10/10 ( )

There are a lot of good insights in this book, and I gave it only three stars for what may be an unfair reason: I don't think the author has fully come to terms with her religious upbringing and views. But maybe she never will -- I feel sorry for her there. Raised in a [C:]hurch of Christ congregation (she says that members are encouraged to use a small "c"), Campbell was both a firm adherent and a rebel because she could never quite see why girls/women couldn't preach or hold other church offices. Yet many years later, having left the church, earned a MARS (Master of Arts in Religious Studies) from Hartford Seminary, and worked as religion reporter for the Hartford Courant, she is filled with trepidation when asked to preach/speak at a local UCC church. And yet she also can't shake the conviction that the liberal churches that would welcome her aren't "real" churches. Visiting her brother, whose wife has led him into what sounds like a Southern Methodist would-be megachurch, she shares discomfort with him and he says "I guess fundamentalism broke off in us." She explains this as a metaphor of a key breaking off in a lock -- but to me her experience seems almost more like a knife breaking off and being left inside someone, poisoning them. I'd say the book is well worth reading although it left me unsatisfied. ( )

Very fascinating - half memoir, half feminist look at the bible, Jesus and Christianity. ( )

I enjoyed this book because I identified with the author's crisis of faith and her struggles with a conservative church. I don't understand why she skipped the actual crisis of faith. ( )

I'm having trouble marshaling my thoughts in regards to Susan Campbell's account of growing up within a rigid brand of Christianity and how that shaped her adult life. When I was sixteen, my family moved and the new church we attended was unlike what I had been used to. For a while I fell in with this new brand of American Christianity until the cognitive dissonance did me in and I had to walk away. From there it's hard to turn around and find a place for faith in my own life. Campbell's experiences were similar -- her church differed in some ways from mine, and I'm sure we would have been equally certain that the other was probably not really saved, but on the larger themes, it could have been the same place.

When my Catholic friends who are lackadaisical or worse about their Bibles call their chuch the "one, true church," I sit silently. If they knew their Bible, they'd know that that title belongs to my church, not theirs. I know they are in for a big surprise come Judgment Day.

This is a humorous account of the odd things Campbell believed growing up and her dawning conviction that even though she was a girl, that she wasn't designed to be secondary; a submissive helper to the men allowed to hold the power and make the decisions. But the book is also a history of the evangelical church in America and how changed drastically over the years, and the story of how Campbell was able to come to a qualified truce with her upbringing.

I was impressed with how Campbell managed to present her story in a humorous way, without downplaying its effect on her or allowing the narrative to become bitter. I loved this book, but wonder if it would be comprehensible to someone who hadn't experienced something similar. On the other hand, with radio talk show hosts and politicians embracing the brittle, angry rhetoric of fundamentalist Christianity, it's more important than ever to understand where their ideas come from and to engage in a reasonable dialog on the subject. ( )