Religion & Spirituality

In The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, author Daniel Mendelsohn unearths and reconstructs the lives of six people in his family who died in the Holocaust. Maureen Corrigan has a book review.

David Kuo is the former deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. He left in December 2003. He says he was disillusioned with the administration because they failed to actually fund faith-based charities, and they used compassion and religion for political ends. He is the author of the new memoir Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction.

H. James Towey is the former director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. He is David Kuo's former boss. He responds to Kuo's criticisms of the Bush administration's follow through on the initiatives. Towey is now president of the Benedictine Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Penn.

Playwright and filmmaker Neil LaBute has earned a reputation for writing characters who are selfish, mean, misanthropic and misogynistic. His films include In the Company of Men and Your Friends & Neighbors. His plays include "The Mercy Seat", "Some Girls" and "Fat Pig". The New Yorker's John Lahr says his plays are "complex and unnerving," and that "there's no playwright on the planet who is writing better." "Wrecks" is LaBute's new one-man play starring Ed Harris.

Tanya Erzen is the author of the new book, Straight to Jesus: Sexual and Christian Conversions in the Ex-Gay Movement. It's about New Hope Ministry, a residential program for evangelical Christian men in the San Francisco Bay area who are struggling with homosexuality. It's part of a larger movement to convert gays to the straight Christian life.

Alan Chambers is the president of Exodus, the largest evangelical group devoted to converting homosexuals to heterosexuals. He himself was a gay teen and young adult before the church helped him overcome his homosexuality.

Religion professor Philip Jenkins talks about his latest book, The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South. The book is a follow-up to his 2002 title, The Next Christendom: the Coming of Global Christianity, which was named on of the top religion books of that year by USA Today.

Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America, is the first woman, the first convert and the first native North American to be elected to the position. Mattson, who was born and raised in Ontario, converted to Islam in college. The Islamic Society of North America is the largest Muslim organization on this continent.

Writer Alice McDermott won the National Book Award in 1998 for her novel, Charming Billy. McDermott has just brought out a new novel called After This, and our book critic says that it's a stunner.

Episcopalian minister Barbara Brown Taylor's new book, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith, describes her decision to leave her job after 15 years as a full-time minister.

Middle East peace expert Sari Nusseibeh is the founder of the Palestinian Consultancy Group and the Israeli-Palestinian Science Organization, the president of Al-Quds University in Jerusalem and a professor of Islamic philosophy. He co-wrote the People's Voice Initiative to build grassroots support for a two-state solution. Until December 2002, he was the representative of the Palestinian National Authority in Jerusalem.

Augustus Richard Norton is a professor of international relations and anthropology at Boston University and has been writing about Lebanon for 25 years. He is an expert on the Shiite political movements, including Hezbollah. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Norton's books include Amal and the Shi'a: Struggle for the Soul of Lebanon and Civil Society in the Middle East.

Middle East expert Vali Nasr talks about the latest developments there, and about his book The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future.

Our book critic reviews The Most Famous Man in America, by Debby Applegate. Applegate offers insights about the charismatic Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, the brother of Uncle Tom's Cabin author Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Clarinetist Ben Goldberg is a key figure in the Bay Area improvisational scene, where he became known in the early 1990s as a member of the New Klezmer Trio.

Frank Tracy Griswold III, the 25th presiding bishop and primate of the U.S. Episcopal Church, is ending his nine-year term later this year. His replacement — a woman — has just been named. The Episcopal Church has been divided in recent years over the ordination of gay bishops.

Writer Reynolds Price has penned a total of 37 volumes of fiction, poetry, plays, essays and translations. His new book is Letter to a Godchild (Concerning Faith). Price has taught at Duke University since 1958, and has won numerous awards and honors for his work.

Syracuse English professor Mary Karr is the author of two bestselling memoirs, The Liars' Club and Cherry. She has won Pushcart prizes for both her poetry and essays. Her new book of poems is Sinners Welcome.

Michael Farris is the co-founder of Home School Legal Defense Association and the president of Patrick Henry College, the first university in America for Christian home-schooled children. The school, located in Purcellville, Va., grooms its students for leadership.

Journalist Michelle Goldberg, a senior writer for the online magazine Salon, and covers the Christian Right. In her new book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, she writes that Christian nationalists believe the Bible is literally true — and they want to see the nation governed by that truth.