A groundbreaking history of the hereafter, “Heaven” by New York magazine contributing editor and religion editor Lisa Miller draws from both history and popular culture to reveal how past and presage visions of heaven have evolved and how they inspire us to both good and evil.
It is understandable to want to run screaming from a “spiritual memoir”—especially when you discover it’s been written by a 27-year-old. Memoirs are bad enough, with their cringe-making confessions, their sordid tale-telling, and their self-important self-examination. Why, the reader too often wonders, should we care about you? Spiritual memoirs frequently inhabit the lowest tier of this navel-gazing. In a regular …
When George W. Bush became president in 2000, he brought with him a kind of “hey, guy” Christianity that had been quietly booming in megachurches throughout the land. It was neither the formal Episcopal worship of his youth nor the groovy pan-spirituality of lefty dabblers. Bush’s faith was rooted in a Christian-conversion experience—and in the vernacular and ethos of the …