Early in my journey of leaving the church, I was still a stay-at-home-mom. In those days I read an average of a book a week and preferred bound books and had several shelves full. After starting work full-time and commuting, I shifted to audio books and podcasts. Some of these were read with the full intent and desperate hope that they would resurrect something of my former faith. But that was long gone. Instead, I found intellectual peace unlike I had previously known along with a reassurance that I was on the right path and that I was not as alone as I felt.
The following is a list of books, podcasts, blogs, and social media outlets of a wide variety from fiction, self-help, and memoir to treatises on ethics, church and American history, human psychology, and politics. Nearly all of it will be information and understanding that evangelical and fundamentalist churches carefully exclude from their preaching and teaching in Christian and home school curriculums, colleges, and seminaries.
Books
The Sin of Certainty – Peter Enns Jesus and John Wayne – Kristen Munoz American Apocalypse – Matthew Henry Sutton Unsettling Truths – Charles and Rah Misquoting Jesus – Bart Ehrman Harvest of Hope – Juan Gonzalez Caste – Isabel Wilkerson Crazy for God – Frank Schaffer Losing My Religion – William Lobdell Why I Believed – Kenneth W. Daniels Trusting Doubt – Valerie Tarico Women Beyond Belief – Edited by Karen L. Garst Why I am Agnostic – Robert Ingersoll Man’s Search for Meaning – Vicktor Frankel Humankind – Rutger Bregman Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart – Bayer and Figdor How to Be Perfect – Michael Schur
The Body Keeps Score – Bessel Van Der Kolk, MD Healing from Hidden Abuse – Shannon Thomas, LCSW
Leaving the Fold – Marlene Winell, PhD Braving the Wilderness and I Thought It Was Just Me – Brene Brown Nine Parts of Desire – Geraldine Brooks Half the Sky – Kristof and WuDunn Good and Mad – Rebecca Traister Feminism is for Everybody – Bell Hooks I know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou Traveling Mercies and Bird by Bird – Anne Lamott Flight of the Sparrow – Amy Belding Brown
Humans are admittedly a bit complicated. The same person can be hateful with some and the most loving individual with others. Some people have what could be called toxic traits: harmful behaviors that drive their personality and sometimes worsen over their lifetimes causing irreparable rifts with those around them. Others can be problematic to those around them for a short period of time and then through therapy or medication or some transformative experience they become someone much easier to relate to. On top of these relational complications, all of us are born into systems and cultures that build the world as we know it.
Evangelicalism was my world, and since leaving the church and the us versus them, good versus evil dichotomy built by it, I am learning to view the people in my life more clearly. One of those people was my Papa.
Because my mom estranged my sister and me from our dad, I barely knew my paternal Grandfather, but I had a special relationship with my maternal Papa. Papa, before I was old enough to know, was part of the traumatic events that took place when my mom outed my dad in the early 80s. That bothers me, but what I know of Papa is that he was a man of his time, his Presbyterian faith system, and he was known to fiercely defend his daughters and that gives me some perspective on his actions – if not approval.
While I am bothered by those thoughts, in my childhood my Papa was the closest thing I had to a hero and because of my Papa’s influence, I have spent an inordinate amount of time studying. Actually, studying is my only real hobby. And because of Papa, I have spent considerable time studying some very odd things for the average woman – like the history of tractors and cattle breeds. And that drive to study and learn is probably the thing that gave me a special relationship with Papa. We were very similar in that way.
He was a learner and teacher at heart and by profession. Papa taught life sciences – specifically horticulture and agriculture – in our county vo-tech school, and when he died the work he had done for his doctoral degree in those fields was still in a file cabinet in his farm office. He did the research, but never defended the dissertation. And he certainly didn’t need the title to earn the respect of those around him. When he died at the end of December, during my junior year of high school, his former students and coworkers lined up in the ice and snow to pay their respects.
When my chemistry teacher, Mr. Kolakowski, saw me looking sullen after the winter break that year, he pulled me aside. I told him then that my Papa had died, and he put two and two together. He waved me into the little closet area that had doors that linked the chemistry lab to the chemistry classroom.
“Was John Graham your Papa?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Tears flowed for both of us.
“You’re Pappy’s granddaughter!” he practically shouted at me with a grin on his face.
“Yes, I guess.”
