"The high quality of the selections suggests that an annual volume would be welcome." [Starred Review] --Publishers Weekly "'The God Beat' is a book to be reckoned with." --Christian Science Monitor "The essays collected in The God Beat are an invigorating mix, revealing the varied and fascinating ways that people worship." --Foreword Reviews "The best writing about religion is simultaneously personal, political, historical, and spiritual--just like religion itself. The God Beatis all that and more. Costica Bradatan and Ed Simon have crafted a collection that is by turns profound, funny, and searching. It captures a still-unfolding moment in which the old ways of writing about faith were found wanting, and new ways were ready to be born." --Peter Manseau, curator of religious history at the Smithsonian and author of One Nation, Under Gods: A New American History.

"For ten years ending in 1995, I was repeatedly invited and repeatedly declined to be the religion editor of the Los Angeles Times. Reading this anthology, I understand both why I was right to decline the gig back then and why today another reporter might jump at it. The religion beat of old has become what Bradatan and Simon call 'the God beat'--an exciting new freestyle game still learning its own rules." --Jack Miles, Pulitzer Prize winner for God: A Biography.