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Malcolm Gladwell Returns to Christian Roots: ‘I Realized What I Had Missed’

Bestselling author tells RNS how writing new book brought him ‘back into the fold.’

Christianity Today October 10, 2013
Pop!Tech/Flickr

The fascinating interviews just keep coming.

On the heels of Pope Francis's surprising candor (or "theological wreck") and Justice Antonin Scalia's C. S. Lewis-inspired nod to the Devil comes intriguing news from last week's Catalyst conference: Malcolm Gladwell returned to his Christian faith while writing his latest book.

Religion News Service's Sarah Pulliam Bailey offers an intriguing interview with the bestselling author worth reading in full. When asked whether he has had a "personal conversion experience," Gladwell said:

I realized what I had missed. It wasn't an "I woke up one morning" kind of thing. It was a slow realization something incredibly powerful and beautiful in the faith that I grew up with that I was missing. Here I was writing about people of extraordinary circumstances and it slowly dawned on me that I can have that too.

CT has interviewed Gladwell on what churches can learn from the flu bug, reviewed his book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, and excerpted another Gladwell book, Tipping Point, on word-of-mouth epidemics.

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