“Pappy was my friend for years! Wait. Let me get something.”
Mr. Kolakowski then headed to his desk in the classroom side. I heard the old desk drawer slide open and then close again and he came back to the closet with an old black and white yearbook photo of Papa. He had recently found it in a storage room.
“Here you go, Pappy!” He handed me the photo and gave me a little hug.
Mr. Kolakowski called me “Pappy” every time he saw me from that day until I left the school. My Papa left a sweet memory in the minds of many – not just me.
Mingled with my adult confusion about the man, I have a bunch of loving thoughts of Papa. Papa, G’ma, and their farm were my refuge in childhood. I’m pretty sure that I spent more time with them than my siblings or my cousins did. Their love, care, and support were pillars to my life.
And there is one story that, to me, encompasses the whole of my relationship with Papa.
Annually, from the time I was five or six until my mother married my stepfather when I was thirteen, Papa and G’ma took us on vacation with them – usually to the Jersey shore. Each year we would pile into their Ford LTD with their tow-behind camper and travel across the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Usually an aunt came along – very often my fun Aunt Joy. We would stop and load up on the gorgeous produce available at the garden stands as we passed through New Jersey and then camp at a campground fairly close to the beach. During our week we would swim, visit one of the famous New Jersey boardwalks, go crabbing and steam fresh crabs, and eat loads of that fresh garden produce. I was a light sleeper and Papa a farmer, so we often got up early together and sometimes those early mornings included our own little adventures.
One year, Papa noticed a wild berry patch at the campground where we stayed. When I appeared from the camper one morning, he was sitting in a lawn chair under the awning drinking a cup of Folger’s Crystals. He had a small, plastic ice-cream pail with him. He greeted me with his low cheerful voice and told me to get ready to head out. We were going berry picking so that the others could have fresh berries for breakfast.
We had been at the patch a while and our pail was nearly full when I noticed the most beautiful caterpillar. He was smooth and green and majestic and very fat, and I don’t think I had ever before seen such an amazing creature. Papa immediately noticed my fascination and told me the scientific name and that the caterpillar would one day become a moth.
Then he said it, “He loves to eat tomatoes.”
Hornworm image by Pam Carter from Pixabay
My child mind flew into a tizzy then. We had a bunch of good tomatoes back at the camper. We could feed him his favorite food and then he could become a beautiful moth. I was going to keep him! And though any farmer worth his salt would never have kept a hornworm caterpillar and fed it, Papa did it for me.
He pulled out his little pocket-knife and cut off the branch the caterpillar was resting on and we carried it back to the camper with our pail full of berries.
When we got there, G’ma was up and setting out breakfast things. It didn’t take the master gardener long to recognize the pest on the branch that I was proudly carrying. She eyed Papa and I heard her familiar, “Jaaahn?” And Papa told her sweetly that I loved the beautiful caterpillar, and we were going to feed him so that he could become a beautiful moth.
When my mom appeared and saw the thing, she was indignant and wanted to get rid of it. Again, Papa told her that I was keeping it and I was going to feed it so that it could become a beautiful moth.
And so, I found the best container from our sand toys and set up a nice little home for the caterpillar and gave him a nice little tomato to munch on. And I diligently cared for him the rest of the week.
When we packed up to head home, the others thought that I would have to say goodbye to my little hornworm, but not Papa. He helped me to get it set up to safely survive the trip back across the Pennsylvania Turnpike to the big, beautiful farm garden that would be its next home.
And so we traveled all that day and reached Papa and G’ma’s farm sometime after dark. It was a beautiful night, and the lawn and garden could be clearly seen from just the light of the moon and stars.
As others unpacked, Papa took me and my beautiful caterpillar to the garden to his perfectly straight row of tomato plants. He allowed me to pick out the best plant with the biggest tomato and I said a sweet goodbye to my caterpillar there. Then, with a skip in my step, I headed to the lawn where Aunt Joy was sprawled out looking at the stars. We spent some time there discussing what I knew of constellations and then went inside with the others.
And I think we all know what Papa did with my little hornworm – may he rest in peace.
Former Evangelical homeschool mom and one-time missionary and pastor’s wife, Stephanie Logan, aka Snicklefritz, writes from her life story and four decades of experience in the evangelical movement. Her views and stories are her own.
