Just in time for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which has already prompted patriotic one-upmanship to beat the marching band, comes this diverse, multifaceted anthology of God-wrestling brilliantly edited by the Amherst College polymath professor, Ilan Stavans. Readers will be struck by the sheer range of genres represented in A Nation Wrestles with God: American Prophets, Philosophers and Firebrands (Restless Books, 2026): essays, poems, plays, speeches, memoirs, novels, polemics. Among the viewpoints represented: Christian (devout and nominal), Muslim, Jewish, ardently atheistic, feminist, and those trying to bridge these worlds. 

In the case of science and religion, Stephen Jay Gould’s “Non-Overlapping Magisteria” ought to be nationally required reading. Barack Obama’s “Easter Prayer Breakfast” is reproduced, and so is Donald Trump’s “National Prayer Breakfast.” We hear many voices from before the United States of America formed, including Native Americans and enslaved Blacks who were excluded from this less than perfect union, and many voices from generations X, Y, and Z, none of which I had heard before, but which Stavans obviously had. The common flaw of most anthologies—too little or too much—seems to me fully resolved in this volume. So, we have cartoons, prayers, poems, alongside selections from longer works that are invariably well chosen. Philip Roth’s short story “Conversion of the Jews” does double duty as a satire of post–World War II Jewish ethnic boundary definition and the arbitrariness of religious doctrines. A few pages from The Autobiography of Malcom X serve to convey the appeal of the Nation of Islam to a lifelong spiritual seeker. From ex-religionist, ex-patriot, the reader may find an entire chapter of James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain, a very different evocation of the Black experience.

Black authors are well represented, but who would scratch Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. DuBois, Alice Walker, or Martin Luther King Jr.? Well represented is not overrepresented. Colonial-era divines and poets, men and women, Protestant and Catholic, enslaved and free, are also prominent inclusions, but maybe a few more contemporary evangelical voices could have been included. Some megachurch preachers seem more like snake oil salesmen than God-wrestlers, but, surely, not most.  The authors appear according to chronological birth order; Stavans eschews topical divisions within the volume, and if this makes navigating the book a little more difficult, it is vastly preferable to shoehorning these writers into ill-fitting sandals (always wise to remove these before encountering the divine). Stavans has an appetite for humor, possibly more than one might expect in a book of this name. Matt Wallace’s “Meeting Satan Herself” and Stephen Colbert’s “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” are hilarious, as is Woody Allen’s “The Scrolls.” Lyrics from Bruce Springsteen and Lana Del Ray will have you calling out requests from your Alexa or her equivalent.

Ultimately, what we have in this anthology is the single most comprehensive document of the sheer prominence of America’s religious thinkers.

The selections in this anthology are consistently well chosen on literary grounds as well as widely representative; meeting both standards is a bar that Stavans crosses. Each entry is well edited (i.e., the selections are coherent and don’t feel truncated) and ably introduced. Occasionally, the thornier aspects of the author’s utterances or actions are elided. There’s no mention of Alice Walker’s anti-Semitism, Woody Allen’s “courtship” of Soon Yi Previn, the sad truth that Martin Luther King Jr’s “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” reflects his prophetic insight, but also his slipping grasp of the national movement. But a little boosterism of these religious thinkers—even the antireligious ones—is forgivable. Ultimately, what we have in this anthology is the single most comprehensive document of the sheer prominence of America’s religious thinkers. I believe it would be hard to transpose this book title to any modern western or central European nation and arrive at a comparable list of “prophets, philosophers and firebrands” who were also inarguably consequential to their respective nations. Love it or hate it, that’s testimony to the role religion plays in the national conversation.

Stavans’s introduction to this anthology is less a user’s guide than an acknowledgment of other classics that did not make the cut. This effective way of clocking the “overabundance of material” (xx) supports De Tocqueville’s recorded response from Americans asked about their view of law and order: “They always answered, without a moment’s hesitation, that a civilized community, especially one that enjoys the benefits of freedom, cannot exist without religion.” That Stavans could have expanded this already sizable volume is evident from his opening discussion of Huck Finn, no Kierkegaardian, who suspends the religious in favor of the ethical. Stavans, a “Jew from Mexico” who immigrated in the mid-1980s, is more than enough of an insider to catch every nuance of the United States, and more than enough of an outsider to avoid taking for granted that which is contingent, questionable, or offensive. 

Stavans is more than enough of an insider to catch every nuance of the United States, and more than enough of an outsider to avoid taking for granted that which is contingent, questionable, or offensive.

Stavans’s introduction takes a broad swing at pivotal turning points in our story, from the Founders to Noah Webster, from the Transcendentalists to the Civil War. He considers the founding of Mormonism a decisive moment: I agree. (The gradual shift in emphasis from an Old Testament/New Israel self-conception to an attempt for the New Testament to adjudicate slavery is a major theme that Eran Shalev developed in his American Zion is confirmed here). His discussion of God and science also hits the mark, though his thinly veiled praise of the US Supreme Court’s ability to keep “creation science” out of classrooms ought to be balanced by noting SCOTUS’s recent rereading of Jefferson’s cautions; here, a few pages of Kennedy v. Bremerton would suffice. 

Which brings me to my sole complaint about this book: I would contend that the “God-Wrestling” in America has been dominated by scriptural encounters. Although England and Germany were the key sites of biblicism from the Reformation until the nineteenth century, the United States has played that role ever since. A few entries in the genre of biblical commentary would have been welcome. I would have liked to see some evidence of Jefferson’s struggles with the Bible, not only his famous “wall of separation” letter to Danbury Baptists. How about Jefferson’s three tries to write a Life and Teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, the final title for his sliced and diced New Testament? How about his letters to John Adams or Benjamin Rush on Bible and religion? Or John’s to Abigail and vice versa? Or, still in the Early Republican period, Hannah Adams’s pathbreaking studies in religious ecumenism? Or Elias Boudinot, a founding member of the all-important American Bible Society (Jefferson was a donor) and champion of Native American and women’s rights? Stavans has some sage words on Emerson and Thoreau; Abe Lincoln’s “Proclamation of Fasting” is truly moving. But Lincoln’s Second Inaugural might be the best piece of biblical exegesis in the modern era. 

These smack-on-the-nose encounters with the Bible could be multiplied. Still, this suggestion amounts to a mere tweak to the God-wrestling Stavans anthologizes so brilliantly. If Jacob is the God-wrestler in Genesis, who strove with gods and man, we are a nation that still struggles to wrest blessing and prevail.

University of Oklahoma