A national bestseller and winner of the PNBA Book Award and Pushcart Prize, God Laughs & Plays is David James Duncan’s (The River Why, The Brothers K) profound, original, and exhilarating tour de force.
In this multiple award-winning and bestselling diagnosis of the contemporary American spirit, David James Duncan suggests that the de facto political party embodied by the so-called “Christian Right” has turned worship into a self-righteous betrayal of the words and example of the very Jesus it claims to praise. In a bracing and often hilarious response to this trend, God Laughs & Plays offers “churchless sermons,” stories, memoir, conversations, and cosmological reflections that scorn riches and embrace the poor; bless peacemakers, not war-makers; celebrate creation, diversity, empathy, playfulness and beauty; and insist that Divine Mystery is indeed mysterious and compassion is literally compassionate. The spiritual kingdom described by Jesus, this unusual book reminds us, is located not "in the Sky" or beyond a disastrous future, but within us, to be sought and embodied in the here and now.
David James Duncan is the author of the novels The River Why and The Brothers K and several works of nonfiction. His work has won a Lannan Fellowship, the 2001 Western States Book Award for Nonfiction, a National Book Award nomination, two PNBA Awards, an honorary doctorate from University of Portland, the ALA's 2003 Award (with Wendell Berry) for the Preservation of Intellectual Freedom, inclusion in four volumes of Best American Spiritual Writing, and many other honors.
