Product Description

Sacred America, in lucid and poetic prose, is the story of ordinary people who have dared to follow and trust the voices of their own souls in the midst of everyday life in the United States. It is also the story of another America, one not seen on the nightly news. What Roger Housden finds on his journey across the country suggests to him that, contrary to popular belief, the United States is among the most creative and spiritually vibrant cultures on earth. Sacred America is his proof.

Just as Alexis de Tocqueville set out across our country in search of democracy, so too did Housden, an Englishman, travel throughout the United States in the waning years of the twentieth century in search of this country's heart. He discovered that, despite or perhaps due to the moral turpitude of Wall Street and Capitol Hill, the spirit of the American people is flourishing. Americans are continually redefining what it means to be human, what they want from democracy, and, most important, how a democratic society is an expression of the sacred.

As an outsider, Housden was both surprised and impressed by what he found -- the extent to which the aspirations, genius, actions, wisdom, and compassion of people in all walks of life are woven into the social and cultural fabric of America. For Housden, this presence of Being in the midst of everyday life, rather than in formal places of worship (though he found it there too), is reinventing what a sense of the sacred means for the American individual at the turn of the millennium.

Sacred America acknowledges that a spiritual materialism prospers here to an extent that would stagger any European mind; spiritual techniques and teachings have become major product lines along with everything else. Yet Housden also finds a genuine human spirit flourishing, found in small-town Wyoming, on a bus ride to Manhattan, on a remote Indian reservation, in an artist's cave in New Mexico, in the life of a letter carrier in California, and even in Hollywood. Further, he finds groups of people coming together to share their various faiths in a truly open spirit: at Wellesley College in Massachusetts; among the politicians of Washington, D.C.; at Habitat for Humanity; at a retreat center for ex-cons in North Carolina; as well as in churches, at an Islamic conference, in Buddhist meditation centers, and in the traditional Hispanic faith in northern New Mexico.

What is significant, Housden discovers, is that no one is in charge of this emergence of the human spirit. No one is doing it. This other America -- so different from the image that much of the world holds of this country -- is not a cause that you fight for or a movement orchestrated by any religious or spiritual denomination. It is something at work, Housden suggests, in the collective psyche. It is something we participate in, rather than direct or control. A broader intelligence is at work not as some external force acting on us but from within us as a collective. It is changing the way Americans feel about themselves, restoring a sense of meaning and moral authority to the wellspring of individual conscience -- Housden calls it the intelligence of the knowing heart. Sacred America is emerging, Housden concludes, as that growing community of individuals who are interconnected not by the external dictate of creed or culture but by the prompting of the heart's intelligence.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1314347 in Books
• Published on: 1999-11-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

Amazon.com Review
Roger Housden was researching a book on the survival of the sacred in India when a floating thought settled smack in front of his third eye. "India for all its living spiritual wisdom, is not the land that holds the seal of the sacred for the next millennium," he realized. "That country is America." From then on, Housden, a native of Britain, began his quest to document the spiritual breadth and depth of America. Some of his fascinating destinations include a native Sun Dance at the Crow Fair powwow in Montana, a Rosh Hashanah retreat in the Catskill Mountains of New York, and a catholic Easter celebration in Old New Mexico.

Rather than dryly cataloging all the spiritual diversity that America hosts, Housden allows himself to truly spend time with the people and places he visits. As a result, his reflections carry the substance of a wise man who dwells with people and ideas, asking penetrating questions and listening attentively. As a result, this is armchair pilgrimage at its best--offering keen insight and rich storytelling to grasp "one of the most spiritually vibrant cultures on earth." --Gail Hudson

From Publishers Weekly
Housden, a British author and leader of spiritually oriented tours, here narrates his personal journey through the religious landscape of the United States. His tourAa clockwise circle from Billings, Mont., to San FranciscoAdoes not claim to be exhaustive. He does not seek out conservative Christians, Mormons or Hasidic Jews (although he does meet a man expelled from the Lubavitcher rabbinate for promoting LSD). Housden's sacred America embraces instead the mystics, seekers and individualists of American religion. Many are like himself: New Age entrepreneurs making a living through inspirational speaking or corporate retreats. Others have started nonprofit organizations to bring prayer to prisons or introduce troubled youths to Nobel Peace Prize laureates, or have founded meditation retreats along the continuum between Thomas Merton and D.T. Suzuki. Still others are ordinary people possessed by a passion for Rumi or a conviction that God is working through them. Housden's account is brisk and readable but short on context and analysis. The distinctive qualities of different confessions blend together, although the reader may not be convinced that Housden has observed a single national "spirit." Framed by his very personal response to everything he encounters (at one Midwestern meditation center he weeps for the death of Princess Diana), the book reads like an unedited travel diary of a likable, curious, slightly starry-eyed visitor. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
British chronicler Housden (Sacred Journeys in a Modern World, 1998, not reviewed, etc.) makes a mixed contribution to that honored genre, the American travelogue, by traipsing across the country with his eyes on the spiritual. The US, he believes, holds the seal of the sacred for the next millennium. Housdens cast of characters is an intriguing bunch: Jewish renewal devotees celebrating Rosh Hashana in the Catskills; green-conscious architects in Charlottesville, Virginia; leftist evangelicals in D.C. Housden introduces us to Doug Conwell, the leader of a program that takes people with AIDS walking in the wilderness; Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat for Humanity; and Eddie Hauben, a Jewbue (Jews who practice Buddhism and observe all the Jewish holy days). Taken together, Housdens assorted spiritual snapshots reveal a varied, vibrant, and idiosyncratic sacred America. Unfortunately, Housden overemphasizes the idiosyncratic. Where, one wonders, are the Episcopalians, the Southern Baptists, the Orthodox Jews? Where are the believers whose beliefs Housden, in his ecumenical indulgence of everything left-of-center, cannot embrace? And how can one offer a portrait of spiritual life in America without a trip to Salt Lake City? Housden imagines he is a latter-day Tocqueville, but he is deceived. Worth skimming, but dont confuse Sacred America with the definitive portrait of spiritual life in the US. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Deeply Nourishing Soul Food/Compassionate/Intelligent/Wise
In Sacred America, Roger Housden uncovers a powerful current in the American zeitgeist that illuminates the frontiers of the transformational process. I found this book to be deeply nourishing soul food, especially in a time like ours, when the spiritual life, along with everything else, is being reconceptualized for the global era. The search for a deeper spiritual chord that is more resonant with the times than the traditional creeds of organized religion is well under way in the US. This is the territory that Sacred America beautifully explores, and, I feel strongly that the Kirkus review has missed the point entirely in complaining that the book should include something on the Episcopalians and a trip to Salt Lake City. Housden clearly has no interest in making yet another journey through well tried and well worn dogmas and movements. His focus is much more specific - he wants to unearth what is new and emergent (note the subtitle) that is shaping the way we may experience ourselves both as individuals and as a culture in the new millenium. The result for me is a stirring book that gives us a hopeful and empowering field guide - both to the human heart and to the soul of America. I am grateful to Housden for the stories he tells so well and for his penetrating observations and compassionate ear.

best book I have read this year
This is frankly the best book I have ever read on the fertile landscape of the spirit in America. I was moved, uplifted, and encouraged to trust more in the intelligence of my own life's pattern by the stories of the people Housden meets as well as by his own story. It was also gratifying to hear that a foreigner - an Englishman - sees such promise for the inner life in our country. Housden's view is a welcome relief from the other, more common picture of America as the engine of global greed. He also happens to be a deep and insightful writer. In Sacred America, he has made a profound and inspiring contribution to the ongoing conversation on our culture.