Brook Wilensky-Lanford

Brook Wilensky-Lanford is author of Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and A God-Shaped Nation: Five Hundred Years of Religion in America, coming in June 2026, both from Grove Press. Learn more about her work at www.brookwilensky-lanford.com

Articles

Religion Dispatches

Heaven on His Mind

Trump’s Telling Fixation with the Afterlife

America’s 47th president and aspirational dictator seems particularly concerned lately with where he’s headed when he dies. Trump mused about his chances at eternal salvation with the cast of “Fox and…

Brook Wilensky-Lanford

November 10, 2025

Article

Religion Dispatches

Gen Z's Religious Affiliation Stats Are Confusing ... But Only When Viewed From a Christian-Centric Perspective

Recently, Atlantic writer Derek Thompson tweeted an image of two graphs of religious survey data. The first showed the number of people who say they “believe in God without a doubt,” broken down by…

Brook Wilensky-Lanford

July 27, 2021

Article

Religion Dispatches

How To Talk To "Nones" and Influence People: Rob Bell's Transrational Experience

Did I really need to learn How To Be Here, urgently, right now? The book’s publisher had sent me not one advance reading copy, but three. A sign from the universe? I decided to read the book to find…

Brook Wilensky-Lanford

June 6, 2016

Article