Lost Faith and Wandering Souls: A Psychology of Disillusionment, Mourning, and the Return of Hope

A deeper look at the religious identity crisis of our time that shows a way past our debates and toward a healthier spirituality.

Americans are obsessed with religion. You're either in or your out; you're this or you're that, and you had better figure it out. Except now, so of us just want to forget the whole thing. We often feel angry, hurt, and alone, while knowing there's a better way. Lost Faith and Wandering Souls helps readers get at those important feelings of disillusionment and shows that within them they will find the keys to rediscovering hope.

Taking an evocative approach, David Morris puts theological arguments aside and holds up our humanity as equally important. He treats the loss of faith as if it were any other kind of loss, and asks, what if we learned to mourn? He turns to psychoanalytic psychology for its interpretive power. With the concepts of mourning, pining, and play, he shines a light on a restorative path. Applying these ideas to contemporary spiritual memoirs, Morris discovers a back-and-forth movement in overcoming faith loss, going between feelings of numbness, self-recrimination, and wandering to playfulness, self-agency, and belonging. If we can feel our loss, he argues, then we rediscover a new imagination for meaning making.

Lost Faith and Wandering Souls acknowledges the religious identity crisis of our time and the full power of the psychological journey. By looking beneath the surface at deep, lifelong dynamics, it shows a way past our losses individually and socially toward a healthier, inclusive spirituality.