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Looking Around for God
The Oddly Reverent Observations of an Unconventional Christian
James A. Autry
Paperback | 144 pages
978-157312-484-3
Regular Price: 16.00
This book may ship from a different location. Delivery times are estimated at 7–10 business days. Returns should be addressed to Smyth & Helwys Publishing.
 

eBook

Looking Around for God eBook • $8.99

Book Description

James A. Autry, author of Looking Around for God, thinks that the true message of the old spiritual is not just that God has an eye on the sparrow— it’s that God is demonstrating that if these details are worth God’s attention they are certainly worth ours. It may be that we will more readily find God in the details of this world— and of our own lives— than anywhere else.

Looking Around for God, Autry’s tenth book, is in many ways his most personal, as he considers his unique life of faith and belief in a God often clouded by church convention. In assembling these personal essays, stories and poems, Autry strives to share how God has been revealed in many different circumstances of his life, while at the same time offering a few ideas for how the Christian church might better serve in making God’s love and presence manifest in the world.

About the Author

James A. Autry (Nights Under a Tin Roof, Confessions of an Accidental Businessman), the son and grandson of Mississippi Baptist ministers, is a former Fortune 500 executive, author, and poet whose work has had significant influence on leadership thinking. His book Love and Profit: The Art of Caring Leadership won the prestigious Johnson, Smith & Knisely Award as the book that had the most impact on executive thinking in 1992. Autry lives in Des Moines, Iowa, with his wife, Sally J. Pederson, the just-retired lieutenant governor of Iowa, and their son.

Book Reviews

As you read Looking Around For God, you might as well be adding up everyone you love, or have ever loved. Whatever the figure, it will be the exact amount of people with whom you will wish to share this extraordinary gift.

— Norman Lear

I loved this book! Sweeping aside conventional pieties, Jim Autry’s clear insights, told with wit and poetry, show how we may see traces of the divine shining through our everyday world.

— Elaine Pagels
Harrington Professor of Religion
Princeton University

Yes, it’s true: I did urge Jim Autry to write this book. For lesser sins the Good Lord may yet forgive me; this one could be unpardonable.

— Bill Moyers
from the Foreword

We don’t hear the phrase “Christian gentleman” much these days, but that is what James Autry is: generous, large-hearted, tolerant, funny, a man who finds the love of God wherever he can, who pays attention with his heart. Looking Around for God is a book vivid with life and fulfillments. Its honesty is deeply moving, and its irreverence is actually a form of reverence. It’s a book that Jesus would have enjoyed.

— Stephen Mitchell
Translator of the Tao Te Ching

In a few deft strokes, in one fell swoop, Jim Autry picks at the most profound presuppositions of belief, tickles the intellect, pricks the conscience, and kicks us all in the seat of the pants.

— James M. Dunn
The Divinity School at Wake Forest University

In this wonderful collection of prose and poetry, Jim Autry writes about the spirit and the church with such an unorthodox slant, one wonders if he isn't a prophet. The man's a born poet, maybe even a frustrated preacher. It's a rare gift; an exploration of how much faith there is in doubt and how much grace there is in poetry.

— Patricia DeJong
Senior Minister
First Congregational Church of Berkeley, CA

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