Karen
Jeanna Kadlec's memoir of growing up in an evangelical Christian family in the Midwest and discovering she was a lesbian when she was in grad school in Boston. Jeanna's own story is interspersed with the history and critique of American evangelicalism, and especially how it came to be tied up with so-called "conservative" politics. I was more interested in Kadlec's personal story. I think the history and analysis is meant to add context rather than to be an in depth study of evangelicalism. Still, I found some insights in the book that will stay with me. One was that evangelical Christianity can be thought of as a civil folk religion because of how its values have become tied up in the idea of what it is to be American--the so-called Protestant work ethic of hard work and self reliance being also the bedrock idea of the American citizen, for example.
It was interesting to me that in Jeanna's story, her mother was the main transmitter of patriarchal religion. Her father, a lapsed Catholic, was checked out until she was a teenager, when he suddenly converted and then brought the family to an extremely repressive evangelical church. At that point, Jeanna attended a different church on her own, because she knew what the people at that church were doing was wrong. I was also interested in how, after Jeanna came out as a lesbian, she felt she couldn't be a Christian anymore. Despite finding churches that were welcoming of LGBTQ+ people and feeling intellectual agreement with them, she felt she "couldn't hear Jesus" anymore. Instead, she looked for expressions of spirituality that helped her listen to herself in another way; tarot, for example. It struck me that leaving Christianity was not necessarily an intellectual decision, but an intuitive one. Another form of the same religion that raised her would not help her grow the way she needed to.
I read this book for a book club, otherwise I might not have picked it up. Kadlec's writing about herself is admirable. She's not shy about describing her callous behavior to her husband as their marriage collapses (although she also describes some of his callous behavior, she keeps it to a minimum) or her enthusiasm for sex once she understands why she didn't enjoy sex with her husband.
Jeanna Kadlec's memoir of growing up in an evangelical Christian family in the Midwest and discovering she was a lesbian when she was in grad school in Boston. Jeanna's own story is interspersed with the history and critique of American evangelicalism, and especially how it came to be tied up with so-called "conservative" politics. I was more interested in Kadlec's personal story. I think the history and analysis is meant to add context rather than to be an in depth study of evangelicalism. Still, I found some insights in the book that will stay with me. One was that evangelical Christianity can be thought of as a civil folk religion because of how its values have become tied up in the idea of what it is to be American--the so-called Protestant work ethic of hard work and self reliance being also the bedrock idea of the American citizen, for example.
It was interesting to me that in Jeanna's story, her mother was the main transmitter of patriarchal religion. Her father, a lapsed Catholic, was checked out until she was a teenager, when he suddenly converted and then brought the family to an extremely repressive evangelical church. At that point, Jeanna attended a different church on her own, because she knew what the people at that church were doing was wrong. I was also interested in how, after Jeanna came out as a lesbian, she felt she couldn't be a Christian anymore. Despite finding churches that were welcoming of LGBTQ+ people and feeling intellectual agreement with them, she felt she "couldn't hear Jesus" anymore. Instead, she looked for expressions of spirituality that helped her listen to herself in another way; tarot, for example. It struck me that leaving Christianity was not necessarily an intellectual decision, but an intuitive one. Another form of the same religion that raised her would not help her grow the way she needed to.
I read this book for a book club, otherwise I might not have picked it up. Kadlec's writing about herself is admirable. She's not shy about describing her callous behavior to her husband as their marriage collapses (although she also describes some of his callous behavior, she keeps it to a minimum) or her enthusiasm for sex once she understands why she didn't enjoy sex with her husband.