I Sold My Soul on eBay

March 12, 2007
Mehta, an atheist, once held an unusual auction on eBay: the highest bidder could send Mehta to a church of his or her choice. The winner, who paid $504, asked Mehta to attend numerous churches, and this book comprises Mehta's responses to 15 worshipping communities, including such prominent megachurches as Houston's Second Baptist, Ted Haggard's New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo., and Willow Creek in suburban Chicago. (Mehta ranks Willow Creek as the church most likely to draw him back.) Mehta, who grew up Jain, offers some autobiographical context, then discusses nonreligious people's approach to topics such as death and suffering. But all that is just a preamble to Mehta's sketches of the churches he attended. He doesn't find much community in churches; families sit far apart from other families, and people race "out the front doors to their cars" as soon as the service ends. Churches earn high marks for Mehta when they offer great speakers and focus on community outreach, but they also do many things wrong, including singing repetitive songs and alienating non-Christians by ubiquitously proclaiming them to be "lost." Mehta's musings will interest Christians who seek to proselytize others and who want to identify their evangelistic mistakes.

March 1, 2007
Mehta, a young graduate student in mathematics, a former Jain, and a current leader in the Secular Student Alliance, made himself the center of a web phenomenon not long ago. He held an auction on eBay in which he agreed to attend any place of worship to be determined by the winner. He later submitted his resulting critiques of a number of Christian churches to the winner's web site. This book reflects on those experiences as well as others Mehta has had while also considering "what works" on Sunday mornings to a nonbeliever and what does not. The result, while intriguing, is distinctly odd and even callow; it does not seem to have occurred to Mehta that worship is not, at root, a form of entertainment and is under no obligation to prove anything, much less to persuade a nonbeliever of the existence of God. Still, many Christians may find it interesting to see their worship through Mehta's eyes. For larger collections.

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