Wrestling with God: Stories of Doubt and Faith

Now Featured in the Patheos Book Club
Wrestling with God
Stories of Doubt and Faith
By Barbara Falconer Newhall

About the Book

How do diverse Americans find faith and live it? Journalist Barbara Falconer Newhall explores the journeys of many diverse believers, hearing their stories of encounters with God and the divine. Along the way, she meets many who share their accounts of faith and the loss of faith, including:

 - An atheist who conducts an experiment on God.

- A fundamentalist Christian who takes up political activism.

- A pop songwriter who founds Muslims for Progressive Values.

- A Buddhist who embarks on a 650-mile bowing pilgrimage.

- A World War II veteran who survives a forced march across Germany.

- A Congregationalist minister who questions God's goodness.

Includes a Foreword by Don Lattin, who covered the religion beat at the San Francisco Chronicle for more than two decades. He is the author of five books on American religion and spirituality, including the most recent, Distilled Spirits.

About the Author

 Barbara Falconer Newhall has been wrestling with God for as long as she can remember. The daughter of a mother educated in a Catholic convent school and a – skeptical – father who grew up in a small town Methodist church, she began asking questions early about who God might be, if God is at all.

Barbara has been an award-winning writer and editor at Good Housekeeping magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Oakland Tribune. At The Contra Costa Times in Walnut Creek, California, she covered the religion beat and met the fascinating human beings – Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, Pagans, and more – who inspired her newly released interfaith book, Wrestling with God: Stories of Doubt and Faith.

An Episcopalian, Newhall has completed the University of the South's four-year Education for Ministry seminar. She has trained and served as an EFM mentor, facilitating group theological reflection.Barbara grew up in Michigan and lives now in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband Jon. Her good-natured husband of many years and her far-flung, grown-up kids are her favorite subjects, along with God. Whatever the topic – her unruly garden, her low-fashion wardrobe, her ever-changing family, her slender religious faith – Barbara looks to find humor, if not meaning, in whatever life throws her way.