Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, September 10, 1995                   TAG: 9509080143
SECTION: BOOKS                    PAGE: G-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY MARIE S. BEAN
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

AN EDITOR LOOKS AT AMERICA'S SPIRITUAL SIDE

"Re-Discovering the Sacred" is a thoughtful book, but it is not heavy. A notable attraction is the unique combination of the intellectual and the experiential. Author Phyllis Tickle has an objective viewpoint, but hers is not the mode of cool detachment.

Tickle is religious editor of Publishers Weekly. PW is an international trade journal serving the book industry - from libraries and booksellers to writers and publishers, rights buyers and dedicated readers who scan its pages before deciding to buy a book. Tickle's job, first of all, is to review the manuscripts and/or bound galleys of English-language books that are to be published on religion, spirituality and sacred literature. And, second, her job is to identify shifts in the market.

The subject is not just a "job" to her. She admits to having a lifelong, personal absorption with the sacred, the spiritual and the religious. She regards being at PW as "a vocation in both the mundane and the theological sense of that word." About "Re-Discovering the Sacred," it will be "a view from the `catbird' seat," she says.

What she is seeing from the "catbird" seat is the dramatic upsurge in interest in books having to do with spirituality and with religion generally, theistic as well as nontheistic. This interest is broadly ecumenical and thematically open-ended as people search for meaning, for answers to questions having to do with material well-being, for spiritual roots.

There are 10 short chapters (and endnotes), dealing with such topics as why we are in turmoil; what we believe in; what we are seeking; what we believe the sacred is; what the means and gifts of spirituality are; what Christianity is in the New Age.

Interspersed are four chapters she calls "interludes," anecdotal material that illuminates and clarifies.

Tickle concludes this survey with an intensely personal confession of faith which lends a special authenticity to her work.

Marie S. Bean is a retired college chaplain.