he
heart of this book -- the second on religion from a journalist known for her
elegant forays into behavioral science -- is the kind of vivid reporting we have
come to expect from Winifred Gallagher. She travels from Sudbury, Mass., to
Madurai, India, introducing readers to 10 spiritual luminaries. We meet Sister
Bette Edl, a Franciscan hermit who lives in a yurt in Maine; Tenzin Palmo, a
Buddhist nun who spent three years on a solitary retreat in a Himalayan cave;
and Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, the Israeli teacher best known for his landmark
English translation of the Talmud. What unites this diverse group is what
Gallagher calls spiritual genius: part attentiveness, part moxie, part wisdom,
part compassion.
Gallagher is to be commended for her deft and
respectful treatment of so many traditions. With her gentle guidance, religious
people of all stripes will find that they have much to learn. Catholics and
Orthodox Jews pondering the question of women's ordination will find the chapter
on Riffat Hassan, a feminist Muslim scholar, instructive. Protestant parents
trying to juggle church and Sunday-morning soccer games will appreciate Rabbi
Steinsaltz's musings on the Sabbath.
But if Gallagher's breadth and gracious humility
are the greatest strength of ''Spiritual Genius,'' her uncritical embrace of
ecumenism is also its great weakness. Insisting that ''global changes . . . make
the pursuit of insight from diverse sources the rule,'' and that ours is an age
when ''it's hard to maintain that only one group owns the truth,'' Gallagher
seems most taken with the religious teachers who assure her that the world's
religions are different paths to the same truth. As Lawrence Kushner, the
learned Reform rabbi who has reintroduced Jewish mysticism to modern Americans,
puts it, ''Your degree of religious tolerance is a barometer of your spiritual
development.'' This will come as something of a surprise to Jews who see
adherence to halacha (Jewish law) as a better barometer; to Protestants who
measure spiritual development against the will of Jesus, and so forth.
For all her capaciousness, Gallagher fails to
make room for one thing -- the unfashionable belief, shared by the orthodox of
most of the world's faiths, that there is something exclusive about the nature
of religious truth claims. Indeed, Gallagher has never had much use for belief
per se. In her memoirish ''Working on God,'' she concluded that ''religion
needn't focus on beliefs.'' In ''Spiritual Genius,'' pressing the old pragmatist
question of how to set aside literal belief in dogma without abandoning religion
altogether, she focuses on practice. To wit, her portrait of Tony Campolo, an
evangelical preacher and activist. Gallagher is wary of talking to Campolo about
''matters of faith.'' Instead, she focuses almost exclusively on his social work
with poor children in inner-city Philadelphia. Campolo's ministry is worthy of
praise and emulation. But for the evangelicals listening to his sermons,
Gallagher's dichotomy between admirable social action and discomforting belief
in the uniquely salvific work of Christ would be unintelligible.
Gallagher herself seems content with a sort of
spiritual dilettantism: ''I accepted my conflicted Christian heritage . . . and
also continued to do Zen meditation, study with rabbis and pursue other kinds of
religious insight.'' This pastiche approach to spiritual practice may leave many
readers unmoved. If Lawrence Kushner numbers both the Baal Shem Tov and the
Dalai Lama among his formative influences, many of the spiritual geniuses
Gallagher profiles point to another, narrower path. The examples of Sister Bette
in her yurt, Rabbi Steinsaltz at his Talmud and Tenzin Palmo on her retreat
suggest that it is consistent and costly engagement with the vocabulary and
grammar of one religious tradition that bears spiritual fruit. Perhaps in her
next book, Gallagher will invite pilgrims on a journey that doesn't require them
to surrender particularistic claims in favor of a spiritual smorgasbord.
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