Book review: Do You Believe? by Antonio Monda

The subtitle “Conversations on God and religion” is an excellent way of summarizing the basic thrust of Do you Believe? Antonio Monda has taken advantage of his contacts within the artistic world to interview 18 prominent individuals within influence on contemporary culture, ranging from Jane Fonda to Spike Lee to David Lynch to Salman Rushdie. The goal of his interviews is disarmingly simple: to ask them about their religious convictions, and to explore how those convictions have shaped their approach within their respective careers.

When I first began reading this book I was worried that it was going to turn into another set of self-congratulatory exchanges celebrating the so-called virtues of relativism. And then I read the introduction. It turns out that Antonio Monda is a believer, and not just any believer: he is a self-professed Catholic, with a very articulate confidence in the guidance of the Church’s magisterium. As he put it himself,

I certainly don’t mean to say that the Church of Rome hasn’t made mistakes, even serious ones, in the course of its long history, but I want to emphasize that the believer can’t not know that Christ entrusted the keys to Peter, investing with complete authority the disciple who denied him three times during the night before the Crucifixion.

This piqued my curiosity, because I happen to share this perspective. I realised that I would not just be reading a set of interviews, but an exchange of world-views, and that I (through Antonio Mondi) would be one of the interlocutors.

I was not disappointed. The interviews, presented substantially in their core elements, really do draw you in. I felt like *I* was in dialogue with Derek Walcott, for example. Interestingly, that interview gave me a chance to gauge the success of this book in capturing the voice of those interviewed, for I actually *have* had a chance to chat with Derek Walcott (over pizza a couple of years ago in St. Lucia).

I am not sure what long-term cultural impact this book might have. It presents a survey of spiritual and religious perspectives from people who possess influence but who don’t really have any specialization in such matters (and, in some cases, who present opinions that honestly seemed a little vacuous). I am left asking myself: where does this book fit in the building of the Kingdom of God? Perhaps it lies simply in that place of discernment, revealing what some major cultural figures think of God and religion and that most burning question: Do you believe? My rating: B