Submitted by Pam Denham

FAIRHOPE, Ala. — “According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 40 million Americans 18 and older suffer from an anxiety disorder,” says Karen Spears Zacharias, the critically acclaimed author of Where’s Your Jesus Now?, an examination of how fear is changing people’s lives for the worse, eroding faith in America.

In American culture, fear is stealing headlines and destroying lives, Zacharias says.

“Our fear factor has been escalated, from war and different types of cancer to pedophiles and nuclear threats to tsunamis and global warming to terrorism and 9/11,” she continues. “Since 9/11, Americans are living in a nagging state of hyper-alert. Neurosis has become as American as billowing flags and apple pies.”

Page & Palette invites you to meet Zacharias and hear her advice on how to confront what you fear most, wrestle with it and then release it, freeing yourself. The bookstore will host a special reading-signing event with the author on July 24, from 6-8 p.m.

According to Zacharias, fear has direct correlations to faith. The more afraid we are, the more rigid we become — in our daily routines, our family dynamics and our doctrinal structures.

“We often swap out a true faith for a ‘Religion of Certainosity,’” Zacharias says, “where being right is considered more worthy than being redeemed.”

With transparency and wit, Zacharias examines her own fears and those of others through compelling storytelling crafted from her years as an award-winning writer.

She finds hope in a Vietnamese war widow, in a young man decimated by HIV, in the burnt remains of a handmade maternity outfit and in the strength of a mother with a gun held to her chest.

Zacharias is a notable journalist-author and mesmerizing speaker. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Newsweek, and on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition.”

For more information, call (251) 928-5295.

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