Art & Creativity Quote by Studs Terkel

“Obviously” is doing the heavy lifting here, and it’s classic Studs Terkel: plainspoken on the surface, quietly provocative underneath. Terkel was a journalist who made a career out of letting everyday Americans speak in full human complexity. So when he says religion “obviously played a role” in not just one book but “the previous book, too,” he’s not offering a theological thesis. He’s signaling that belief, doubt, ritual, guilt, hope - whatever form it takes - keeps showing up whether the author planned for it or not.

The phrasing also carries a gentle challenge to a certain secular self-image. In literary and intellectual circles, religion can be treated as an artifact: something people used to have, something other people have. Terkel’s “obviously” punctures that posture. If religion is present across multiple works, it’s not a gimmick or a one-off “theme”; it’s a pressure system shaping characters, communities, and moral choices. He’s nudging the listener to notice the infrastructure: the way religion organizes time (holidays, Sundays), authority (priests, parents, conscience), and language (sin, redemption, calling) even when a story isn’t “about” religion.

There’s also a reporter’s pragmatism in the word “played.” Religion isn’t crowned as truth or dismissed as superstition; it’s treated as a force in the field, like class or race or labor. That’s Terkel’s signature move: translating the metaphysical into lived consequences, then daring you to admit you recognized it all along.