c. 2006 Religion News Service

CHICAGO _ Cathleen Falsani has a few rules when it comes to religion reporting:

No finger pointing. Never turn your tape recorder off. Listen intently without worrying about the next question. And remember all truth is God’s truth _ whether it comes from a church pulpit or the Playboy Mansion.

That’s why in the summer of 2004, Falsani, religion writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, found herself outside Hugh Hefner’s palatial home, telling a “talking rock” by the gate that she was there to ask the Playboy founder what he thought about God.

The gate opened and before long, Falsani, a self-described “born again, left-leaning evangelical” was deep in a surprising conversation with Hefner about the meaning of life. It was, Falsani, recalls in her new book, “The God Factor,” something she could “never have imagined in a million years.”

Falsani’s curiosity about how people see God, and her love of a good story, inspired “The God Factor,” which was released Tuesday (March 14). The book, based on a series that ran in the Sun-Times, features conversations on spirituality with an eclectic group of 32 public figures. Some, like Bono, Sen. Barack Obama, novelist Anne Rice, and White House speechwriter Michael Gerson, have been outspoken about their faith. Others, like Chicago Cubs manager Dusty Baker, singer Annie Lennox, actor John Mahoney and economist Jeffrey Sachs, had rarely spoken about it before.

The idea, Falsani said in an interview at Chicago’s House of Blues, was to view the breadth of religious faith in America through the eyes of well-known people.

“My hypothesis was that if I talk to enough of these people,” she said, “I was going to see a real spectrum but some qualities that are universal.”

Those universals included grace, love and dealing with suffering. Lennox, for example, talked about the death of her first son, who was stillborn, and how it taught her that life was “a flickering candle” easily snuffed out. Mahoney told of his bout with cancer, and of the colostomy bag he’s worn for nearly 20 years. Iyanla Vanzant talked about surviving rape and an abusive marriage, all the while fearing the Jesus of her childhood _ who would “plucketh out thine eye and smiteth out thine being” at the slightest transgression.

The stories reflect Falsani’s take on religion reporting. She steers away from blow-by-blow accounts of culture war conflicts, like gay marriage or the “war on Christmas,” in favor of small stories of how religion affects daily life.

“I find people far more interesting than conflicts,” she said. “You can communicate great truths and universal ideas through the very specific. I could sit down and read four volumes of theology, but if I read a 400-word story about someone who actually expresses it in the way they live, in the way they love _ that stays with me.”

That approach earned Falsani the 2005 Supple Award as the country’s best religion writer, from the Religion Newswriters Association.

Falsani prefers straight talk to theological hairsplitting. (Though she does, in fact, have a master’s degree in theology.) After the Sago Mine disaster in January, while many reporters were asking theologians how God could allow such a thing to happen, she instead talked to her friend Studs Terkel. The 90-something Terkel, who also appears in “The God Factor,” reminded her that the Creator hadn’t let those miners down _ their employer had. The Sago mine had been cited for more than 200 safety violations the year before the disaster.

In a Sun-Times column, she recalled Terkel saying, “It’s not an act of God, it’s an act of guys _ guys exploiting other guys!”

Falsani believes her curiosity and willingness to suspend judgment opened up a “God-space” during the conversations. That space allowed her interview subjects to be honest and vulnerable about their faith, or lack of it. The approach was something she learned while attending evangelical Wheaton College and from a book called “The Go-Between God,” by John V. Taylor.

She prayed before the interviews that God would be present in the conversation.

“Often I didn’t say very much (in the interview),” she said. “Being a good listener, because it is the loving and respectful thing to do, allows people to think out loud. I am comfortable with the awkward pauses, because usually the next thing that comes out of the person’s mouth is what they really want to say.”

There were a few people who Falsani missed out on interviewing. She’d hope to talk with Johnny Cash.

“I am going to have to wait on that, I suppose,” she said.

She did talk with U2’s Bono, whom she met at a Dublin pub in 2002. She joined him later that year in his “Heart of America” tour, when he traveled the U.S., urging Christian groups to get involved in fighting the AIDS pandemic. “He makes me want to be a better person,” she said.

The chapter on Bono reflects one of the main themes of Falsani’s work: the essential nature of grace. In their conversation, the singer said that he’s “not the best advertisement for God,” calling himself a “crap disciple,” and “the runt” of the Christian litter. He refers to grace as “the oxygen of religious life on earth.”

“Because without it,” he said, “religion will surely suffocate you.”

That’s a sentiment that Falsani shares.

“Without grace, we are screwed,” she said. “If grace isn’t true, we might as well give up.”

MO/JL END RNS Editors: To obtain photos of Cathleen Falsani and the cover of her new book, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.