{"id":100,"date":"2009-03-02T01:14:04","date_gmt":"2009-03-02T01:14:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/03\/new-book-losing-my-religion.html"},"modified":"2009-03-02T01:14:04","modified_gmt":"2009-03-02T01:14:04","slug":"new-book-losing-my-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/03\/new-book-losing-my-religion.html","title":{"rendered":"New book: Losing My Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>William Lobdell was the LA Times religion reporter for many years. In his new book, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0061626813\/davesmormonin-20\">Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America &mdash; and Found Unexpected Peace<\/a>, Lobdell tells the story of how he lost his faith. I assume that the <a href=\"http:\/\/articles.latimes.com\/2007\/jul\/21\/local\/me-lostfaith21\">essay on the same topic that he wrote for the LA Times in 2007<\/a> gives a taste of what the book offers.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>In the essay, Lobdell briefly recounts his conversion at a megachurch, followed some years later by his demoralizing journalistic encounters with victims of sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests, Ex-Mormons who feel socially ostracized by still-faithful Mormons, and Evangelical preachers getting filthy rich off the gospel of health and wealth. I&#8217;m guessing the book offers more of the same, no doubt alternately gripping and sickening for most readers. I wonder if he visited with amoral technocrats in Eastern Europe or nihlistic terrorist cells to broaden his data set and put his &#8220;religion is the problem&#8221; thesis into a wider context? I&#8217;ll get back to you on that after I procure and read a copy of the book.<\/p>\n<p>If you want more, Hugh Hewitt did <a href=\"http:\/\/hughhewitt.townhall.com\/blog\/g\/ed55bed0-fc25-4ff1-b648-eb8db498f09f\">a two-hour radio interview with Lobdell<\/a> a few days ago (audio replay available at the site). If you&#8217;re one of those lucky folks who has two hours to invest in a podcast, let us know what he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>William Lobdell was the LA Times religion reporter for many years. In his new book, Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America &mdash; and Found Unexpected Peace, Lobdell tells the story of how he lost his faith. I assume that the essay on the same topic that he wrote&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":173,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>New book: Losing My Religion - Mormon Inquiry<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/03\/new-book-losing-my-religion.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"New book: Losing My Religion - Mormon Inquiry\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"William Lobdell was the LA Times religion reporter for many years. In his new book, Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America &mdash; and Found Unexpected Peace, Lobdell tells the story of how he lost his faith. I assume that the essay on the same topic that he wrote&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/03\/new-book-losing-my-religion.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Mormon Inquiry\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-03-02T01:14:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Dave Banack\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"New book: Losing My Religion - Mormon Inquiry","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/03\/new-book-losing-my-religion.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"New book: Losing My Religion - Mormon Inquiry","og_description":"William Lobdell was the LA Times religion reporter for many years. In his new book, Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America &mdash; and Found Unexpected Peace, Lobdell tells the story of how he lost his faith. I assume that the essay on the same topic that he wrote&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/03\/new-book-losing-my-religion.html","og_site_name":"Mormon Inquiry","article_published_time":"2009-03-02T01:14:04+00:00","author":"Dave Banack","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/03\/new-book-losing-my-religion.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/03\/new-book-losing-my-religion.html","name":"New book: Losing My Religion - Mormon Inquiry","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-03-02T01:14:04+00:00","dateModified":"2009-03-02T01:14:04+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#\/schema\/person\/2f677c4d0aa56d33221bfcb682f43c5f"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/03\/new-book-losing-my-religion.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/03\/new-book-losing-my-religion.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/03\/new-book-losing-my-religion.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"New book: Losing My Religion"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/","name":"Mormon Inquiry","description":"Mormon News and Culture","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#\/schema\/person\/2f677c4d0aa56d33221bfcb682f43c5f","name":"Dave Banack","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/7ae\/7aebc9e4453d630505d00cebd1d8aa38x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/7ae\/7aebc9e4453d630505d00cebd1d8aa38x96.jpg","caption":"Dave Banack"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/author\/dbanack"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/173"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}