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Do You Believe? Conversations on God and Religion
Some of the most well-known and well-respected cultural figures of our time enter into intimate and illuminating conversation about their personal beliefs, about belief itself, about religion, and about God.
Antonio Monda is a disarming, rigorous interviewer, asking the most difficult questions (he often begins an interview point blank: “Do you believe in God?”) that lead to the most wide-ranging conversations. An ardent believer himself, Monda talks both with atheists (asked what she feels when she meets a believer, Grace Paley replies: “I respect his thinking and his beliefs, but at the same time I think he’s deluded”) and other believers, their discussion ranging from personal images of God (Michael Cunningham sees God as a black woman, Derek Walcott as a wise old white man with a beard) to religion’s place in American culture, from the afterlife to the concepts of good and evil, from fundamentalism to the Bible. And almost without fail, the conversations turn to questions of art and literature. Toni Morrison discusses Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner, Richard Ford invokes Wallace Stevens, and David Lynch draws attention to the religious aspects of Bu–uel, Fellini...and Harold Ramis's Groundhog Day.
Informal, revealing, unexpected, Do You Believe? is a captivating and thought-provoking meditation how faith, in all its facets, remains profoundly relevant for and in our culture.
Antonio Monda is a disarming, rigorous interviewer, asking the most difficult questions (he often begins an interview point blank: “Do you believe in God?”) that lead to the most wide-ranging conversations. An ardent believer himself, Monda talks both with atheists (asked what she feels when she meets a believer, Grace Paley replies: “I respect his thinking and his beliefs, but at the same time I think he’s deluded”) and other believers, their discussion ranging from personal images of God (Michael Cunningham sees God as a black woman, Derek Walcott as a wise old white man with a beard) to religion’s place in American culture, from the afterlife to the concepts of good and evil, from fundamentalism to the Bible. And almost without fail, the conversations turn to questions of art and literature. Toni Morrison discusses Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner, Richard Ford invokes Wallace Stevens, and David Lynch draws attention to the religious aspects of Bu–uel, Fellini...and Harold Ramis's Groundhog Day.
Informal, revealing, unexpected, Do You Believe? is a captivating and thought-provoking meditation how faith, in all its facets, remains profoundly relevant for and in our culture.
192 pages, Paperback
First published October 9, 2007
3 people are currently reading
54 people want to read
About the author
Antonio Monda
29 books21 followersANTONIO MONDA is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including, most recently, the critically acclaimed Ota Benga. His work has been translated into eleven languages. A regular contributor to La Repubblica and a columnist for RAI Italian Television and Vogue Italia, Monda has directed several documentaries, as well as the feature film Dicembre. In 2015 he was named Artistic Director of the Rome Film Festival. He lives in New York, where he teaches in the Film and Television Department at New York University.
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May 31, 2018I know it’s a small book for the subject, but perfect for me tonight. The author’s idea, to approach relevant cultural figures/intellectuals about religion and God, is fascinating and fun and personal. I think each interviewee had the chance to open up about things that don’t normally go in books. I liked the variety of each person’s experiences, from believer to atheist to somewhere in between. Also cool to spot the commonalities between us all in how we go about believing and how those beliefs shape who we are. Wish I knew more of the literature and film references....gotta get on that.
June 4, 2014
The sections are too short for me. If you have never heard of these thinkers (one or two may not actually think)this book may be for you. I've read most of their works and know that their universes are so vast that a few pages cannot even hint at what they have to say about spirituality.
Still,for what the book attempted, good job. The subject matter is just too large for a little book.
Still,for what the book attempted, good job. The subject matter is just too large for a little book.
October 16, 2008
I thought the author missed the boat on this one: instead of asking questions that related to the interviewee's answers, he kept asking the same pointed questions instead of listening.
August 13, 2010
This is like the People Magazine of theology books.
Hey, famous person, what do YOU believe about God?
Kind of fun.
As they are famous intellectuals, they mostly have non-belief or vague belief instead of a crystallized image of what God or morality should be.
The interviewer, however, is very definitely Catholic. Even if he didn't tell you in the intro, you could probably get the idea from the way he asks his questions. When Derek Walcott says his relationship with God is "inconstant," Monda follows up with "How can you be inconstant toward an omnipotent being in whom you say you believe?"
