Cone Distinguished Service Professor at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago and the author of numerous books, including Modern American Religion and (with the photographer Micah Marty) the forthcoming Our Hope for Years to Come: The Search for Spiritual Sanctuary.

If you don’t have real faith in God, how can you search for God honestly? Doesn’t the search itself imply faith? I did the best I could and then decided to ask other people of faith what they might tell my friend who asks how she can find God. She wanted to know if I had any answers for her. It was a real conundrum for her: If you don’t have real faith in God, how can you search for God honestly? Doesn’t the search itself imply faith? Can you somehow “get” faith? Still, she is essentially a skeptical woman-intelligent, well educated-living in a secular culture. Although, like many contemporary Americans, she views herself as “non-religious,” she envies friends who live lives of faith and desires that faith for herself. The question was asked by a good person, a Catholic who has lost touch with her church.

It was a quintessentially American question that was posed to me a few weeks ago by a close friend: “How do I find God?” Editor's note: This article was originally published in the issue of America.

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