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| Author: William Lobdell |
| Format: | Hardcover |
Product Summary
| Lobdell''s journey of faith--and doubt--is a book about life''s deepest questions that speaks to everyone: the author understands the longings and satisfactions of the faithful, as well as the unrelenting power of doubt. How he faced that power, and wrestled with it, is must reading for people of faith and nonbelievers alike. |
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From the Publisher:
A prominent Christian journalist recounts how his career with the William Lobdell's journey of faith—and doubt—may be the most compelling spiritual memoir of our time. Lobdell became a born-again Christian in his late 20s when personal problems—including a failed marriage—drove him to his knees in prayer. As a newly minted evangelical, Lobdell—a veteran journalist—noticed that religion wasn't covered well in the mainstream media, and he prayed for the Lord to put him on the religion beat at a major newspaper. In 1998, his prayers were answered when the Los Angeles Times asked him to write about faith. Yet what happened over the next eight years was a roller-coaster of inspiration, confusion, doubt, and soul-searching as his reporting and experiences slowly chipped away at his faith. While reporting on hundreds of stories, he witnessed a disturbing gap between the tenets of various religions and the behaviors of the faithful and their leaders. He investigated religious institutions that acted less ethically than corrupt Wall St. firms. He found few differences between the morals of Christians and atheists. As this evidence piled up, he started to fear that God didn't exist. He explored every doubt, every question—until, finally, his faith collapsed. After the paper agreed to reassign him, he wrote a personal essay in the summer of 2007 that became an international sensation for its honest exploration of doubt. Losing My Religion is a book about life's deepest questions that speaks to everyone: Lobdell understands the longings and satisfactions of the faithful, as well as the unrelenting power of doubt. How he faced that power, and wrestled with it, is must reading for people of faith and nonbelievers alike. |
Former reporter William Lobdell relives his religious roller-coaster ride in this incisive memoir about his fluctuating faith. After his first marriage fell apart, Lobdell found Jesus and became a born-again Christian. He prayed to God for a chance to put his journalistic skills to work promoting the good words and deeds of fellow Christians and, shortly thereafter, the LA Times hired him to cover the religion beat. Unfortunately, rather than the charity and compassion he had initially envisioned publicizing, most of Lobdell's assignments had him documenting sex scandals or financial corruption at various churches and ministries. After years of accumulating evidence that many religious leaders were engaging in degenerate abuse or simply using God as a front for collecting personal riches, Lobdell determined that Christians were no more morally advanced than anyone else, a realization that caused him to surrender his embattled faith and begin a new search for answers as an atheist.
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Chapter One "You Need God"
By age 27, I had screwed up my life. I had married my volatile high school sweetheart five years earlier, mostly because it seemed easier than breaking up. When I left her, I didn''t follow through with the divorce. Dealing with her in court would be messy, so I just bailed. In the meantime, I happily jumped into an adolescence delayed by my fidelity to the first girl I''d ever loved. Before long, I managed to get a girlfriend pregnant. I loved my newfound bachelorhood, and I was petrified by the prospect of another marriage and my first child (leaving aside the fact that my divorce to my first wife couldn''t be finalized for at least six months). I ran away as fast as I could, concluding that I had only a few months left in the wild before |