Which is very Priest waggling a finger, in my opinion, while at the same time lacking the nuance of humanity.
IF THERE IS ONE ABSOLUTE THEN YOU MUST ACT TOWARD IT IN AN ABSOLUTE FASHION! This does not compute, y'all.
But then there are all sorts of areas where my belief system is so thoroughly out of sync with the author's that I am left befuddled. Take this line from the intro: "Personally, I feel that having faith allows us the greatest freedom in secular life, precisely because it leads to a genuine and complete detachment from any possible ideological or bigoted attitude." He goes on to mention that in practice there IS bigotry found in people of faith. Which, ya know, THANKS FOR THE HEADS UP. Which makes his statement merely a description of his Platonic ideal of how things should be. And yet he's using it as an actual plank in his argument...gah, my head hurts.
If things were this way arguments are annoying because things are NOT that way, and therefore those arguments should not affect real-life discussions.
The point of all this is: Read this book if you'd like to hear cultural behemoths talk about God or their lack thereof.
People Magazine of Theology.
All I'm saying.
Hey, famous person, what do YOU believe about God?
Kind of fun.
As they are famous intellectuals, they mostly have non-belief or vague belief instead of a crystallized image of what God or morality should be.
The interviewer, however, is very definitely Catholic. Even if he didn't tell you in the intro, you could probably get the idea from the way he asks his questions. When Derek Walcott says his relationship with God is "inconstant," Monda follows up with "How can you be inconstant toward an omnipotent being in whom you say you believe?"
Which is very Priest waggling a finger, in my opinion, while at the same time lacking the nuance of humanity.
IF THERE IS ONE ABSOLUTE THEN YOU MUST ACT TOWARD IT IN AN ABSOLUTE FASHION! This does not compute, y'all.
But then there are all sorts of areas where my belief system is so thoroughly out of sync with the author's that I am left befuddled. Take this line from the intro: "Personally, I feel that having faith allows us the greatest freedom in secular life, precisely because it leads to a genuine and complete detachment from any possible ideological or bigoted attitude." He goes on to mention that in practice there IS bigotry found in people of faith. Which, ya know, THANKS FOR THE HEADS UP. Which makes his statement merely a description of his Platonic ideal of how things should be. And yet he's using it as an actual plank in his argument...gah, my head hurts.
If things were this way arguments are annoying because things are NOT that way, and therefore those arguments should not affect real-life discussions.
The point of all this is: Read this book if you'd like to hear cultural behemoths talk about God or their lack thereof.
People Magazine of Theology.
All I'm saying.
October 4, 2019
I loved hearing from a diversity of people from various fields to include film makers and film stars like Jane Fonda. I was also consistently annoyed by the author who would ask a question and then argue with the person he was interviewing, almost always projecting his own sense of "orthodoxy." Still to hear from David Lynch, Saul Bellow, Spike Lee, Toni Morrison, Martin Scorsese, and Ellie Wiesel in one collection was worth putting up with the annoying Monda. I kept writing in the margins "arrogant," "naive," and "absolutely impoverished imagination" not of the people interviewed but of the interviewer. To his credit he's willing to interview people with open minds and a willingness to stretch beyond the box but at the same time He can't seem to get over a flat unimaginative reading of Dostoyevsky's "if God doesn't exist everything is permitted." To him this phrase has some magical talisman like power and I couldn't get over my impression that he hasn't really read Dostoyevsky. Spike Lee and I are on the same page because I wrote in the margin didn't the German's have "Gott mit uns" on their helmets and Spike made the same point on the very next page. Mondo heard something like this from at least three other people and seemed really unable to really hear their perspective. One final example of the author's narrowness of imagination was when interviewing Scorsese he asks about examples of spirituality in another great director. Scorsese mentions a moment in the film The Leopard which he felt was profoundly spiritual. Monda immediately dismissed the prayer because he said "it was almost pagan" as if this invalidated it as spiritual. The diversity of this collection and the quality and honesty of the voices here make up for the occasional annoying assertions of the author. In fact there is something interesting in seeing the way traditional religious views can block the imagination in contrast with those who have freed themselves from the blinders that is itself a gift this book unwittingly provides.
