Speaking of Faith - book review

Krista Tippett, who wrote Speaking of Faith, must be an extraordinary person. She is able to speak and write about a highly sensitive topic with very opinionated people who are not used to their opinions being questioned and still come off sounding like a mild-mannered reporter or, even better, a good friend. For those familiar with the PBS series "Speaking of Faith" this will not be news nor will Ms. Tippett be unfamiliar as she has written, hosted, and produced this series intermittently from 2000 and weekly since 2003.

With this book Tippett appears to want to lower the temperature of the whole debate around religion, especially the fundamentalist flavor, while raising the visibility of spiritual needs and resources. The book is peppered with humor and insight. For example she writes, "I define a fundamentalist as anyone who not only has the answers for himself, but has them for the rest of us, too." Later in the book she explains that "There is a profound difference between someone saying 'This is THE truth', and hearing someone say 'This is MY truth'. It is easy to disagree with the opinion or doctrine of another but much more difficult to disagree with his experience. Thus, Tippett spends a lot of time on experiences and little on dogma.

She points out the vast differences in how different religions came to be and how impossible or impractical it is to apply the template of, say, western Christianity to, say, mid-eastern Islam. We know little of Christ except from the Bible and his history is hundreds of years prior to Mohammad. What we know of Christ centers almost entirely around a 3 year ministry followed by his brutal death at the hands of the Roman empire (albeit with encouragement of the ranking Jews). Mohammad, on the other hand, is documented by the Quran as a husband, father, prophet, general, friend, poet, in short -human. "Proof texting" an irritating but well-worn practice in Christianity, is new to Islam, says Tippett.

Rather than separate religions and ideologies between liberal and conservative or radical and moderate, Tippett sorts them our into the categories Mean and not-Mean and most of us have no trouble knowing what she means. One of my favorite quotes from the book which Tippett quotes from Yassi Klein Halwvi: "You can't outhate a fundamentalist. He will win."

An excellent book if just for the calming and reassuring spirit it evokes. You CAN be religious and faithful without stirring up hatred and starting World War III. I'm going to have to watch the PBS series of the same name to see if it is as good.