I do have the sense that being in some serious human trouble in this society is a very important geography right now for trying to discern what the future is going to be; and by the same token to be in trouble at all is to share in what I take to be a frightening movement toward violence and death. To resist that movement is one' choice.
—Daniel Berrigan
The sensitive spirits of a child psychiatrist and a popular American poet are distended between the grim reality of the war and the emergent forces of opposition to the war. In The Geography of Faith, Dr. Robert Coles of Boston interviews the imprisoned Jesuit priest Daniel Berrigan—now a dentist's assistant.
Dr. Coles, an incredibly open-minded man (he recently released a study of Middle Americans based on extensive interviews), finds Daniel Berrigan to be a "tough, knowing, complicated, lively, passionate man." The edited transcript of their discussiosn ranges freely from alternative family structures, university life (which Berrigan finds to be "a kind of hothouse laboratory of human expression and human passion"), church hierarchy, professional life, and Berrigan's moral explanations of his actions. The dialogue is spirited and illuminating especially when the radical priest probes Cole's religious stance and unravels the doctor's political viewpoint.