Sundays in America

In 2005, Suzanne Strempek Shea, a lifelong Catholic who felt alienated from her church, sat mesmerized by the televised images of Pope John Paul II's wake. She envied the mourners' passion and wondered how widespread such religious devotion was. Thus was launched a yearlong pilgrimage to 50 different worship services around the country. The Bondsville author's new book, "Sundays in America" (Beacon Press), details those visits to Christian churches.

She decided to focus on Protestant churches, bypassing non-Christian "majors" like Judaism and Islam partly to contain the project, and avoiding Roman Catholic churches, with which she was already quite familiar. She found the churches as diverse as you'd expect - some dynamic in their devotion, some boring; some rigidly fundamentalist, others less biblically literalist and open to gays, women, and others.

Shea read from the book this week at one of the profiled churches, King's Chapel in downtown Boston, and plans to give a presentation on April 29 at Harvard Coop in Cambridge.

Excerpts from an interview last week follow.

Q. Some people might read Wikipedia on other religions. Why did you need to enter their physical spaces?
A. Being a writer who loves detail and setting, I thought it would be a much more rich experience for research and a lot more fun than just sitting down with someone saying, "What's it like to be an Episcopalian?" I think I bring more to the reader [that way]. I didn't notify the places that I was coming. I didn't want that treatment of, "Oh, we have to be on our best behavior."

Q. It seems odd that Catholic mourners' passion for their dead pope led you to Protestant churches.
A. As I'm watching this wake incessantly - at home, at my mother's, when I get up in the middle of the night - another part of my thinking broke off and said: "Well, how about other religions? Do the Methodists have a pope?" Tommy [her husband] was brought up the same way - Do not enter these [Protestant] places.

Q. He was raised Catholic?
A. So much so that a good part of his childhood was spent waiting to be pope.

Q. I wasn't surprised by the theologies you encountered in the various churches. Were you?
A. What surprised me was how similar a lot of the liturgies were to the Catholic liturgy. I tell the story about an uncle who went to church in England. It wasn't until he was leaving and looking at the sign that he realized he had been in an Anglican church.

I was disappointed in Jimmy Carter, getting to hear him teach Sunday school [at his Georgia Baptist church]. I thought Jimmy Carter would be a little more open. [The former president argued against gay marriage.]

Q. That triggers a question: Is it fair to judge a church by one visit? Maybe he was just off his game that day.
A. I liken this to if I came to your house. Could I say I was welcomed warmly, I was made to feel at home, they talked about interesting things? They always tell kids you have one chance to make a first impression. [Churches] never know who's sitting there; somebody who might be searching.

Q. Did your research make you curious about those non-Christian "majors?"
A. I think you could keep going with this, definitely. I hit just the tip of the iceberg for Christianity.

Q. Where did you wind up, churchwise and spiritually, after your road trip?
A. I'm probably more spiritual than I was. A very popular [Catholic] church around here has a 25-minute Mass, and it is packed. We want to get in and out. In many of the churches I went to, by the time the service had begun, they'd already been to a Bible study, women's group, church meeting, and afterwards there was going to be a coffee and their kids were going to get together. This was their whole day.

I go to church very often, but I love to sit in there and meditate and pray and be grateful. I don't really attend services.

Q. I take it you did not shed the spiritual disconnect that you felt with the Catholic Church?
A. I didn't, but I think I've grown closer to God. I have seen, Sunday after Sunday, so many ways that God has worked in untold lives.