The God Problem: Expressing Faith and Being Reasonable (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780520274280)

The United States is one of the most highly educated societies on earth, and also one of the most religious. In The God Problem, Robert Wuthnow examines how middle class Americans juggle the seemingly paradoxical relationship between faith and reason.

Based on exceptionally rich and candid interviews with approximately two hundred people from various faiths, this book dispels the most common explanations: that Americans are adept at keeping religion and intellect separate, or that they are a nation of "joiners." Instead, Wuthnow argues, we do this--not by coming up with rational proofs for the existence of God--but by adopting subtle usages of language that keep us from making unreasonable claims about God. In an illuminating narrative that reveals the complex negotiations many undertake in order to be religious in the modern world, Wuthnow probes the ways of talking that occur in prayers, in discussions about God, in views of heaven, in understandings of natural catastrophes and personal tragedies, and in attempts to reconcile faith with science.



Author: Robert Wuthnow
ISBN-10: 0520274288
ISBN-13: 9780520274280
Publisher: University of California Press
Language: English
Published: 10/01/2012
Pages: 344
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.34lbs
Size: 9.41h x 6.38w x 1.00d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 09/10/2012 pg. 52
Library Journal 11/15/2012 pg. 87
Christian Century 12/12/2012 pg. 38
Choice 11/01/2013