This absorbing collection of nine short stories has two common themes: Texas as a homeland and Christianity as a balm and a barb. Some of the characters in the first four stories grew up with Jesus and never leave Him, however they may struggle at times with the organized church.
The narrator son in the Houston family of the second part’s five stories (which comprise a novella) encounters Jesus late, after his blind and depressed mother has driven his scientist father into the bed of her longtime caretaker. In his remorse, as his marriage is collapsing, the father seeks counseling and becomes Born Again.
Thus he becomes what many devout believers are in America today, and particularly the evangelical Christians of the stories in the book’s first part: outsiders in a secular society which either mocks the expression of their values, attacks them as subversive, or ignores them altogether. Author David McGlynn comes at it all as a skilled reporter, neither endorsing nor condemning, but finely detailing the challenges and the rewards of a way of life that increasingly is being lost to us.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
“…way of life that increasingly is being lost to us.”
And my impression was that the number of religious people – both born again and otherwise – is on the rise everywhere. Was I wrong then?
Everywhere, I don’t know about. But it’s my take on the USA that overt religious expression of the Christian variety is an endangered species. It is usually ignored by the general media and mocked outright by Hollywood. People see us as a religious country, and indeed the polls consistently find a majority of believers. Yet church membership has been in decline for a long time. As for Judaism, as I imagine you know, the secular rule in America. It’s so bad that converts are no longer discouraged, even outside Reform.