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Janelle's avatar

Been looking forward to this interview and it did not disappoint.

The book really clarified for me so much of what I intuitively knew but had trouble articulating. I grew up in a church that relatively speaking didn't fall prey to much of this bullshit but even so it still filtered down to me through youth group retreats with other churches, camp, and going to a conservative Christian College. I tend to be on the more cynical side of thinking there is truly no point in trying to "fix" the system from within but rather to cut your losses and start over somewhere else.

Sarah Bessey (a deconstructing blogger/author who came out of Evangelicalism) calls it making your own table in the wilderness when you are rejected from or just can't stand to sit at the table they have made. I did that about 5 years ago and haven't looked back since. To me, the foundation is rotten to the core (as this book so elegantly points out this has been present in white American Evangelicalism from the beginning) so what exactly are we trying to preserve?

It really comes down to how much men hate women and that's depressing to me. They can't serve the Jesus from the Bible because that's too feminine...as if the divine doesn't exist in both male, female, and non binary people.

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Ams C's avatar

I'm a Canadian who grew up in a rural SK community where I participated in a LOT of Full Gospel youth events and retreats, etc, even though I was Catholic because they had the largest youth group in town. And, tbh, I think straddling that line between both churches allowed me to cast a more critical eye on what was going on than if I had just been in one or the other.

I grew up on Adventures in Odyssey (and, for the most part, maintain that they're actually...not awful?? They truly instilled in me a lot of imagination and good values, so I can't say *everything* about Focus on the Family was awful.) and VeggieTales, but also read the Bible on my own because I figured if I was going to be a good Catholic, I should intimately know what it was I was a part of. And even as a teen, I was just always...confused? by the disconnect between what was happening at youth retreats and in Mass vs what was in the Bible. Like I didn't understand why we were supposed to love one another but then there was this derision about poor people or queer people or single, teen mothers. It also felt very cliquey and much like a popularity contest with rules I didn't understand because, again, they weren't based on the text I was told we were following, but rather outside rules that I didn't always understand.

It's still something, as an adult, I'm trying to navigate, both within myself and within familial relationships. And there's a lot of trying to reconcile a feeling of spirituality that feels wholesome and I did access with understanding that the institutions I found it in aren't actually what they say they are on the package. And how absolutely insidious so much of that toxicity is if you're vulnerable in any way.

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