1. Update:
I started a book club! It's called a very proper "Ladies Nonfiction Book Club." It's a public group through meetup.com and we've had 2 meetings so far. Yesterday's meeting was so much fun. Co- conspirator and I started ransacking our shelves and Amazon wishlists for dusty books that we will now actually read!
We met at a new to me cafe called "Mokha Cafe" and the espresso was delicious but the setting a little noisy for a discussion group and quite limited seating. We're dashing back to Dagny's, a local coffee shop in downtown BK.
You know I actually already do read books; but now I will hopefully knock out even more.
2. Book:
We met at a new to me cafe called "Mokha Cafe" and the espresso was delicious but the setting a little noisy for a discussion group and quite limited seating. We're dashing back to Dagny's, a local coffee shop in downtown BK.
You know I actually already do read books; but now I will hopefully knock out even more.
2. Book:
This was June's book for club. This was on founding member's wishlist and my own so we put it at the top of the queue.
The Schaeffers were a household name in the milieu of late eighties and nineties evangelicalism. They were elegant, intellectual, and sophisticated Bible thumpers. They lived in a chalet in Switzerland and their ministry was basically hosting young impressionable bohemians and "witnessing" through dialogue and by administering lectures which called upon the arts and the high points of Western Civilization to reinforce Christian beliefs.
Author, Frank is their youngest child and only son. This book was published in 2007 so it's been out there awhile and based on a podcast interview of his that I listened to recently, I'd wager that since 2007 he's evolved from Orthodoxy to more of agnosticism or atheism. Actually another more recent book title of his is Why I Am an Atheist Who Believes in God so it's not a wager.
This memoir recounts his childhood at L'abri the name of the Schaeffer's multi-location ministry, rise to fame as a member of the fledgling but soon powerful American Christian right movement, his exodus from that world and reinvention of himself as an artist and writer. He had a pretty free-range "unschooling before it was a term" homeschooled/autodidact childhood up until he did some boarding schools in the UK.
The Schaeffers were a household name in the milieu of late eighties and nineties evangelicalism. They were elegant, intellectual, and sophisticated Bible thumpers. They lived in a chalet in Switzerland and their ministry was basically hosting young impressionable bohemians and "witnessing" through dialogue and by administering lectures which called upon the arts and the high points of Western Civilization to reinforce Christian beliefs.
Author, Frank is their youngest child and only son. This book was published in 2007 so it's been out there awhile and based on a podcast interview of his that I listened to recently, I'd wager that since 2007 he's evolved from Orthodoxy to more of agnosticism or atheism. Actually another more recent book title of his is Why I Am an Atheist Who Believes in God so it's not a wager.
This memoir recounts his childhood at L'abri the name of the Schaeffer's multi-location ministry, rise to fame as a member of the fledgling but soon powerful American Christian right movement, his exodus from that world and reinvention of himself as an artist and writer. He had a pretty free-range "unschooling before it was a term" homeschooled/autodidact childhood up until he did some boarding schools in the UK.
I found his portraits of his parents and upbringing to be the most interesting aspects of the story. I was less interested in his subsequent career but related to his perspective and found guilty pleasure in some of the snark. His portrayal of his parents was honest but not cruel and I think like many families who were renowned in some way, the pressures can be significant and I believe they were for Frank and his siblings and his parents too.
A few passages I flagged.
"Everything we did was to witness. (to witness was to share Christ; in other words, talk about your faith in hopes that you would convince the person listening to convert. To witness also meant to live in such a way that people would see Christ" in you and want to convert because your life was so admirable.)"
I related to this a lot. Again - doesn't sound like a big deal - but it's a lot of pressure nonetheless.
"When we traveled on the Coroveglia, Mom pointed out that "We still have to pay for our tickets....' The idea was that because we were in the Lord's work, any person with a lot of money what was truly discerning would give us the boat passage and to do less was something like Mary and Martha charging Christ for supper."
This was kind of a painful connecting point for me as someone who raised funds for our "missionary work." I always found it incredibly awkward and murky.
"Life had two huge demarcation lines, a cosmic before and after, from which everything else flowed. There was salvation, the crossing of the line from light to dark. And there was marriage, and life before "the wedding night" and after."
Frank, well captured.
Re: his mom's long winded prayers that seemed to be for the benefit of the listener rather than have anything to do with God "I sometimes wondered if God ever tried to duck out of the room when he saw Mom coming."
"When Jessica (his baby) is not keeping her food down, I learned the prayer that has no words, the one that I'd be praying forever after I became a father, whatever I called myself or converted to, or abandoned, when the feeling of dread is prayer - prayer and longing for what I could never give a child in danger, or myself; the guarantee of joy."
"What I don't want is to live in a culture that makes sweeping and dismissive secular or religious "theological" one-size-fits-all decisions that oversimplify complex issues."
Preach
3. Observation.
People talk about their conversions to faith. Sometimes it was a lightning bolt moment of clarity or a supernatural occurrence that was the catalyst for a faith to be born. Other times it was a gradual realization or onset of a decision. My deconversion feels marked by both of those things - moments even seconds of startling clarity and a recognition of sudden alignment after many years of ponderous deconstructing.
Like a new convert I want to talk about it. I feel excited about the peace and congruence I feel. Like a new convert who wants others to experience their knowledge, freedom, and awakening, my deconversion has spawned similar feelings. Yet, I know that you can't sell your own experience too hard. You can touch on it - but others in your life have to witness it in their own way. They have their own journey; own monsoon strikes of insight to uncover.
Deconversion from what? Certainly not from openness to a conception of God(s) , spirituality, or faith - merely from a religion and any religion that would seek to overly simplify, stratify, systemize, and dogmatize access to and revelation of the mysteries.
