Customer Reviews

Strength for the Journey: A Pilgrimage of Faith in Community

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a dangerous book to start reading, unless you have some time on your hands. I couldn't put it down! I've never encountered a book quite like this. The author weaves together many different strands that make up a single, powerful story.

On one level she tells the story of her own spiritual development that covers everything from being brought up as a Methodist, to becoming "born again" in high school, and then an Episcopalian (!). If the story stopped there, it would be enough because the writing is so engaging and humorous.

But the story doesn't stop there---it keeps on going. She also tells true stories of all the different churches she attended, the inside politics, the everyday drama of community life. The stories come off as honest, both the good and the bad, but the book is never vindictive. She doesn't have an axe to grind, which is refreshing when it comes to organized religion.

But again, the story doesn't even stop there. She puts all of this, her personal story and the congregational stories, into the larger social and historical context of religious trends in America.

This is a stunning achievement. But again, be forewarned: once you start reading you won't be able to put it down. It's that good!

Spiritual autobiography in the best sense, this rather spare account continually is a continual surprise and a quiet delight, avoiding cliche and the temptation to be too personally confessional. The itinerary inverts the tale common to the post-war generation; the author's early conversion to dogmatic religion and to ritualism gradually yields, against her will, to a more flexible and at the same time more rigorous faith, quite different from the caricature of 'liberalism' inculcated by dogmatic churches. It is full of insight into the interaction between the personal seeker and the social realities of a church-going life, and a remarkable courtesy for the conservative Christians whose company she ultimately departs. The balance between deep feeling and deep reflection is fully achieved, and the story of this 20th century Pilgrim is moving as it is compelling.

As a late twenty-something student of both counseling and religion, I have often found books on spirituality--especially first person accounts--to hover precipitously on the boundary between vacuous platitude and careless self-indulgence. This book is different. Its pages are both insightful and engaging, and its story about the potential of mainline religion is one that hopefully more will feel called to share.

Bass manages to embed a keen analysis of the state of mainline religion in the engrossing story of her own faith journey--a journey that was never just her own, but one always linked to those of others. To mainline believers struggling to find their place in contemporary society, Bass shows that serious faith need not be dogmatic and that critical faith can be nutured within communities grounded in the richness of the Christian tradition.

To those looking for strength for their journey, Bass is a spiritual friend worth getting to know.

Diana Butler Bass has done a wonderful job of describing her faith journey. It is witty, intelligently written, well documented, and compelling. It probably helps to be an Episcopalian to enjoy it and to see one's self in parts of the book. Bass is a churchgoer. Always has been. Always will be. I understand where she is coming from. However, her education and experience at eight different parish churches from Massachusetts to California makes very entertaining reading as well as giving the reader much to reflect on and ponder. There is nothing flip about this book. It is serious stuff and it is also uplifting. Her path in the church does not mirror mine, but that just makes the twists and turns in her faith life more interesting. It also explains why the Episcopal Church can be so frustrating to many and misunderstood by others. It is a journey worth reading about and who knows, you may find strength for yours there also.

Diana Butler Bass gives us a gem of a book that will help each of us on our own faith journey and spiritual struggle. The writing is clear and intelligent, the narrative is often gripping, and I think her book's basic structure, captured perfectly in her subtitle, is brilliant: She describes her story not just as the progress of some solitary pilgrim but as a faithful person embedded in a series of different churches and religious communities. This approach allows the reader to simultaneously learn about the author's own personal faith journey as she lives in different parts of the country and moves through her educational and professional development, but it also illuminates the "dark spots" in our churches, the all-too-human sides of our congregations and the regular folk who fill them on Sundays.

I'd like to call this book a "page-turner" because of its fascinating topic and fine writing, but the fact is that many pages had such provocative ideas that I often found myself getting lost in thought--about not only the author's faith journey but my own, about the author's faith communities in conservative and mainline Protestant churches as well as the different churches I've worshipped in, and about the triumphs and pains that marked the author's life as well as those that have comprised my own. This is superb autobiography: While laying bare the author's singular life it illuminates more universal lessons, and consequently allows the reader to see oneself in the pages.

