Review

Awide-ranging, ultimately quite charming personal manifesto of faith, humor andinquiry: -Kirkus Reviews

Atone point in Stemmle's gently irreverent and highly entertaining debut, one ofhis fictional interlocutors refers to him as "already 90% atheist," thoughreaders will have their doubts. Stemmle is deceptively modest and self-deprecating,but in one of his various "puddles," he reveals extensive reading ofthe Bible, the great documents of Christian theology, and biblical scholarship. In a series of well-paced, smoothlywritten chapters, he examines various aspects of modern Christian belief. He saves an extra amount of railingfor the fault of righteousness, which he shrewdly says "replaces the search fortruth." (It's a mark of the book's winning self-deprecation that Stemmledoesn't exempt himself from this failing.) He intersperses his philosophicaland theological musings with plenty of personal anecdotes and family history, endingeach chapter with "Questions for Reflection and Discussion". The highlight of hisnarrative comes in the sections in which Stemmle crosses swords with interviewcharacters of his own invention--in fact, he puckishly reminds one of them,Arthur, that he's invented--testing his knowledge and convictions againstwell-realized devil's advocates; a fictional news anchor even has the fourEvangelists as guests. The playful inventiveness of these sections highlightsrather than obscures the essential heart of the book, expressed in manyvariations of Stemmle's contention that an "informed faith is built onquestioning and searching." There's a great deal here for readers of any faithto appreciate.

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