The Gospel According to America: A Meditation on a God-Blessed, Christ-Haunted Idea

I have found this book an excellent read. Dark begins a conversation about conversation. In a day when we pay others to think for us Dark asks the questions we ought to ask every day of all the varying authorities that shape the cultural, social and political landscape of our county. I've given this book to numerous people in lots of settings and told them its a must read. As a pastor in a church that recognizes our struggle to understand the need for corporate confession on a nation-state and church institutional level I have been using this as a Sunday school curriculum that proved very fruitful and sparked an engaging and faithful conversation. While the vast scope of Dark's material from Moby Dick and the Scarlet Letter to Radiohead, folk music and Bob Dylan will at times seem overwhelming - there is always a good bit of wisdom and more questions offered for stimulating a healthy communal awareness.

The level of debate about faith, politics and cultural life in the United States (and beyond) is woefully lacking. Too often, being a person of faith means either hiding in a ghetto, or compartmentalising critical engagement and faithful living. David Dark, who laid out his credentials in Everyday Apocalypse, offers this tour de force looking at the intersection of faithful life and rich cultural engagement. Living faithfully means engaging with all that is around us, lifting up that which is worthwhile and working to transform that which is dehumanising. Dark looks for that which is distinctive about the american experience and casts a critical yet loving look at that broad cross-section. Scattered with analogy, reflection and a deep appreciation of music, film and literature, this is the sort of engagement that should be making headlines and has the power to change lives.