Sundays in America

Suzanne Strempek Shea, the novelist and memoirist from the Bondsville village of Palmer, grew up in a Catholic world, surrounded by a Polish community, going to a parochial school, attending Mass.

Many years later, shaken by a bout with cancer and scandals in the church, she started to wonder what other Christians were about. So she went on the road to find out.

The result is her new book "Sundays in America: A Yearlong Road Trip in Search of Christian Faith" (Beacon Press, 324 pages, $24.95).

Strempek Shea sat with worshippers from Maine to Hawaii, from Shaker village to Indian reservation, from military chapel to jazz group, in church, convent, parish, meetinghouse and Kingdom Hall.

She was often moved by gestures of humanity and kindness. In a recent interview, she talked about a Baltimore church in which one of the worshippers was a pregnant woman.

At a certain point, the rest of them, about 14 people, were asked to stand in a circle around the woman. "It was one of the times I felt really blessed to be there," said Strempek Shea.

She tried to remain anonymous on her visits. She didn't tell people that she was coming to their church or that she was writing a book. Often they treated her warmly anyway.

At a CME, or Colored Methodist Episcopal, church in Louisville, Ky., she started to sit in back, but was soon escorted to a cluster in the middle. "I walked in off the street, and they included me right off the bat," she says. "I felt so lucky. I thought, 'Who's having a cooler experience than I am?'" In Richmond, Va., a group of transvestites called out, "Looking for us, Honey?" as she stepped out of the cab she had taken to their church. It was the kind of place that took in people who weren't welcome anywhere else. They met in the basement because the roof was falling in. "I could have cried through that whole ceremony because it was so beautiful," said Strempek Shea. In many churches, people could mention their own "joys, concerns, worries," said Strempek Shea. Someone's mother turned 90. Someone else was off to Iraq. "Some of the churches were very loud, with call-and-response," said the author, "and in some, like the Quakers, nothing was said in one hour." At one black church, a man was racked with sobs through the service. People accepted it and left him alone. Strempek Shea liked best the churches that were "inclusive of other genders and lifestyles. I don't see how a place could call itself the house of the Lord and then say, 'But we don't want you,'" she said.

"But even in cases where perhaps I didn't agree, there was something that made me feel: What a country!

"In some countries, residents are forced to pay a tithe. Here, we can attend or not attend. People come here for the freedoms, and this is one of them."

Strempek Shea is awed that all across the country, people assemble to pray together once a week. It's a phenomenon that's "dazzling" to contemplate, she said.

She didn't start out to write a whole book about this "giant group" called Christians. She meant to visit a few churches. But there are about 3,400 Christian denominations, she said. The project "took on a life of its own."

Strempek Shea recommends the effort to anyone who has been part of one religion or one church. "Go and look around," she said. "If nothing else, you'll find out we're more alike than not alike.

"I felt very privileged to be among these people. They're out there - and anybody can do this."

A recurrent message she heard in churches was that "the Lord is there seven days a week, not just on Sundays," said Strempek Shea. It was a message that stayed with her.

"I think God is included in my days more than he ever says," she said. "That was something I didn't see coming."