A leading authority on religion and spirituality in America recounts the changes she witnessed from 1992-2004, a period she compares to the tumultuous years of the Reformation and Peri-Reformation in Europe.
As the founding editor of the religion department of Publishers Weekly, Phyllis Tickle was a key figure in bringing discussions about religion into the nation's cultural and intellectual mainstream. Prayer Is a Place is her insightful first-person account of the people she has met and the trends she has observed over twelve crucial years of change in American religion.
Tickle writes about her face-to-face meetings with such luminaries as the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Chief Mullah of Jerusalem; describes speeches and conferences that redefined traditional religions; and chronicles the birth of new approaches to religion and spirituality. The result is a fascinating overview of the reconfiguration of religion in America and its impact on our culture.
In charting the changes, passions and innovations that have occurred, Tickle remains a clear-eyed, unbiased and sympathetic observer. From her lively reminiscences of the 1003 Parliament of the World's Religions-a seminal gathering of Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists-to an intriguing look at the rise of Gnosticism in the country to a cogent analysis of the spirituality movements that swept through America during the last decades of the twentieth century, Prayer Is a Place reminds readers that reverence can be expressed in many different forms and in many different settings.
