FAITH INTERRUPTED
A Spiritual Journey
A profoundly personal, deeply felt exploration of the mystery of faith—having it, losing it, hoping for its return. The son of an Episcopal priest whose faith is balanced by an understanding of human nature, Eric Lax develops in his youth a deep religious attachment and acute moral compass. An acolyte from age six and as comfortable in church as he is at home, he often considers becoming a priest himself. Eventually his faith guides him to resist military service in Vietnam. His principles will not allow him to kill, and he is willing to go to jail for them. His faith abides until,
A profoundly personal, deeply felt exploration of the mystery of faith—having it, losing it, hoping for its return. The son of an Episcopal priest whose faith is balanced by an understanding of human nature, Eric Lax develops in his youth a deep religious attachment and acute moral compass. An acolyte from age six and as comfortable in church as he is at home, he often considers becoming a priest himself. Eventually his faith guides him to resist military service in Vietnam. His principles will not allow him to kill, and he is willing to go to jail for them. His faith abides until, in his mid-thirties, he begins to question the unquestionable: the role of God in his life.
- Knopf
- Hardcover
- April 2010
- 288 Pages
- 9780307455543
Buy the Book
$26.00
About Eric Lax
Eric Lax is the author of On Being Funny: Woody Allen and Comedy, Life and Death on 10 West, and The Mold in Dr. Florey’s Coat, and coauthor (with A. M. Sperber) of Bogart. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and the Los Angeles Times. An officer of International PEN, he lives with his wife and their two sons in Los Angeles.
Praise
“Jesus said that he who would save his life must lose it. Does that go for faith, too? Do you have to lose it to save it? If there is any single question that Eric Lax’s luminously honest loss-of-faith memoir most clearly raises, this would be it. We live in two faith cultures. One culture only wants to hear how you lost your faith, the other only how you found it. But some of us have a foot in both cultures: dubious as plain believers, equally dubious as plain unbelievers. Eric Lax’s unfinished, interrupted story is a good one for us, and for better or worse our name is Legion.”—Jack Miles, author,
God: A Biography
“Eric Lax’s moving and riveting memoir reflects a Christian boy’s struggle with faith and doubt, tradition and discovery. His encounters with other beliefs reflect as well his sense of empathy for, and solidity with, victims of destiny.”—Elie Wiesel
“In an age when it’s so fashionable to mock religious belief, Eric Lax gives us a quiet, very moving meditation on his own spiritual trials and turns.”—Paul Hendrickson, author, The Living and the Dead
“Heartfelt . . . Faith, Interrupted is such an honest and affecting memoir that one can imagine Lax wrote much of it in the same frame of mind in which he contemplated the night sky as a boy.”
—Judy Bolton-Fasman, Boston Globe
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