Why Faith Matters

by David J. Wolpe

Overview

In Why Faith Matters, Rabbi David J. Wolpe blends the powerful personal story of his struggles with his own faith with a poignant response to the new atheists that reveals just how important faith in modern society. With a foreword by Rick Warren, New York Times bestselling author of The Purpose Driven Life, Why Faith Matters is an articulate and much-needed nondenominational defense of established religion in America by the man Newsweek magazine named the #1 Pulpit Rabbi in America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061633355
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	09/01/2009
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	214,934
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Named the #1 Pulpit Rabbi in America (as reported in Newsweek), David J. Wolpe is the rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and a teacher of modern Jewish religious thought at UCLA. Rabbi Wolpe writes for many publications, including The Jewish Week, Jerusalem Post, Los Angeles Times, and Beliefnet.com. He has appeared as a commentator on CNN and CBS This Morning and has been featured on the History Channel's Mysteries of the Bible. He is the author of six previous books, including the national bestseller Making Loss Matter: Creating Meaning in Difficult Times.

Editorial Reviews

Rabbi Wolpe (Making Loss Matter) joins the throngs of authors responding to the new atheists with defenses of faith. Yet rather than tense up about atheism, its defenders and their dismissive attitudes about people of faith, Wolpe answers these challenges with such kindness and thoughtfulness that even the heart of Christopher Hitchens might find itself warmed. Wolpe does not make his case for faith by hiding the darkest moments of Western traditions. Rather, he shines a light on religion's deepest scars-for instance spending a good deal of time discussing the relationship between religion and violence-while at the same time showing how religions have also (almost) always been a force of good in the world. (Take Christianity's extraordinary response to the tsunami in Indonesia, Wolpe explains.) With gentle, wonderfully engaging prose, Wolpe scrolls through history and shows how faith traditions don't offer easy, simplistic answers for the intellectually weak, as the New Atheists imply. More often than not, religion sparks believers to ask even more difficult questions, while at the same time building a platform on which to live under a canopy of hope. (Sept.)

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