Faith in the Modern Age: New and Notable Books

Lots of new books are documenting the difficulties of faith at the present time, as well as interesting conversions. We need those writings in an age of “nones” and low church attendance. Here are four volumes that came across my desk during the last month.

Turning Points: How Thirteen Remarkable Men and Women Heard God’s Call and Responded to It, by Russell Shaw, selects the all-stars of sainthood. We have Paul, Augustine, Thomas More, Ignatius of Loyola, and nine others. Most readers of First Things know the basics of their lives, of course, and Shaw doesn’t rehearse much of them. Instead, he has a specific focus, the “special incidents or episodes” that drew the saint to “God’s providential plan.” These are the turning points of the book title. They can be dramatic and quick (as in the case of St. Josemariá Escrivá), and they can be studious and slow (Newman and his books). All of them have the same coda: “Thanks be to God.” Each biography ends with Shaw’s general remarks on the respective episodes and what kind of “call” they represent. Pope St. John Paul insisted that God loves every one of us as “unique individuals.” St. Paul’s experience, Shaw notes, “was uniquely his own.” The implication is that these turning points should inspire us, but we should not expect to repeat them. Every person’s answer to the call is distinct.

Fr. Donald Haggerty jumps to the other side. His book is titled The Hour of Testing: Spiritual Depth and Insight in a Time of Ecclesial Uncertainty, and uncertainty is, indeed, the starting point. The “death of God” now afflicts “the collective soul of a Western society in its denial of the divine,” he says. We don’t need Nietzsche or any other fiery atheist to declare it. It’s a common experience, like “an undetected poison in the shadowy air.” The problem is less boastful irreverence than unconscious apathy. Hence, believers are in an “hour of testing.” The Church gives us a way to endure, Fr. Haggerty argues. The wounds of the martyrs, the reticence of Jesus before Pilate, the “interior prayer” of religious sisters, the “pure faith” of St. John of the Cross—they are patterns of life, attitudes ready to be adopted by people dismayed by and estranged from the culture in which we live. Fr. Haggerty emphasizes one option in particular: “the recovery of the ascetical spirit,” which in the midst of modern consumerism and hedonism will appear “a striking phenomenon.”

The Colorado Trail is a five-hundred-mile pathway through the Rocky Mountains. In Summer 2022, Fr. John Nepil set out to cover the whole trail in one go, a “thru-hike.” It was a trip that would bring him closer to the Word of God, he says in To Heights and Unto Depths: Letters from the Colorado Trail. The Garden of Eden was on a mountaintop, Abraham ascended Mount Moriah, Moses had to climb to receive the commandments, and Jerusalem sits on Mount Zion. An ascent up the Front Range, Fr. Nepil says, is an aspiration, a striving toward heaven. His book chronicles the trip in its physical and spiritual dimensions. Copper Mountain, Cataract Creek, the Cochetopa Hills, the stars every night—and reflections on liberalism, existentialism, technology, the nature of being, leisure, language, and silence. In the end, he writes, the trip was not even really his: “The landscape of creation exists for the story of humanity, and the soul of that story is the personality of Jesus Christ.”

Kelsey Osgood studied postmodernism in college in New York City, interned at fashion magazines, and saw a happy bohemian future ahead. It didn’t happen. In 2015, she stepped into the warm water of a mikvah, answered queries posed by three rabbis, plunged deep into the pool, and emerged a Jew. She sets the scene in the opening of Godstruck: Seven Women’s Unexpected Journeys to Religious Conversion. She tells the full story of her transformation not until the last chapter of the book. Before that, we learn of six other women who underwent surprising changes of faith. Angela grew up in California, studied technology, wrote a column called DATA for an online magazine, and admired Richard Dawkins. She is now a Quaker. The story of Sara takes off in Boston, April 15, 2013, when the marathon bombing would have taken her life if it went off thirty seconds later and she had made it closer to the finish line as she intended. She was a student at super-progressive Emerson College, and she was alienated from her Catholic childhood. The trauma of the bombing, however, sent her on an unexpected journey back to faith, which ended with evangelical commitment: “Yes, I want new life in you. Yes, I believe in Jesus.” We have converts to Mormonism, Islam, Amish, and Catholicism, too. Their lives have improved, their souls have been fed. They have found companionship; they belong to something. Osgood is careful, however, to guard against the religion-as-instrument-of-happiness conception. People in this lonely age find community, yes, but the truth comes first, not the social benefits. “My subjects weren’t doing well simply because they’d joined a church or a mosque,” she concludes. “They truly believed, and it was that interplay of belief and behavior, I feel, that has helped them in the end.”