Overview

William Lobdell's journey of faith-and doubt-may be the most compelling spiritual memoir of our time. Lobdell became a born-again Christian in his late 20s when personal problems-including a failed marriage-drove him to his knees in prayer. As a newly minted evangelical, Lobdell-a veteran journalist-noticed that religion wasn't covered well in the mainstream media, and he prayed for the Lord to put him on the religion beat at a major newspaper. In 1998, his prayers were answered when the Los Angeles Times asked him to write about faith. Yet what happened over the next eight years was a roller-coaster of inspiration, confusion, doubt, and soul-searching as his reporting and experiences slowly chipped away at his faith. While reporting on hundreds of stories, he witnessed a disturbing gap between the tenets of various religions and the behaviors of the faithful and their leaders. He investigated religious institutions that acted less ethically than corrupt Wall St. firms. He found few differences between the morals of Christians and atheists. As this evidence piled up, he started to fear that God didn't exist. He explored every doubt, every question-until, finally, his faith collapsed. After the paper agreed to reassign him, he wrote a personal essay in the summer of 2007 that became an international sensation for its honest exploration of doubt. Losing My Religion is a book about life's deepest questions that speaks to everyone: Lobdell understands the longings and satisfactions of the faithful, as well as the unrelenting power of doubt. How he faced that power, and wrestled with it, is must reading for people of faith and nonbelievers alike.

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9780061626814

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Reviews

Veteran journalist Lobdell provides a compelling account of his personal journey toward and then away from faith in God.As a troubled young man, the author turned to religion as a way of finding meaning and order. His faith grew through involvement in a Protestant mega-church and eventually began to mature while attending a more traditional congregation. He spent years in personal turmoil as he attempted to find his spiritual place in the world. This quest led him to pursue, and in the fall of 2000 to attain, a job as religion reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Soon after, he received the first of many assignments connected to child molestation scandals within the Catholic Church. This was personally as well as professionally shocking, since Lobdell's wife was a Catholic and he was in the process of becoming one. His reporting exposed a grim pattern: Hypocrisy at all levels of the church, innocent people put in harm's way by the church's 'shepherds,' self-interest triumphing over Christian values, lies big and small and a general lack of courage among followers of Christ, especially those in power, would be recurrent subjects of my reporting. Lobdell soon concluded that this pattern extended beyond Catholicism. He attended a conference of ex-Mormons who told of the harsh, unforgiving treatment they received in their Mormon-dominated communities. He investigated the evangelical Trinity Broadcasting Network, finding evidence of extensive financial and sexual misconduct. These discoveries drove the author away from his faith and toward the bottle. He struggled to blame human imperfection and organizational flaws for the evils he was investigating, but he could not escape the question of why God would permit such things to happen. Pursuing a particularly horrendous story about an Alaskan island on which virtually all the boys were sodomized by Catholic clergy, he finally reached an uncompromising answer: What had happened to helpless boys at the edge of the world made a lot more sense if there were no God. It's not a cheerful conclusion, but Lobdell's honesty and self-effacement make it persuasive.An important wake-up call to people of faith. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

William Lobdell has been a journalist for 25 years, winning scores of state and national awards. In 1998, he was assigned to the religion beat for the Los Angeles Times. During his eight years covering faith, he was a finalist for national religion writer of the year in 2002, 2003 and 2004. He left the religion beat when he lost his faith, in 2007.

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