What do you think?
Rate this book
Acts of Faith
Acts of Faith is an anthology of short fiction that illuminates the "What is faith?" Stories by such authors as Flannery O'Connor, Alice Walker, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Raymond Carver, and Richard Bausch offer examples of what faith can be.
Faith is different from belief, belief in God or in a set of orthodox opinions. Faith is used here in the sense of trust in something that cannot be explained logically. It is that leap in the dark - Abraham's willingness to follow God's command - with an outcome that cannot be known until it is attained. When certain characters in Acts of Faith dispel their doubts and follow their feelings, their worlds expand to include a comprehension at which logical reasoning can only guess.
Faith is different from belief, belief in God or in a set of orthodox opinions. Faith is used here in the sense of trust in something that cannot be explained logically. It is that leap in the dark - Abraham's willingness to follow God's command - with an outcome that cannot be known until it is attained. When certain characters in Acts of Faith dispel their doubts and follow their feelings, their worlds expand to include a comprehension at which logical reasoning can only guess.
180 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1995
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 15, 2025
I have a suspicion I am the only one on GoodReads who has ever read this collection of short stories....in part because it is from a small press I have never heard of, and the collection of short stories is from 30 years ago, 1995. Nevertheless, the collection was based on the theme of faith. A quote from the Bible at the beginning of the book sort of defines faith ... Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. [from the epistle to the Hebrews, 11:1].
It has a short story by Raymond Carver so it has to be sorta good, eh? And that short story was good. Pretty damn quirky!
Actually 3 of the short stories were excerpts taken from books.... Here are the short stories and excerpts and the ratings I gave them.
It led off with an essay by Frederik Buechner, Faith and Fiction, and he made the point that there were some similarities between the two. One goes into writing fiction oftentimes without a definitive goal of the story line...you sort of let the characters grow as you go along and let them to some extent develop and they play a role in the final story line. I don’t know...I’ve never tried my hand at fiction. Some of what he said made sense to me, though. He also had a sentence that I really liked...I think it reminded me of me: “But in the journey of faith, it’s possible every once in a while to be better than you are.”
• The Expert on God — John L’Heureux — 3.5 stars
• The Saint — Gabriel Garcia Marquez — 2 stars
• Cathedral — Raymond Carver — 4 stars
• Parker’s Back — Flannery O’ Connor — 4 stars
• Angel Levine — Bernard Malamud — 3 stars
• (from) Household Saints – Francine Prose — 3.5 stars
• Design — Richard Bausch — 4 stars
• (from) Golden Spark, Little Saint — Hannah Green — 2.5 stars
• The Welcome Table — Alice Walker — 4.5 stars (damn good)
• (from) Mariette in Ecstasy – Ron Hansen — 4 stars
Reviews
• Yep, I was sort of right. Looks like 3 people on Goodreads rated it but nobody had reviewed it. And nobody that I can find has reviewed it in the public arena. Sad. It is available to read for free on the Internet at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/actsoffai...
It has a short story by Raymond Carver so it has to be sorta good, eh? And that short story was good. Pretty damn quirky!
Actually 3 of the short stories were excerpts taken from books.... Here are the short stories and excerpts and the ratings I gave them.
It led off with an essay by Frederik Buechner, Faith and Fiction, and he made the point that there were some similarities between the two. One goes into writing fiction oftentimes without a definitive goal of the story line...you sort of let the characters grow as you go along and let them to some extent develop and they play a role in the final story line. I don’t know...I’ve never tried my hand at fiction. Some of what he said made sense to me, though. He also had a sentence that I really liked...I think it reminded me of me: “But in the journey of faith, it’s possible every once in a while to be better than you are.”
• The Expert on God — John L’Heureux — 3.5 stars
• The Saint — Gabriel Garcia Marquez — 2 stars
• Cathedral — Raymond Carver — 4 stars
• Parker’s Back — Flannery O’ Connor — 4 stars
• Angel Levine — Bernard Malamud — 3 stars
• (from) Household Saints – Francine Prose — 3.5 stars
• Design — Richard Bausch — 4 stars
• (from) Golden Spark, Little Saint — Hannah Green — 2.5 stars
• The Welcome Table — Alice Walker — 4.5 stars (damn good)
• (from) Mariette in Ecstasy – Ron Hansen — 4 stars
Reviews
• Yep, I was sort of right. Looks like 3 people on Goodreads rated it but nobody had reviewed it. And nobody that I can find has reviewed it in the public arena. Sad. It is available to read for free on the Internet at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/actsoffai...
Displaying 1 of 1 review