The Life of Meaning: Reflections on Faith, Doubt, and Repairing the World - Hardcover

"A rich feast of accumulated wisdom"-"Publishers Weekly"

"Filled with ideas of people from scientists to writers, the book dismantles the myth that postmodern thinking offers little room for faith."-"Religion News Service"

"If you want to know how a wide and divergent array of thoughtful American understand and practice their religious faith, no other one book can tell you more than this collection of honest and often powerfully moving reflections."-Peter Steinfels, Co-director, Fordham Center on Religion and Culture and religion columnist for the "New York Times"

"This is a feast of ideas and insights, a banquet of hard-won wisdom to which you can return time and again when your heart yearns for inspiration and your intellect for illumination."-Bill Moyers

Praise for the PBS Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly show:

“Finally something intelligent on TV about religion.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“The best spot on the television landscape to take in the broad view of the spiritual dimension of American life as well as insightful glimpses of developments abroad.”—The Christian Science Monitor

In this thoughtful collection, extraordinary people who have been guests on the celebrated PBS show Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly describe how faith is possible amid the tragedy and senselessness of contemporary existence. Their insights on community, prayer, suffering, religious observance, the choice to live with or without a god, and the meanings that are gleaned from everyday life form an elegant meditation that acknowledges the desire to search for something beyond what we can see and measure.

Features over sixty contributors, including Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu, Studs Terkel, Madeleine L’Engle, Chris Hedges, Marilyn Robinson, Rabbi Harold Kushner, Thomas Lynch, Reverend Barbara Brown Taylor, Phyllis Tickle, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and Dr. Francis Collins.

Bob Abernethy is the executive editor and host of Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, which he developed and created for PBS in 1997. Before launching the series, he had served as a correspondent for NBC News for more than four decades, reporting from Washington, Los Angeles, London, and Moscow.

William Bole is a freelance journalist whose articles have appeared in The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Commonweal magazine, and other outlets. He is also a research fellow of the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University.