Why is
religion, any religion, important? How should we think of God? Does one need to be a Mother Teresa to be a good Christian?
A long list of such questions from Jana Novak to her father, theologian Michael Novak, led to Tell Me Why, an extended dialogue about
religion and its bearing on contemporary life.
Michael Novak, recipient of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in 1994, holds the George Frederick Jewett Chair at AEI. His dozens of books include The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, Business as a Calling: Work and the Examined Life, The Joy of Sports, and Belief and Unbelief. Jana Novak writes poetry and fiction and is employed as a speechwriter in Washington, D.C.
In the early summer of 1996, Michael Novak was at a seminar in Poland when his
daughter Jana faxed a long series of questions. That message and his reply were the beginning of a correspondence between daughter and father that turned into Tell Me Why. In his initial reply, Michael Novak wrote: "I want to do the best thinking and writing I can, because as far as I'm concerned this is your inheritance, or the most part of it." He went on to explain, "What I have to leave you, Jana, is the inner life of our faith. It has kept our family going through wars and peace for perhaps a thousand years, in the invisible lustrous chain of God's love."