June 7, 2024
I enjoyed this book a great deal. It asks important questions, and gives you so much food for thought you'll never go hungry again.
October 22, 2024
I read this one who knows when, at least a few years ago. How we come to hold propositions through time is fascinating in and of itself.
January 13, 2025
Covers some deep concepts extremely well.
February 19, 2026
Not an in-depth analysis, but interesting to know the basic thoughts from the likes of Jane Fonda, Martin Scorsese, Salmon Rushdie, Spike Lee and Toni Morrison.
May 29, 2009
A frustrating but worthwhile book. It's disappointing when one comes to understand that certain artists for whom one has great admiration as artists have arrived at their opinions on God and religion with undeniable laziness. I'm not talking about some need to have all people agree with me, but rather that their thought exhibit rigor. I'm tired, for instance, of reading atheist condemnations of religion on the grounds that evil things have sometimes been done in God's name: the latter is true, but its being true is neither evidence against God's existence nor revealing about anything at all except human compulsions to consecrate their wrongdoing in the hope that it will then cease to be wrongdoing. It's an exhausted old saw, and Auster and Rushdie wield it here (Rushdie never seems to tire of wielding it). And then there's Jane Fonda, a Christian, arguing: "to say that Jesus is the only way to salvation has an odor of Christian imperialism" (63). Well, it isn't just anyone suggesting that, Jane, it's Christ himself: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). Is there a discomfiting hint of imperialism about it? There is, but instead of dismissing it out of hand as an affront to political correctness, we must wrestle with it, anguish over it, understand that -- perhaps -- we cannot fully understand it.
And if I had a dollar for every intellectual I've encountered (among those in, or mentioned in, this book: nebulous near-believer Michael Cunningham, Jonathan Franzen's atheist father, atheist Grace Paley) who insists on the Jeffersonian view that Christ was a fine or significant philosopher and nothing more, I'd be a rich man. The problem with this position is that these intellectuals are bending over backward to fashion Christ in their images (in much the same way Shakespeare scholars, including Germaine Greer, cannot but give us a Shakespeare that looks like them). Closer to the bone is C.S. Lewis's observation in Mere Christianity: "I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to" (52).
In short, the interviews with Saul Bellow, Nathan Englander, Jonathan Franzen, Spike Lee, Daniel Libeskind, David Lynch, Toni Morrison, Martin Scorsese and Elie Wiesel bear the most fruit. Each of them convinces me that his or her thought on the question of God has been pointed, conflicted, relentless, careful, thorough. I was grateful to have read their views, and could feel their views exerting pressure on my own. But the interviews with Paul Auster, Jane Fonda, Richard Ford and Salman Rushdie were as exasperating as those I've mentioned above were enlightening.
And if I had a dollar for every intellectual I've encountered (among those in, or mentioned in, this book: nebulous near-believer Michael Cunningham, Jonathan Franzen's atheist father, atheist Grace Paley) who insists on the Jeffersonian view that Christ was a fine or significant philosopher and nothing more, I'd be a rich man. The problem with this position is that these intellectuals are bending over backward to fashion Christ in their images (in much the same way Shakespeare scholars, including Germaine Greer, cannot but give us a Shakespeare that looks like them). Closer to the bone is C.S. Lewis's observation in Mere Christianity: "I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to" (52).
In short, the interviews with Saul Bellow, Nathan Englander, Jonathan Franzen, Spike Lee, Daniel Libeskind, David Lynch, Toni Morrison, Martin Scorsese and Elie Wiesel bear the most fruit. Each of them convinces me that his or her thought on the question of God has been pointed, conflicted, relentless, careful, thorough. I was grateful to have read their views, and could feel their views exerting pressure on my own. But the interviews with Paul Auster, Jane Fonda, Richard Ford and Salman Rushdie were as exasperating as those I've mentioned above were enlightening.
June 29, 2011
So I picked up this book from my local library a few weeks ago as I was looking to explore faith and why people believe what they do. This book seemed to be exactly what I was looking for; it was a book focusing on different people's views on religion and faith! When I sat down to read it though, it wasn't what I'd hoped it would be.
