Throughout Canada, they are searching: engaging in complex but deeply relaxing contortions at Salt Spring Island’s ashtanga yoga center; feeling “the blast of divine light of the Resurrection” at St. Herman’s of Alaska, a non-ethnic Orthodox church in Edmonton; taking the healing waters at Alberta’s Lac Ste. Anne pilgrimage; grasping for the Good News at a Billy Graham gathering in Ottawa. These are the Canadians at the cutting edge of today’s spiritual quests, says Peter Emberley, men and women seeking to satisfy today’s raw hunger for spiritual wholeness, for what is real, for what is.

Divine Hunger is a first-ever portrait of the spiritual searches of Canada’s babyboomers. It offers a fascinating commentary on our modern state of religious consciousness, looking at the dichotomy between our belief that we are free and self-determining beings, yet willing to submit to religions and movements that require subjugation and a large leap of faith.

PETER C. EMBERLEY is professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Carleton University in Ottawa, where he is also a founding director of the College of the Humanities.

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