Imagine that you are directly descended, on both sides of your family tree, from Pilgrims who journeyed to the New World seeking religious freedom — but that generations later, here in the 21st century, you yourself have no faith in God. That remarkable story belongs to Neal B. Freeman, founding producer of William F. Buckley Jr.’s show Firing Line, and a longtime friend of National Review.

In his new book, Freeman has produced a thoughtful reflection on what it means to be a person of faith, especially in an American context, drawing on his own experience of having studied his family’s storied history and its entwinement with the history of Protestantism in America.

Freeman is descended on his fa­ther’s side from William Brewster, the re­nowned spiritual head of the Mayflower Pilgrims, and on his mother’s side from John Winthrop, the Massachusetts Bay Colony settler and famed Puritan leader. But while his distant ancestors came to the shores of this continent seeking the freedom to practice their faith, he describes himself rather cheekily as “white, Anglo, Saxon, and almost Protestant,” adrift, when it came to religion at least, for most of his life.

In the book’s first chapter, which serves as an introduction to his project, Freeman focuses on the significance of conversion in the life of a Christian. He describes his book as an invitation to readers to take that most difficult and yet most important, most momentous step in the pursuit of a life of faith: the first one.

“We know the general direction in which we should be headed, but the exact route is beyond our ken and known only to Him,” Freeman writes. “But even the most debauched among us can put one foot in front of the other.”

It is a fitting introduction to a book in which the author goes on to describe with great candor his personal spiritual journey, a reassuring opening for readers who might imagine themselves a step or two behind those around them in their own faith or their knowledge of their religious tradition.

Freeman calls himself, “roughly speaking, the WASPiest man in America,” writing, “I have been bred within an inch of my life and could be installed neither painted nor powdered as a free-standing exhibit in the Pea­body Museum,” a fictitious exhibit he jokingly titles “WASP Man.”

“But does this unusual genetic inheritance mean anything special?” he asks himself. “Does it mean that I was born on third base? Does it mean that as I make my way in life, ornate and filigreed doors swing open at my approach?”

Freeman laments that despite his being an heir to “the WASP inheritance,” no strong religious faith was passed down to him: “Neither Brewster nor Winthrop nor any of those voluble preacher-men following on behind them had bequeathed to me their own faith in God.”

Freeman says that for most of his life he could not count himself even as a nondenominational believer, a fact it still pains him to admit. He describes himself as instead having been “wandering in the desert” when it came to religion, and he drifted there so long that he feels himself unqualified to determine where a man’s search for faith might rightly begin.

His lack of certainty or a claim to authority, far from discrediting his example or advice, makes his musing that much easier to take seriously. Instead of directing readers to a set of texts or experts, Freeman has a more relatable idea: He suggests crowdsourcing as the best way to study religion and gradually immerse oneself in faith.

For his part, he announced to friends and colleagues that he “intended to commence an inquiry of faith,” soliciting their guidance and stories of inspiration. In response, he received a wealth of ideas, “copious amounts of instruction, uplift, and prayerful concern,” though he warns that he nevertheless found himself not “a single step closer to God.”

Freeman relates that his wife, “Miss Jane,” came from a Catholic family, a matter of great concern to his very Protestant relations at the time of their wedding. Freeman has his own complaints about the Catholic Church and concludes that, for now and for him, “all roads do not seem to lead to Rome.” He describes the Church, a bit inaptly in this reader’s view, as a “mediating structure” that would get in the way between him and God, and he settles instead on calling himself “some kind of a Protestant.”

In his chapter on the value of prayer, and how best to do it, Free­man displays a charming eagerness and almost too much compunction. “My problem is that I don’t pause to think about it. I now leap to prayer as a first resort,” he writes, adding that he began to seek structure and rigor for “this new life of prayer.”

While a desire for structure is commendable, Freeman need not worry, as he puts it, about calling on God too frequently and annoying him into disappearing. In a search for answers on how to pray, he found himself consulting C. S. Lewis, the famous Christian apologist, whose oeuvre, much to my chagrin, Freeman did not enjoy as much as I have.

And yet it was in a book of Lewis’s letters that Freeman found this, what he was searching for on the value of prayer:

There is no question whether an event has happened because of your prayer. When the event you prayed for occurs, your prayer has always contributed to it. When the opposite event occurs, your prayer has never been ignored; it has been considered and refused, for your ultimate good and the good of the whole universe.

In an unexpected and delightful chapter, Freeman writes at length about his informal debates over God’s existence with famous atheist Christopher Hitchens, who, he re­ports, “thrashed” him in a friend’s little kitchen at a party. “I very much hope that, while you won the debate, you lost the argument,” he writes in a touching farewell to the late Hitchens.

In the book’s final pages, Freeman offers this gem: “Faith is always and everywhere an affair of the heart. But faith rarely settles in without assent from the head. The mind turns and the heart leaps, in one sequence or the other.”

Knowing this, he closes with a nod to Pascal’s famous “wager.” If we can’t know for sure, should we assume that God does exist, or that he doesn’t? Having considered the wager for himself, Freeman posits that, “in seeking God, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”

With this candid story of his slow, thoughtful journey toward faith, Free­man has extended to his readers a little book of reasons to take, with the author, whatever step one can muster on the path to God.