Keeping Faith - by Fenton Johnson (Paperback)

About the Book

A journalist and award-winning novelist offers a frank and intimate account of how he rediscovered faith in a spiritual journey from Gethsemani to the San Francisco Zen Center, through Buddhism and back to Catholicism.

Book Synopsis

In his resonant account of a spiritual quest, Fenton Johnson examines what it means for a skeptic to have and to keep faith. Exploring Western and Eastern monastic traditions, Johnson lives as a member of the community at the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky and at the branches of the San Francisco Zen Center. Ultimately his encounter with Buddhism brings him to a new understanding and embrace of Christianity. Weaving together meditations on Johnson's spiritual journey with history and insights from modern monks, Keeping Faith offers a blueprint for a new way of practicing faith.

Review Quotes

"Richly allusive, impressively lucid, and unflinchingly honest; Johnson speaks as eloquently to the heart as to the head." Kirkus Reviews

"KEEPING FAITH is a tour de force -- a moving memoir of an American boyhood as well as a deftly written exploration of Christian and Buddhist monasticism. Fenton Johnson's urgent inquiry traces religious impulse to its source in the very springs of human desire -- where he finds much longing, much trouble, and enduring beauty." --Patricia Hampl, author of A ROMANTIC EDUCATION

"Johnson's account of his passage from skepticism to faith is exceedingly refreshing and pure in its honesty..." Publishers Weekly --