Much-needed educational work, but without redemption.

This much-needed book would be great, if it was only to reveal the ugly reality of the SBC. But sadly she used it also as a weapon against the remaining members of her family and most tragically against JESUS Himself. How beautiful would it have been to see her come to salvation outside the evil triangle of Catholics, Baptists (and Freemasonry).

PROS
+ Much needed report from a survivor of s**ual abuse. It has to be added that the SBC played a central role in racial segregation while opposing interracial marriage, has still a strong prevalence of Calvinists and Freemasons in their rows, and was the breeding ground for one of the biggest frauds in 'Christian' history, Billy Graham (key figure in the ecumenical movement; close collaboration with the Vatican and the Pope; unfriendly takeover of Halley's Bible Handbook and deletion of Jesuit references; advised his friend Nixon to end the Vietnam conflict in a blaze of glory; trained female pastors; great admirer of the 33° Mason Norman Vincent Peale). She sadly failed to give a more complete picture of the SBC.

+ This book does a great job in describing the s** abuse not only of her, but provides also a general picture, although being relatively vague considering the vast information she collected through her rather secular ministry. She adequately describes how the SBC maliciously and systematically covered up cases for now several decades.

+ She did well to give us a background of her upbringing, but went way too deep in the realm of gossip, when giving us dozens of ultra-detailed accounts of her ugly exchanges with her family members. A few accounts of each problematic aspect would have sufficed.

CONS
- She most certainly never experienced the real Jesus, which is bitter because she should have seen it at some point clearer than anyone else, that her environment of a fortune-telling grandmother killed by her own husband, of a Billy Graham- and Oral Roberts- addictive father, of a Franciscan mother, and of abusing Baptists is certainly not where the true JESUS is to be found.

Did she really hope that while she was used as a caulbearer and proforma priest for the confessions of her mother, who wanted her also to continue with fortune-telling, that she would find in that setting the true JESUS?

If she had found JESUS, there would certainly not have been additional suffering for decades, but forgiveness towards her family and restoration for herself. And she would have probably shed light on the SBC decades earlier.

Quote: "Even God abandoned me. It wasn’t a matter of unbelief, for unbelief would have been a mercy. Rather, it was as though God had become something monstrous at least toward me — an uncaring and rejecting God who was prone to sadistic whims.


- She believes in VISITATIONS from the dead:

"How could I tell her that I talked with ghosts? Yet, there they were. Even in death, Mom and Dad had both returned to me. It was an extraordinary gift."

- Despite her trauma regarding her mother, she clearly failed to distanced herself from CATHOLICISM, but rather seems to be close to it.

"I loved her [her friend] for it, and I also envied her. When I learned that she prayed to Mary, I wished that I, too, could pray to a woman."

- She describes herself as a 'fanatic for HALLOWEEN'.

- She endorsed the wearing of AMULETS and her life centers around the practise of yoga.

"... whether I could hack it in law school. But wearing a locust encased in plastic amber as a good luck amulet, I aced the first exams."

"So, I dropped out of the PhD program and instead began training as a yoga teacher"

- She repeatedly rejected the concept of ETERNAL HELL and of ORIGINAL SIN.

"She [her daughter] had grown up wholly unchurched, yet she was filled with empathy and kindness. She was and is goodness incarnate - original sin be damned."

- Constant use of FOUL LANGUAGE (e.g. 9x ...sh*t, 2x pissed ...)

- She actively supports and celebrates H**UALITY.

"This was still two decades before DeGeneres would take the landmark step of coming out as g*y on a television sitcom. "

- She is a serious FEMINIST and does not accept biblical authority:

"I took comfort in recalling that Charlotte Brontë, the author of one of my favorite books, Jane Eyre [the first major feminist novel], had also rejected a marriage proposal when she was twenty-two."

"I felt called to be a pastor."

She endorses a very long list of feminists, e.g.:

Barbara Kingsolver, Charlotte, Cynthia, Ellen DeGeneres, Emily Dickinson, Flannery O’Connor, Gloria Jean Watkins, Joan of Arc, Judith Herman, Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Linda Ronstadt, Mary Oliver, Sarah Stankor, Zora Neale Hurston

- It seems as if she believes in INCARNATION and several souls.

"With each of my demises, seeds from the prior life were blown into the next one, where they took root and rebirthed me into a new life, nourished in the dirt and decay of the prior incarnation."

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!