This is a mature, serious book and I think readers will find that both their hearts and their minds will be deeply engaged. In addition, though, the reader will be sometimes enraged. The author's story is ultimately uplifting, marked by the typical spiritual ebbs and flows of the mature life of faith, but her journey is affected by the petty politics and small sins of many folks around her, from an unsupportive husband who puts obstacles his wife's faith journey to some clergy and church-goers who, um, do not exactly seem able to walk with Christ and to love what is just and kind. The author lets us in on how she balanced and integrated the good and the bad, the sacred and the profane, in her own spiritual growth.

Read this book and get some strength for your own journey.

Diana Butler Bass is a church goer. Always has been. Always will be. However her faith journey has been long and sometimes difficult. This is a very personal and compelling recounting of one woman's travels in the faith and also an interesting and thought provoking discourse on the condition of the Episcopal Church. Her church attendance has spanned the country. From Massachusetts to California and several places in between. She brings to the recounting of it, not only her description of her faith journey, but a scholar's understanding of the dynamics of the Faith. It is personal, it is uplifting and it is instructive. This is a wonderful book to read and reread.

Having journeyed thorugh my own myriad religious background and experiences, I found this book in a way reflecting my own story. But more than that, the author sets the personal story in the context of a community of faith's story - and further extends the story into the context of American culture and political system. She exhibits a breath of knowledge of the various tensions at work within in the church, which is never far away from being what it is:"in the world."
I was facinated with her personal story of moving from an evangelical - fairly rigid religious orientation as a teenager and college student - to confronting the questions and paradoxes that life brings. In the midst of that honesty with her own life she allows us to listen to her own struggle with faith questions, which are truly interwoven into life decisions and choices.
There seems to be a dialogue that forms with the reader as the author becomes open to her changing religious reference points: where the rites, riuals, forms, textures, tastes, smells and sounds of spiritual life become alive within a community of people. The hunger for spiritual nurishment is never quite satiated...but as the author indicates in her title: she is given strength for the journey.

Diana Butler Bass offers herself as a cherished and cherishing companion to the many souls whose journeys of faith have been erratic, halting, tentative, exuberant, and unorthodox. Her honesty as she shares her own sometimes limping, sometimes soaring travels (from a childhood Methodism through an evangelical path that she began to perceive as more and more restrictive, into the Episcopal church in several of its many manifestations), gives each reader permission to admit their own disappointments and dead ends, to grieve their losses and sorrows, and to celebrate their continually renewing and awakening relationship with the Living God who is Love Incarnate.
But this is more than an autobiography; it is a reflection on the anxious and hopeful state of the Christian church in the time and place of the 21st century United States. The diversity of faithful witness is heartening. The honesty of mistakes is not only comforting and amusing, but encouraging as transitions unfold from seeming tombs to radiant hope.
Diana Butler Bass is not only a highly trained observer, but a deeply skilled theologian. She is not content with simple answers or trite generalizations. She admits that she is a fallible witness, but that doesn't stop her from sharing the truth as she sees it.
You may not agree with everything she says, but you will be challenged and informed to deepen in your own reflections.
Well worth reading by anyone on a spiritual journey, including clergy, lay leaders, lifelong church-goers, brand-new converts, and anyone who wonders, "Who would ever want to go to church, anyway?"

The mark of a great writer is someone whose words leap off the page and into the reader's own heart and mind. Diana Butler Bass writes her remarkable journey in a way which ultimately gives meaning to all of our own Christian pilgrimages. I am encouraged and inspired by this work which combines scholarship with spirituality. Highly recommended.

The news likes to focus on how many churches are losing members and refusing to change in response to community needs: Strength For The Journey tells how one woman chose to stay and discovered a renewed meaning in her faith. Her title recounts the emergence of a healthier set of Protestant mainline churches which are enjoying a new vitality from its membership, and comes from the unusual perspective of an ongoing participant in church activities who never left her circle and thus was able to observe the changes.