The God Factor.

THE GOD FACTOR By Cathleen Falsani (Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2006)

Readers of Cathleen Falsani's The God Factor become virtual flies on the wall as her 31 well-known interview subjects talk honestly about their spiritual beliefs. As the religion writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, she has a sense for the wide variety of religious belief and practice in our culture.

Falsani has done a great job of presenting her interview subjects as real, vulnerable people. In doing so, she reveals a lot about herself. As I read about musician Billy Corgan, director David Lynch and Sen. Barack Obama, I realized these are not the shallow celebrities one might expect. My reactions to them ranged from a desire to argue to a desire to go out with them for coffee.

The one interview Falsani longed to do, with poet Seamus Heaney, never happened. He did send a poem to her, one of special interest to Catholics.

I do find the title The God Factor somewhat strange, because many of the interviewees do not believe in God or a higher power, or they are uncertain. It actually explores "the belief factor," or how belief or non-belief affects public life. I don't know how Falsani chose her subjects; perhaps the Spirit led her. The assortment of interviewees includes rock stars, writers, a "shock jock," a minister, and a senator. All are creative people, exceptional in their fields, image-makers in many ways.

Reading the interviews gives one a glimpse of postmodernism, in that many have chosen to redefine concepts of spirituality and religious beliefs and are content in a state of ambiguity. The interviewees give witness to the shift we have seen in our society from "religion" to "spirituality" I think they can teach us traditional church adherents, especially church workers, a good deal about how this shift has taken place. I would recommend it to anyone curious about the spiritual journeys of our fellow travelers in the 21st century.