Praise for the PBS Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyshow:

"Finally something intelligent on TV about religion."-San Francisco Chronicle

"The best spot on the television landscape to take in the broad view of the spiritual dimension of American life as well as insightful glimpses of developments abroad."-The Christian Science Monitor

In this thoughtful collection, extraordinary people who have been guests on the celebrated PBS show Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklydescribe how faith is possible amid the tragedy and senselessness of contemporary existence. Their insights on community, prayer, suffering, religious observance, the choice to live with or without a god, and the meanings that are gleaned from everyday life form an elegant meditation that acknowledges the desire to search for something beyond what we can see and measure.

Features over sixty contributors, including Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu, Studs Terkel, Madeleine L'Engle, Chris Hedges, Marilyn Robinson, Rabbi Harold Kushner, Thomas Lynch, Reverend Barbara Brown Taylor, Phyllis Tickle, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and Dr. Francis Collins.

Bob Abernethyis the executive editor and host of Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly,which he developed and created for PBS in 1997. Before launching the series, he had served as a correspondent for NBC News for more than four decades, reporting from Washington, Los Angeles, London, and Moscow.

William Boleis a freelance journalist whose articles have appeared in The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Commonwealmagazine, and other outlets. He is also a research fellow of the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University.

"Faith and doubt stand in loving tension in this splendid collection edited by Bole, a religion writer, and Abernethy, founder and host of the PBS program Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. The book draws from the extensive interviews the series has conducted with religious luminaries and writers, some of whom appear more than once. The interviews are loosely arranged into themes of prayer; suffering and the problem of evil; encountering religious pluralism; preparing for death and the afterlife; and the varieties of religious practice. Not all of the contributors describe themselves as religious ('You know what an agnostic is?' asks the agnostic near-centenarian Studs Terkel. 'A cowardly atheist'). Most of those profiled, however, have walked a long path of religious devotion, including Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter, Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama, Anne Lamott, William Sloane Coffin, Martin Marty, Frederica Mathewes-Green and Phyllis Tickle (PW's former contributing editor in religion). With such an amazing cast of characters, it's practically impossible to go wrong, and this collection doesn't miss a step. The section on suffering is particularly perceptive ('I know that where there is no suffering, nothing happens,' novelist Madeleine L'Engle says). This is a rich feast of accumulated wisdom." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

In this thoughtful collection, guests of the celebrated PBS show "Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly" describe how faith is possible amid the tragedy and senselessness of contemporary existence.

Bob Abernethy is the executive editor and host of Religion &Ethics Newsweekly, which he developed and created for PBS in 1997.