tippett suggests (with quotes from many people she's interviewed) religion is about doubt, about wrestling with texts, about understanding the breadth of expression people give to their impulse to have faith, about seeing commonality and treasuring difference.

This is a swift read that offers a peaceful, compassionate, eloquent defense of faith in all its forms. A perfect Sunday experience for me.