{"id":21167,"date":"2015-08-13T00:01:24","date_gmt":"2015-08-13T07:01:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=21167"},"modified":"2015-08-13T00:01:24","modified_gmt":"2015-08-13T07:01:24","slug":"author-don-lattin-americans-are-more-thoughtful-about-religion-than-we-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/author-don-lattin-americans-are-more-thoughtful-about-religion-than-we-think\/","title":{"rendered":"Author Don Lattin: Americans Are More Thoughtful About Religion Than We Think"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/NaC1nZkVLnA\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>In this video Don Lattin talks about psychedelics at Harvard &#8212; at Harvard. Check it out.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Apparently I\u2019m not the only one wrestling with God.\u00a0In his foreword to my new book, <em>Wrestling with God: Stories of Doubt and Faith<\/em>, veteran religion reporter Don Lattin asserts that Americans everywhere have been\u00a0doing a lot of\u00a0wrestling with the divine in recent decades.<!--more--><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_20561\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-20561\" style=\"width: 200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2015\/08\/13\/author-don-lattin-americans-are-more-thoughtful-about-religion-than-we-think\/\" rel=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2015\/08\/13\/author-don-lattin-americans-are-more-thoughtful-about-religion-than-we-think\/\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-20561\" src=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/lattin-don0001-449x580-232x300.jpg\" alt=\"Author Don Lattin, Photo by Deanne Fitzmaurice\" width=\"200\" height=\"258\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-20561\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Author Don Lattin, Photo by Deanne Fitzmaurice<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cIf you believe what you see on TV or the World Wide Web, modern civilization is under attack by forces of narrow-minded, intolerant religious fundamentalists\u2014all the way from Fallujah to Florida.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The real story, at least in the United States, is less alarming and more interesting. We are not really falling into fundamentalism, nor are we finally coming to our senses and embracing a new atheism . . .\u00a0We are, in fact, wrestling with God.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Don goes on to describe how Americans have been\u00a0struggling with traditional ideas about God and religion \u2013 while at the same time opening themselves up to new ways of experiencing the transcendent. For example:<\/p>\n<p>A recent Pew study found that 70 percent of people affiliated with a religion agreed with the statement that \u201cmany religions can lead to eternal life.\u201d<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A Gallup poll found that one third of Americans now say that they are \u201cspiritual but not religious.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>In the 1950s \u2013 when Don and I were growing up \u2013 only one in 25 Americans reported leaving the religion or the denomination of their childhood. A few decades later, that percentage had shifted radically: one of every three Americans had turned to a different religion or denomination.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Don says lots of nice things about <a href=\"http:\/\/WrestlingWithGodBook.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Wrestling with God<\/em><\/a> in his foreword, but I\u2019m most flattered by his assessment that I managed to avoid snarkiness.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2015\/08\/13\/author-don-lattin-americans-are-more-thoughtful-about-religion-than-we-think\/\" rel=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2015\/08\/13\/author-don-lattin-americans-are-more-thoughtful-about-religion-than-we-think\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-21184 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/distilled-spirits-book-cover0001-394x580-204x300.jpg\" alt=\"The cover of Don Lattin's book, &quot;Distilled Spirits.&quot;\" width=\"204\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I agree with Don that, \u201ctrue believers\u2014whether they are in the \u2018New Age,\u2019 evangelical Christian, or Islamist movements\u2014are easy to parody, but we do so at the risk of our own understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We also do it at the risk of deepening the already perilous divides that exist between the \u201cuses\u201d and the \u201cthems.\u201d<\/p>\n<h5>Author Don Lattin<\/h5>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.donlattin.com\/pageprofile\/dl_profile.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Don Lattin<\/a> is a wonderful writer, by the way. For decades he was a\u00a0religion beat reporter\u00a0at the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner. And over time\u00a0he\u2019s applied his reporting skills and intuitive understanding of the American religious landscape to a number of books, including:<\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.donlattin.com\/pagehpc\/dl_harvard_psychedelic_club.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Harvard Psychedelic Club:<\/a> How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.donlattin.com\/pageds\/dl_distilled_spirits.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Distilled Spirits:<\/a> Getting High, Then Sober, with a Famous Writer, a Forgotten Philosopher, and a Hopeless Drunk<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/apocryphilepress.com\/book\/psychedelics\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">God on Psychedelics:<\/a> Tripping Across the Rubble of Old-Time Religion<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>If you enjoyed this story, you might like <a href=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2015\/03\/26\/what-happens-when-you-drop-your-cell-phone-into-the-sacred-buddhist-sand-painting\/\">&#8220;What Happens When You Drop Your Cell Phone Into the Sacred Buddhist Sand Painting?&#8221;<\/a>\u00a0 Also, <a href=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2009\/07\/20\/book-openers-i-still-havent-figured-out-how-to-pray-but-im-in-good-company\/\">&#8220;I Still Haven&#8217;t Figured Out How to Pray.&#8221;<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2015\/08\/13\/author-don-lattin-americans-are-more-thoughtful-about-religion-than-we-think\/\" rel=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2015\/08\/13\/author-don-lattin-americans-are-more-thoughtful-about-religion-than-we-think\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-15638 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/IMG_7452-2-580x387-500x333.jpg\" alt=\"As part of the THIRST temporary art installation, hundreds of prayer flags hang from the circular path from the pedestrian bridge down to Lady Bird Lake in Austin. Photo by BF Newhall\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Religion writer Don Lattin says there&#8217;s more to religion in America than atheists vs. fundamentalists. The real story is less alarming and much more interesting. <a href=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2015\/08\/13\/author-don-lattin-americans-are-more-thoughtful-about-religion-than-we-think\/\">Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20561,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1324,1336,1110,34,1479,1016,91,1480,53],"class_list":["post-21167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-rocky-spiritual-journey","tag-american-religious-landscape","tag-atheism","tag-don-lattin","tag-dont-miss","tag-fundamentalism","tag-interfaith","tag-religion-and-spirituality","tag-tolerance","tag-wrestling-with-god"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}