Reece will read from and discuss his latest book, An American Gospel: On Family, History, and the Kingdom of God. The book is the very personal story of Reece's upbringing by his father and grandfather, both Baptist preachers, and how a crisis of his own faith led him to new revelations about his relationship to God and to the kingdom of God, the earth. Reece's dramatic personal history —his father committed suicide at age 33 because of his inability to live up to the expectations of his fundamentalist, sin-obsessed faith—leads him to discover a Christianity he could embrace in Thomas Jefferson's Jefferson Bible. In it, and in the Gospel of Thomas, Reece sees a message that the kingdom of God is not to be found in some far off heaven, but here and now, within us and within nature.
Erik Reece grew up in Louisville and his currently writer-in-residence and lecturer at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. His first book, Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness: Radical Strip Mining and the Devastation of Appalachia, which was first published in Harper's magazine is widely credited with bringing the issue of mountaintop removal mining to a national audience. Reece has won the Sierra Club's David R. Brower Award for environmental writing and the John B. Oakes Prize for Distinguished Environmental Writing.
Contact Information
- Carmichael's Books
- 2720 Frankfort Ave., Louisville, KY 40206
- 502-456-6950
Event Time
- Monday, May 25, 2009
- 8:00 PM
Price
- Free