First off, the book was just strings of interview questions put into chapters; it was very bland and hard to get into. The main problem I had with it though, was the questions themselves. You see, the author interviewed "well known" cultural figures on their views on religion. I, however, had never heard of most of them. I decided to check out the book anyway though because I figured they'd still have interesting insight. The author's interview questions very frequently addressed these people's movies and books which I had never seen or read. The questions focused on how the people's movies or books related to their views on religion, making it very hard for someone unfamiliar with those movies or books to actually focus on what these people's ideas on religion were. Even if I was familiar with these people's works, I wouldn't be very interested in how those works related to their religious views. I wanted more of just people sharing the reasons for their various beliefs.
Because of the bland format and unfamiliarity, I found this book extremely boring and hard to relate to. I ended up just skipping around to chapters I thought I might relate even a little to, not finding much, and eventually just returning the book after reading about three quarters of it. Maybe this book would be good for someone familiar with the people interviewed and their work, but it certainly wasn't for me.
First off, the book was just strings of interview questions put into chapters; it was very bland and hard to get into. The main problem I had with it though, was the questions themselves. You see, the author interviewed "well known" cultural figures on their views on religion. I, however, had never heard of most of them. I decided to check out the book anyway though because I figured they'd still have interesting insight. The author's interview questions very frequently addressed these people's movies and books which I had never seen or read. The questions focused on how the people's movies or books related to their views on religion, making it very hard for someone unfamiliar with those movies or books to actually focus on what these people's ideas on religion were. Even if I was familiar with these people's works, I wouldn't be very interested in how those works related to their religious views. I wanted more of just people sharing the reasons for their various beliefs.
Because of the bland format and unfamiliarity, I found this book extremely boring and hard to relate to. I ended up just skipping around to chapters I thought I might relate even a little to, not finding much, and eventually just returning the book after reading about three quarters of it. Maybe this book would be good for someone familiar with the people interviewed and their work, but it certainly wasn't for me.
January 17, 2015
Come hanno già detto in tanti, le interviste sono troppo brevi, ma d'altro canto esiste un altro modo per affrontare una questione così complessa con personalità di tale spessore, senza limitarsi?
Restano ottimi spunti di riflessione, qualche sorpresa, tipo Franzen, mito assoluto, che mi è sembrato così disarmato(?!) dalla sua intelligenza.
Resta un dato di fatto, tra gente di cultura, la percentuale di atei/agnostici resta elevatissima, e questo non mi sembra per nulla sorprendente.
Non so se è altresì scontata la differenza che noto tra le diverse confessioni, o meglio, la posizione del cattolicesimo; certo sono prevenuta al riguardo, ma mi sembra di notare una boria, un esteriorizzazione sterile delle fede, basata solo su riti "folcloristici" e iconografia pacchiana, così priva di libera scelta, impegno e di quella tanto millantata "grazia", soprattutto rispetto all'ebraismo, al punto da indispormi.
Restano ottimi spunti di riflessione, qualche sorpresa, tipo Franzen, mito assoluto, che mi è sembrato così disarmato(?!) dalla sua intelligenza.
Resta un dato di fatto, tra gente di cultura, la percentuale di atei/agnostici resta elevatissima, e questo non mi sembra per nulla sorprendente.
Non so se è altresì scontata la differenza che noto tra le diverse confessioni, o meglio, la posizione del cattolicesimo; certo sono prevenuta al riguardo, ma mi sembra di notare una boria, un esteriorizzazione sterile delle fede, basata solo su riti "folcloristici" e iconografia pacchiana, così priva di libera scelta, impegno e di quella tanto millantata "grazia", soprattutto rispetto all'ebraismo, al punto da indispormi.
December 25, 2007
Monda interviews many of screen and book luminaries including Martin Scorcese, Derek Walcott, Saul Bellow, Paul Auster, Elie Wiesel,Salmon Rushdie and Toni Morrisson asking them specifically for their take on religion. His motivation for doing so is his belief that religion is "the most important subject of our time".
He manages to elicit quite a diverse range of views, some even mildly surprising (such as Walcott's admission that he pictures God as an old white man)even if many are expected (Bellow's belief in religion, evidenced by the strong influence of his Jewish upbringing in his work; Rushdie's disavowence of fundamentalism).
The questions (and indeed the format) can get a little repetitive, but it was quite fascinating for me to see how these cultural luminaries viewed one of the most fundamental of questions.
