An incendiary but profoundly moving deconstruction of conservative Christianity.
A timely collection of essays by a diverse group of people who’ve left the religious right.
This Eos Award–winning book features an assortment of written works from men and women who grew up attending fundamentalist and evangelical Christian churches but eventually went their own way. The book should be especially praised for its inclusion of a wide range of perspectives. The authors of the nearly two dozen essays here include multiple New York Times-bestselling writers, popular bloggers, artists, and academics; they include white men, feminists, African Americans, members of the LGBTQ community, Protestants, and Catholics. The book’s debut editors are at the vanguard of the bourgeoning “exvangelical” movement on social media; Stroop created the viral Twitter hashtags #EmptyThePews and #ChristianAltFacts, and O’Neal co-hosts the “Sunday School Dropouts” podcast. The book’s foreword is by Frank Schaeffer, the son of Francis Schaeffer, an ideological founder of the modern-day religious right and an evangelical icon from the 1970s through the ’90s. Each essay addresses what the younger Schaeffer calls America’s “generational exodus from toxic Christianity” from the perspective of former members. Although many of the authors here are currently atheists, others found spirituality in Eastern spiritualism or in more liberal interpretations of Christianity. The collection’s opening section, “Purity Culture, Sexuality, and Queerness,” is perhaps its most damning, featuring the stories of abuse survivors, gay people, and other victims of conservative Christians’ sexual repression and hypocrisy. Boy Erased author Garrard Conley’s essay, “Land of Plenty,” on his endurance of gay “conversion therapy,” is particularly poignant. Not all of the essays, though, center on traumatic experiences as the factor that led their authors to leave the church. Peter Counter’s contribution, “Saint Tornado-Kick,” for example, intriguingly shows the gradual transition of a sincere Catholic teenager away from the faith of his parents after taking up karate lessons. Overall, this is a profound, well-written collection that will appeal not just to “exvangelicals” and other critics of the religious right, but also introspective fundamentalists who seek explanations for their dwindling numbers.
An incendiary but profoundly moving deconstruction of conservative Christianity.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-946093-07-3
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Epiphany Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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