Fleeing Fundamentalism
A Minister's Wife Examines Faith
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
A "brave memoir" by a woman who left her husband and her church to find her own spiritual path (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).
Carlene Cross joined the world of evangelical Christianity as a teenager, and after attending Bible college and marrying a charismatic young man who appeared destined for greatness as a fundamentalist minister, she thought the pieces of her life had fallen into place. But her feelings of hope and promise started to crumble when she realized that her husband had fallen victim to the same demons that had plagued his youth.
When efforts to hold their family together failed, she broke away—despite the condemnation of the congregation and the anger of many she had considered friends. Once outside, she realized that the secular world was not the seething cauldron of corruption and sin she had believed, and found herself questioning the underpinnings of the fundamentalist faith. In this "absorbing" account, Cross tells of waiting tables, going on welfare in order to earn a degree and support her children, and making peace with her past; and offers a plea for greater tolerance and understanding in an era when religion so often divides people instead of uniting them (Publishers Weekly).
"A painfully candid account of faith gained and faith lost, of forgiveness, and of the often rocky road of spiritual growth." —Booklist
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The religion depicted in this absorbing memoir of falsehood and betrayal is fundamentalism gone berserk: it has turned into an inhuman, apocalyptic, darkly controlling force that reshuffles common sense, "jumbling all logic into madness." After indoctrination at a Bible college, Cross finds herself in a marriage from hell replete with abuse, addictions and mental illness. Her husband, a popular young pastor, uses religion to mask the alternate reality he has created, a netherworld that will potentially destroy not only his career but the entire family's safety and sanity. With the courage of a trapped animal, Cross reinvents her life, waiting tables and going on welfare in order to earn a degree and support her three children. For a time discarding God, the Bible and organized religion along with her malevolent husband, she eventually redefines spirituality as "a road of discovery not of submission to a rulebook." Cross's brief summaries of Christian history are at best simplistic, and some readers will contend that the fundamentalism she portrays is an aberration, not the norm. Still, her heartfelt condemnation of public hypocrisy couldn't be more timely. In her ex-husband's own self-indicting words: "Isn't it ironic, a guy condemning sinful society and completely without a conscience himself?"