He manages to elicit quite a diverse range of views, some even mildly surprising (such as Walcott's admission that he pictures God as an old white man)even if many are expected (Bellow's belief in religion, evidenced by the strong influence of his Jewish upbringing in his work; Rushdie's disavowence of fundamentalism).
The questions (and indeed the format) can get a little repetitive, but it was quite fascinating for me to see how these cultural luminaries viewed one of the most fundamental of questions.
June 1, 2008
I very much enjoyed this short book of interviews. I picked it up because the first conversation is with Paul Auster, one of my favorite authors. Because of the way Auster writes I have always been curious as to what he believes. Having a similar religous upbringing to the author, may also be why this book felt easy for me considering the topic. I imagine my reaction may have been different had the author been a devout...well, anything, I guess.
I was pleasantly surprised by the number of interesting and well known people he interviews, along with their responses, to his straight to the point questions. I expected the book to carry a more arguementative or evangelical feel (as books of this type generally do), but instead it seemed more curious than preachy.
I was pleasantly surprised by the number of interesting and well known people he interviews, along with their responses, to his straight to the point questions. I expected the book to carry a more arguementative or evangelical feel (as books of this type generally do), but instead it seemed more curious than preachy.
June 22, 2008
I thought it was an interesting question so I read it. What was even more interesting was how some of the people like Jana Fonda and Spike Lee answered this question. Through out the book, I think maybe 10-12 people were interviewed and I can only remember one or two people coming straight out and saying "Yes I believe in GOD" most of them answered with some savvy answer on what they believe or don't believe. Just an interesting topic that I think everyone has had to answer or question at some point in life.
February 21, 2016
A weighty topic but this was sort of a lightweight approach to it, for the most part not much enlightening – I guess there’s a certain interest in seeing that the religious ideas of the people involved are about as nebulous as the religious ideas of the rest of us, but I wouldn’t recommend the book to anyone unless they were interested in the thinking of one or some of the people interviewed. If you approach it less as expecting any serious discussion and more on the level of a somewhat different take on celebrity watching then there might be something to it.
March 6, 2016
One apparent thing to like about this book is Monda's selection of interviewees, among them Paul Auster, Saul Bellow, David Lynch and Michael Cunningham. At the same time, one regrets that each interview is rather short and that the questions tend to be somewhat repetitive. Rather than "Conversations on God and Religion", the book at times feels more like an opinion poll or a questionnaire. Still, if you're curious about the contemporary cultural greats' views on religion, it's a handy volume. Better articulated questions would have earned this book 5 stars from me.
March 30, 2008
Cole gave this to me for my birthday last night. I'm looking forward to settling down with it. Looks similar to This I Believe, but on the theme of religion/spirituality.
EDIT: I finished this fairly quickly after I started it; it was a fast read. I wish that the conversations between the author and the subjects were deeper--it seemed like they had been overedited to the point that you no longer got a sense of why the people believe the way they do.
EDIT: I finished this fairly quickly after I started it; it was a fast read. I wish that the conversations between the author and the subjects were deeper--it seemed like they had been overedited to the point that you no longer got a sense of why the people believe the way they do.
August 4, 2008
I think the premise of this book was great, but the interviews (or at least the recorded portions) are extremely short. So often the interviewee would say something rather vague or profound and it would end there. No follow up questions. No clarification, just some new question. Seemed like a bit of a tease.
March 11, 2014
Monda is a filmmaker, a Catholic perplexed by the lack of religious interest in Hollywood. He conducted a series of interviews over several years with people as varied as Jane Fonda, Salman Rushdie, and Martin Scorcese. This book made me think more than anything I’ve read since college and I absolutely think every Christian should read it and maybe every nonbeliever too!
February 23, 2009
Was thrilled when I found this book, a collection of interviews with authors, poets, thinkers and filmmakers, on religion and God. And it is wonderful to learn their thoughts and perspectives. If only Antonio Monda had gotten over himself and gotten out of the way.
June 26, 2008
In the end, I just wasn't into it.
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September 21, 2008wow
May 16, 2009
Saw it on the bookshelf at the library, the title jumped out to me. Most of the people in this book DON'T believe. Would have been nice to hear from more who DID Believe and WHY...
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