A SPECTACULAR INHERITANCE

Psychotherapist Smith’s memoir explores how religious movements can impede their members’ development as people.

Perspective is essential to memoirs, and this account of the author’s childhood in a family devoted to theologian Frank Buchman’s Moral Re-Armament movement clearly provides an insider’s point of view. Smith, who holds a doctorate in international relations and master’s degrees in both history and counseling, has used this academic background to create a multilayered text that analyzes her own self-development and offers a historical review of how Buchman’s primarily Christian organization rose to prominence on the world stage in the mid-20th century. By the memoir’s conclusion, both the personal and external elements of her narrative build toward her assessment that the movement fell short of the “global network of change makers” it claimed to be. Smith’s organization of the narrative deepens her analysis of the movement’s impact on her personally, and of its claims regarding its own identity. After the narrative begins in 1984 with the moment when Smith left the MRA at the age of 35 to attend Boston University, it jumps back and forth between a childhood circumscribed by her parents’ dedication to the MRA and her adult life in the “wilderness,” or the world outside the movement. She effectively provides her critiques within the context of her professional knowledge of human development—a move that bolsters her ultimate judgement that the MRA failed in its goals because of its leaders’ need to control the lives of its members. The book also includes a moving depiction of her father as someone who was unable to reach his potential due to his adherence to MRA values, ideals, and expectations.

A compelling read, particularly for anyone who’s grown up in and then left a religious movement.