Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America - And Found Unexpected Peace »

William Lobdell has been a journalist for 25 years, winning many state and national awards. In 2008 he left the Los Angeles Times after a long tenure. He is on the visiting faculty at the University of California, Irvine. He is married with four boys.

William Lobdell's journey of faith—and doubt—may be the most compelling spiritual memoir of our time. Lobdell became a born-again Christian in his late 20s when personal problems—including a failed marriage—drove him to his knees in prayer. As a newly minted evangelical, Lobdell—a veteran journalist—noticed that religion wasn't covered well in the mainstream media, and he prayed for the Lord to put him on the religion beat at a major newspaper. In 1998, his prayers were answered when the Los Angeles Times asked him to write about faith.

Yet what happened over the next eight years was a roller-coaster of inspiration, confusion, doubt, and soul-searching as his reporting and experiences slowly chipped away at his faith. While reporting on hundreds of stories, he witnessed a disturbing gap between the tenets of various religions and the behaviors of the faithful and their leaders. He investigated religious institutions that acted less ethically than corrupt Wall St. firms. He found few differences between the morals of Christians and atheists. As this evidence piled up, he started to fear that God didn't exist. He explored every doubt, every question—until, finally, his faith collapsed. After the paper agreed to reassign him, he wrote a personal essay in the summer of 2007 that became an international sensation for its honest exploration of doubt.

Losing My Religion is a book about life's deepest questions that speaks to everyone: Lobdell understands the longings and satisfactions of the faithful, as well as the unrelenting power of doubt. How he faced that power, and wrestled with it, is must reading for people of faith and nonbelievers alike.

The New York Times - Mark Oppenheimer

There are many great books about finding God. But there are far fewer books, great or otherwise, about finding and then losing God. So Losing My Religion,…feels powerfully fresh. It is the tale of being born again in his adulthood, then almost 20 years later deciding that Christianity is untrue. Today Lobdell prefers the God of Jefferson or Einstein, "a deity that can be seen in the miracles of nature." While Lobdell never entirely rejects belief in the supernatural, his humane, even-tempered book does more to advance the cause of irreligion than the bilious atheist tracts by Christopher Hitchens and others that have become so common. And Lobdell's self-deprecating memoir is far more fun to read.

1 "You Need God" 1

2 Born Again 5

3 A God Thing 25

4 Answered Prayers 39

5 Shot Out of a Cannon 61

6 My Ten Commandments 79

7 Father Hollywood 91

8 A Spiritual Body Blow 107

9 The Golden Rule 121

10 Millstones Around Their Necks 135

11 A Gentle Whisper Silenced 151

12 "Rebuild My Church" 163

13 Heal Thyself 173

14 The Dark Night of the Soul 197

15 At the Edge of the Earth 215

16 Letting Go of God 235

17 One Story Too Many 253

18 "Welcome to the Edge" 259

Epilogue 275

Index 285