Can God Intervene? by Gary Stern

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Synopsis

To explore various religious explanations of the tragedies inflicted by nature, author Gary Stern has interviewed 43 prominent religious leaders across the religious spectrum, among them Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People; Father Benedict Groeschel, author of Arise from Darkness; The Rev. James Rowe Adams, founder of the Center for Progressive Christianity; Kenneth R. Samples, vice president of Reason to Believe; Dr. James Cone, the legendary African American theologian; Tony Campolo, founder of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education; Dr. Sayyid Syeed, general secretary of the Islamic Society of North America; Imam Yahya Hendi, the first Muslim chaplain at Georgetown University; Dr. Arvind Sharma, one of the world's leading Hindu scholars; Robert A. F. Thurman, the first American to be ordained a Tibetan Buddhist monk; David Silverman, the national spokesman for American Atheists; and others--rabbis, priests, imams, monks, storefront ministers, itinerant holy people, professors, and chaplains--Jews, Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants, evangelical Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and Atheists-people of belief, and people of nonbelief, too.

Stern asked each of them probing questions about what their religion teaches and what their faith professes regarding the presence of tragedy. Some feel that the forces of nature are simply impersonal, and some believe that God is omniscient but not omnipotent. Some claim that nature is ultimately destructive because of Original Sin, some assert that the victims of natural disasters are sinners who deserve to die, and some explain that natural disasters are the result of individual and collective karma. Still others profess that God causes suffering in order to test and purify the victims. Stern, an award-winning religion journalist, has extensive experience in this type of analytical journalism. The result is a work that probes and challenges real people's beliefs about a subject that, unfortunately, touches everyone's life.

Anthony J. Elia - Library Journal

Templeton Award-winning religion journalist Stern's broad work surveys the world's contemporary religious traditions on the issue of natural disaster. The first two chapters focus on the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia that killed some 200,000 people and on the flood myths of antiquity-narrative bookends of natural disaster. The remaining chapters (3-11) detail conversations the author had and interviews he conducted with 43 leaders from the world's "major" religious traditions, e.g., Judaism, Roman Catholicism, Islam, and Hinduism. These include Rabbi Harold Kushner (When Bad Things Happen to Good People) and Hindu scholar Arvind Sharma. Stern's writing is personal, attempting to distinguish the voices of his interviewees while making them familiar and accessible. Each participant has his or her own understanding of natural disaster and demonstrates this through a theological vernacular, yet one might wonder if the choice of voices is broad, specific, or engaged enough. The book is a snapshot of micro-theologies and as such cannot speak for whole traditions, but it can serve as an introductory narrative and engaging read for those interested in what leading figures from the major traditions make of natural disasters. Recommended for public and theological libraries.

Biography

GARY STERN is a journalist who has covered religion for a decade for The Journal News of suburban Westchester, New York. He won the James O. Supple Award from the Religion Newswriters Association as the national religion "writer of the year" in 2001, and in 2005 he won the Templeton Award as National Religion Reporter of the Year. Stern has written about every major religious group in New York and has covered many of the top religious figures of the day. He grew up in Brooklyn and Staten Island and has a master's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. He lives in White Plains, New York.