Divine Hunger: Canadians on Spiritual Walkabout

A.J. Pell is rector of Christ Church in Hope, B.C., editor of the
Canadian Evangelical Review, and an instructor of Liturgy, Anglican
Studies Programme at Regent College in Vancouver, B.C.

In this book, Peter Emberley, a professor of political science and
philosophy, explores the spiritual journeys being undertaken by baby
boomers who are professionals and in positions of some influence. The
International Meditation Institute of Swami Shyam, a retreat for North
Americans and Europeans in the Himalayas, is one faith option described
in the book.

Emberley is curious not only about what his subjects are doing and
looking for, but also why and how they are searching for personally
meaningful expressions of spirituality. He lets his subjects speak for
themselves and then uses his philosophic mind to analyze what he has
heard or seen—a method that yields a number of insights, such as
“much baby-boomer belief is conditioned by what it negates.”

Reginald Bibby has characterized baby-boomer religion as the
supermarket-style pick-and-choose creation of a personally acceptable
combination of beliefs and rituals. Emberley’s book makes a similar
point. In his central chapter, “Fusion Faith, he writes of the type of
person who “takes the best from each tradition and blends these prime
ingredients into a new concoction ... oblivious to the fact that there
are gross contradictions and incompatibilities between its elements.”

Emberley ends the book where he began, as a detached skeptic who
occasionally gets enthusiastic about something, only to reconsider and
soberly move elsewhere. As a survey of a particular socioeconomic age
group’s religious quest, Divine Hunger has topical appeal but soon
will become dated.