Episode
A Nation Wrestles With God: American Prophets, Philosophers, and Firebrands w/ Ilan Stavans
- Published
- Jul 13, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 4530
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- https://parallaxviews.podbean.com/e/istavans7-14-26/
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Summary
👉 Pitch in on Patreon and fuel the future of free-thinking conversations. https://www.patreon.com/parallaxviews Also visit our returning sponsor Mike Swanson's Wall Street Window for the best financial and trading newsletter around:https://wallstreetwindow.com/ On this edition of Parallax Views, acclaimed writer, cultural critic, translator, and literary anthologist Ilan Stavans joins us to discuss his new anthology, A Nation Wrestles with God: American Prophets, Philosophers, and Firebrands. Stavans, the Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities, Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College and a prolific author whose work explores language, identity, religion, and culture, offers a sweeping look at how Americans have grappled with the idea of God from the colonial era to the present day. Rather than presenting a history of belief or unbelief, Wrestling with God traces the ongoing conversation (and often fierce argument) over faith, doubt, morality, and meaning that has shaped American life. We discuss the anthology's remarkable range of contributors, which includes figures such as Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Christopher Hitchens, Will Arbery, Molly McCully Brown, and many others. Among the topics explored are why even outspoken skeptics and atheists like H.L. Mencken continued to wrestle with God through language, symbolism, and imagery; how religious belief and doubt have served as engines of American political, philosophical, and cultural life; and why Stavans believes America's defining religious tradition is less about consensus than about continual debate. We also examine the democratization of America's conversation about God. As Stavans explains, the nation's religious imagination…