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	Look Deeply at Religion with These New Books By Cathleen Falsani Charlotte Observer May 28, 2011 http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/05/28/2330460/look-deeply-at-religion-with-these.html The great American clergyman and social reformer Henry Ward Beecher described summer as "a temperate zone in the mind... just between laziness and labor." It was to this season, Beecher said, that "summer reading belongs." This summer brings a rich collection of new spiritually themed titles that promise to captivate both the soul and the imagination as they explore dark corners of the world of faith. "Render Unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church," by Jason Berry. For more than 25 years, investigative reporter Berry has been at the forefront of exposing sexual abuses by Catholic clergy. In "Render Unto Rome," Berry turns his attention to a different kind of corruption in this investigation of the financial secrets (and alleged deceptions) of the Roman Catholic Church. What happens after checks or cash are dropped into the collection basket? Where does the money go when a diocese sells property for tens of millions of dollars? In light of the more than $2billion paid out in recent years to the victims of clergy sexual abuse in the United States alone, Berry "follows the money," from U.S. parishes to the Vatican, exposing what he believes are practices that fly in the face of Catholic moral teaching and values. "Secrets and Wives: The Hidden World of Mormon Polygamy," by Sanjiv Bhattacharya. British journalist Bhattacharya expands on his 2006 U.K. television documentary, "The Man with 80 Wives," about polygamist Warren Jeffs. "Secrets and Wives" is a breezy investigation of the culture of polygamy among fringe Mormons. He gained impressive access inside polygamist compounds, weaving a fascinating tale that is as much about his attempts to understand these fringe dwellers as it is about their ideology. "Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me: A Memoir... of Sorts," by Ian Morgan Cron. An Episcopal priest in Greenwich, Conn., Cron writes a surprisingly tender, brutally honest and blessedly humorous account of coming to terms with the wounds left by his father, an enigma of a man who was a CIA agent and a depressed alcoholic. "The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism," by Deborah Baker. Biographer Baker went digging for answers to the puzzle that was Margaret Marcus' life. What would compel Marcus, a post-war secular Jew raised in suburban New York, to convert to Islam, change her name to Maryam Jameelah and move to Pakistan in 1962, where she became one of the world's pre-eminent voices for conservative (some would say radical) Islam? Jameelah, who lives in Lahore, Pakistan, became an outspoken critic of Western culture, particularly American foreign policy.
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