Fenton Johnson: There's a very important difference between "religion" (or "belief") and the virtue we call faith. In Keeping Faith, I quote Zen philosopher Alan Watts on this point: "Belief is the insistence that the truth is what one would wish it to be. Faith is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go. Faith is the essential virtue of science, and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception." In the course of my years among the monks, however, I came to see how the virtue we call faith withers in the abstract -- how it needs an architecture of beliefs in which to be housed. Our beliefs -- whether Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Transcendentalist -- provide a home in which and through which we may sustain and develop our faith.

SoF: But you go on to warn about the dangers of putting too much emphasis on belief -- especially how group belief can lead to blind adherence to dogma. You write, "when communities use belief not as an aid to faith, but as a means to establish an identity, sooner or later the guns appear." Does group belief -- or, religion -- inevitably lead to violence?

Johnson: Group belief can lead to violence -- patriotism has led the U.S. into the current war, to offer one example. But group belief can also be the inspiration for great and noble deeds. American Christian history offers a long list of examples: Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, the Berrigan brothers come immediately to mind. And American Buddhist history is accumulating its own list of role models. All enduring religions have at the heart of their teachings the negation of the self in service to the larger, community good. Any use of religion for any other means, most especially self-justification, is a violation of its basic principles.

SoF: What role does faith play in the current environment of war and general uncertainty?

Johnson: Everywhere I go in America, but especially among my students (most of whom are in their late teens or twenties) I find what I would characterize as a crisis of faith. By that I mean that I find no confidence that we can act collectively to address our problems and make for a better world. (It's of interest to note that in Buddhist texts, the Pali word "shrada," sometimes translated as "faith," is also translated as "confidence.") In its place I find a prevailing sense that the world is in decline (economically, environmentally, socially, politically) and that the best I can do is to seize whatever I can and hold it as tight as possible. But faith -- to hearken back to the Watts quotation -- is not about clinging; it's about letting go. How does one accomplish that, in a "me, mine" age? That, I think, is where our wisdom traditions enter in. One makes (as the Buddhists so aptly have it) a practice of letting go; one makes a practice of faith. I ride a bike, or embrace the homeless person not because I believe these gestures will improve the environment or comfort a troubled soul, although they may, and I hope that they do. Instead, I undertake these gestures because they are acts of faith, undertaken -- in the face of much good reason to the contrary -- from the confidence that my small gesture can and will make a difference. Done consistently, that practice becomes a habit -- the habit of faith.

SoF: Is the difference between faith and belief as you define those words simply the difference between Eastern and Western approaches to the spiritual life? How can the monotheistic religions absorb the Buddhist concept of faith -- of "letting go" -- especially given the increasing materialism of the secular West?

Johnson: I'm glad you introduce materialism into the conversation. At every turn the planet and our culture are signaling us that salvation -- in both the spiritual sense and in the very real sense of shaping a world in which we can live -- depends on our finding pleasure and fulfillment in some place other than in material possessions. That's a common ground that Eastern and Western philosophies share. Christianity is as much about "letting go" as Buddhism (Jesus: A man must lose himself to save himself). One of the Trappist monks with whom I spoke gave voice to his hope that the rising popularity of Buddhism in America would enable Western Christianity to free itself from what he aptly called "bourgeois materialism" and return to its roots in nonattachment, nonviolence, letting go. I'd like to believe he's right (though I admit it requires an act of faith).

SoF: You've written that monastic practice is "subversive." How so?

Johnson: As you've noted in your queries, we live in an obsessively materialistic culture which places unalloyed emphasis on the self. Amid such a culture, what could be more subversive than a community of people dedicated to living simply and collectively? To a person the young people with whom I spoke at the various American Buddhist monasteries told me that they had been initially attracted not by the particulars of Buddhist practice but by the notion of a collective of people committed to living out an ideal.

SoF: You say the opposite of faith is not doubt, but fear. What do you mean by this?

Johnson: Following on the various Buddhist translations of the word, you might also render that sentence: The opposite of confidence is fear. Fear is an almost inevitable byproduct of materialism -- the more we have, the more we want to protect it, and the greater our fear that it will be taken from us. Jesus challenged the prosperous to give up everything and follow him. I'm realistic about that (which is to say, I don't think it's likely to happen), even as I know from my own experience and that of the many monks whom I came to know that it's possible to seek and acquire a mindset of simplicity, generosity, trust, and openness. It's possible to find contentment in a simple life -- not only possible, but that life offers contentment in a way that materialism cannot. Materialism is characterized by constant hunger -- having more, we want more. Simplicity is characterized by contentment.

SoF: Your new book grew from an article you wrote for Harper's magazine in 1998. How have your thoughts changed or evolved since then -- and since 9-11 in particular?

Johnson: Keeping Faith is a road story -- the story of my journey from a place where I was literally unable to make the sign of the cross because I was so angry at institutionalized religion, to a place where I attend church and sit regularly at the neighborhood zendo (meditation hall). Through the practice of humbling myself to the rituals of two specific belief systems -- in this case, American Christianity and Buddhism -- I came to see the importance of such rituals in enabling me to maintain perspective on my place in the larger scheme of life. The other day at church I was given this little revelation: Every time I go to communion I feel like a fool. Just as at the zendo, every time I bow to the floor I feel like a fool. And for a prosperous white man living in the world's wealthiest and most powerful culture, that may well be the most valuable lesson I can receive. And the more often I receive it the better. At the heart of Keeping Faith -- at the heart of Jesus' teachings -- is the understanding that outsiders (in Jesus' time as in ours, the poor, women, sexual outlaws, refugees, foreigners, thieves, lepers) possess special access to wisdom. Keeping Faith posits that we each need to seek and live in the place where we are outsiders if we are to have access to wisdom; Christianity and Buddhism can be means to that end.