Do You Believe?

Modern-day Renaissance man Antonio Monda—professor, author, editor, filmmaker and practicing Catholic—taps into his extensive network among America’s cultural elite for this compelling new book. While its straightforward subtitle, Conversations on God and Religion, plainly states what awaits between the covers, it’s the people with whom Monda converses that make this exercise so intriguing. They include authors Toni Morrison and Saul Bellow, filmmakers Spike Lee and David Lynch, and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel. His impressive array is quite at odds with the vast majority of Americans: Only 40 percent of the conversationalists consider themselves believers.

But what conversations they have. Though a slim volume, the discussions provide enough food for thought for a lifetime of such banquets. When Jane Fonda, a relatively recent convert to Christianity, speaks of an apocryphal Gospel of Thomas advising that one must be both male and female to enter Heaven, well, it isn’t hard to imagine why the early church’s patriarchy left that out of the biblical canon. Still, most musings won’t seem revolutionary to people who’ve questioned their spirituality (author Michael Cunningham isn’t the first to observe, “If you believe in physics, it’s really not a big jump to say you believe in God”).

The book also provides a sweet, final coda for author and activist Grace Paley, whose death is so recent, it’s not even noted within these pages. The avowed atheist (interviewed at age 83) tells us that she “obviously” doesn’t believe in life after death, but she also expresses an appreciation of the mysteries beyond human comprehension. It’s a laudably human moment, one of many in this fine collection.