Seeds in the Wilderness: Profiles of World Religious Leaders

T.D. Regehr is a history professor at the University of Saskatchewan and
the author of The Beauharnois Scandal: A Story of Entrepreneurship and
Politics.

Gervais was for many years religion editor for the Windsor Star. During
that time he interviewed and wrote short stories in which salient
features of both the life and ideas of religious leaders were discussed.
Thirty-two of those stories are reproduced in this book. The selection
is eclectic, ranging from the Jewish extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane and
convicted Watergate conspirator Chuck Colson to Mother Teresa and a pair
of lesbian nuns.

The subtitle of the book is misleading. All the individuals profiled
are closely associated with Judeo-Christian religious traditions,
although some modified and enriched their religious understanding by
also drawing on their native or other religious heritage. Non-Western
leaders of other world religions are not included, making this a
sampling of the varieties of Judeo-Christian religions in the 1980s.

The author introduces and closes the volume with diary entries written
in two very different holy places. The prologue was written in Jerusalem
and focuses most directly on the man whose family has for centuries been
the keeper of the key to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and on the
often discordant rivalries of the numerous religions and denominations
for whom that church is a holy place. The epilogue was written in the
Abbey of Gethsemani in Trappist, Kentucky, and focuses on the remarkable
life of Thomas Merton, whose monastic journals, The Sign of Jonas,
established an international reputation for the author and for the
Abbey.

Diversity, rather than a common theme or consistent interpretation,
mark these profiles. They provide brief, personal, sometimes colorful,
but essentially superficial introductions to an unlikely variety of
religious leaders.