One of the most fascinating things about professor Jeff Sharlet's new book, "Sweet Heaven When I Die: Faith, Faithlessness, and the Country In Between," which features, among others, a holocaust survivor, a new age guru and a fundamentalist Christian, is that these stories all happen to be true.
Sharlet, who considers himself a "literary journalist," said his goal is to find the riveting stories that exist in everyday life. His new book, which explores the state of religion in America and the different ways that people connect with and express their faith, is the result of interviews conducted by Sharlet over the course of eight years.
Sharlet partly began the project as a means to escape what he saw as an absolute and confining world view espoused by one religious group that he was researching at the time. He said he simply wanted "to be with the people who were eccentric and wonderful and strange."
Having grown up half-Christian and half-Jewish in a predominantly Christian town, Sharlet often felt like an outsider, a feeling that partially inspired his interest in studying religion. Through his research, however, Sharlet found this sense of being an outsider in many of the subjects he interviewed, he said.
"We're all kind of outsiders," Sharlet said. "America is not a country of orthodoxy. We have a choice in our beliefs."
In the course of writing the book, Sharlet used an investigative, journalistic approach to get to know and understand his characters. While other nonfiction writers might be tempted to exaggerate or modify facts for the purpose of telling a better story, Sharlet said there is something ethically and artistically wrong in such distortion. The goal of nonfiction is to be aware of the world around you, according to Sharlet.
"Creative nonfiction is literary journalism," he said. "You have to get your facts straight."
Creative nonfiction comes with its own special challenges. Sharlet found structuring the book particularly difficult, as the beliefs expressed by Sharlet's subjects often contradicted each other. He worked backwards, first conducting his interviews and doing research, before settling on the theme of the book. In an atypical move for a nonfiction writer, Sharlet chose to forgo an introduction to the book.
"People are going to do what they want with the stories," he said, adding that he wanted to avoid forcing any particular overarching conclusions.
Another challenge unique to nonfiction is the subject's reaction to the book. Several of the people featured in the book were unhappy with their portrayal, according to Sharlet. Sharlet said he stands by what he wrote, and that by recording his interviews, he was able to prove that his depictions were grounded in accurate reporting.
Sharlet was most worried about the reactions he would receive from his own friends he depicted in the book. He was surprised to find that his friends were happy with the book, as they were pleasantly surprised by the ways that Sharlet chose to describe them.
Sharlet also strove to retain an empathetic point of view throughout his writing, even when writing about people who were hostile to him or with whom he disagreed, he said. A failure to empathize makes writing well about someone nearly impossible, Sharlet said.
"The best way to be respectful to someone is to let them tell their stories," Sharlet said.
Although statistics purportedly prove that church attendance has decreased in America, Sharlet said spirituality continues to be expressed in less traditional ways. Sharlet said that the recent GOP debates and the upcoming Republican nomination contests are examples of how religion still has an influential role in politics and society.
It is impossible to exist in a world where religion remains completely separate from society, Sharlet said, since religion and spirituality have an intangible influence on everyday life.
There is something distinctly American about religious expression in the United States, Sharlet found, which he said is one of the more interesting discoveries stemming from his project. Landscape, geography and regionalism all play a role in determining religious ideals. He said the ideas of Manifest Destiny and American Exceptionalism of the 19th century show that in America, while individuals find their personal lives shaped by religious identity, the government is not above using religion to help further nationalistic goals.
During his long journey across the United States, one of the more unexpected things Sharlet uncovered is that many of the people he talked to held a strong belief in free speech. Sharlet said this was particularly fascinating because people he had interacted with seemed to believe that free speech was an important part of their religion, even though the right to free speech is an American invention separate from religious dogma.
Through the diversity of stories in his book, Sharlet shows that religious expression does not always have to be absolute or dogmatic, but that individuals constantly compromise, debate and struggle with their own religious beliefs.
"America is made of a thousand little gods strewn across the country," Sharlet said.