In my past, I often looked down on those who were nominal in their faith. Nominal means in name only and fundamentalists and evangelicals tend to refer to most Roman Catholics, mainline protestants, and many of their own as nominal. In their world, it is a spiritual insult to call a Christian nominal and often whispered as a prayer concern shared about someone who needs *saved*.
As a natural result of my rearing, I thought little of Roman Catholics who only attended mass on holidays, weddings, and funerals; mainline protestants who obviously didn’t understand the *real* message of salvation and didn’t desire holiness; and evangelicals who weren’t in the church every time the doors opened. They obviously weren’t serious in the faith if they even had any. Don’t you know that all those nominal Christians vote Democrat and evangelicals and fundamentalists *know* that people who vote Democrat aren’t real Christians.
What I didn’t realize then, I see clearly now. Perhaps nominal Christians know a thing or two about priorities and balancing their lives and faith. And those referred to as nominal are usually less invested. It is easier for them to miss the dirty underbelly of the church and just enjoy the traditional comforts. They are often less aware of what the Bible teaches – settling themselves on passages of scripture that are universally familiar and don’t cause too many questions. Had I been raised to be nominal, I would likely still be in the church.
But I was raised in a system that prioritized holiness with guilt laden altar calls that took place at both Sunday services. It was riddled with constant talk of death, judgement, and the end of the world. One of our four foundational doctrines was Jesus as the coming king who would save us all from the judgement of earth through the rapture. I can’t tell you how many times I got saved as my anxious child mind could never be certain if my sinful soul was genuine the last time I got saved. I didn’t want to be left behind. And just to be extra sure, I got baptized twice: once as an infant in my grandparent’s Presbyterian church and once again when I was a teen and was told that believer’s baptism by immersion was the way *real* Christians did it.
In my teen years, I was already doing daily devotional Bible study and was *called* to the ministry. Instead of going to a state university to study communications like my high school instructors encouraged, I spent more than twice the amount to attend a denominational college where I earned a degree that has been a hindrance to professional growth. While there, I not only studied for ministry, but I also began the habit of reading the Bible through annually and listening only to Christian radio – two things that greatly influenced the next two decades of my life.
That Bible reading continued for close to 25 years. I have read the Bible cover to cover over twenty times. During three of those years, I was also studying the Bible through verse by verse from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21. I took a notebook full of notes and created my own cross references using a Strong’s Concordance, a Vine’s Expository Dictionary, and a Halley’s Bible Handbook. I have read the King James Version, New American Standard Bible, New King James Version, New International Version, and the English Standard Version.
I have worked to arrange church programs, sat on committees, assisted preachers, taught Sunday School and children’s church, and have even been offered the pulpit on occasion, though only under the authority and in the presence of a male preacher and never to actually preach (of course).
My choices about the church and faith have not come from lack of knowledge or effort or faith. As a matter of fact, I was so all in that one of the last things my last pastor said to me was, “You know too much to stay away, Steph”. But as others who have walked a similar path have said, I have seen behind the curtain and once you see behind the curtain you can’t unsee.
Rather than knowing too much to stay away, I know far too much to return because there was nothing nominal about me.
Former evangelical homeschool mom and one-time missionary and pastor’s wife, Stephanie Logan, aka Snicklefritz, writes from her life story and four decades of experience in the evangelical movement. Her views and stories are her own.
The day I went to lunch with two men – neither my significant other and one of them married – felt to me like a day that warranted a gold medal. That may sound a bit hyperbolic to some but hear me out.
As a former evangelical, I spent most of my life in very conservative churches. From childhood, I was taught what pretty much every American evangelical or fundamentalist woman is taught: my body was dirty, and I should hide it from men and boys; if a man looked and liked what he saw, it was my fault; if a girl got pregnant, then she was slutty; if a man cheated on his wife, then the wife must not have been satisfying him or a Jezebel lured him. I was also taught that to be alone in a room with a man who was not your spouse or a relative would be an impossible temptation – a cause for expulsion on my college campus; inappropriate advances made by men were my fault; I could not be friends with men; and work lunches between the sexes would become affairs. If you think this sounds a bit like what you hear oppressed Muslim women are told, you’d be right. If you think this sounds like victim blaming, you’d be right again.
Because I have always been very conscientious and a tad anxious and I was raised in that environment, by the time I was a full-grown woman I was continuously worried that I was a potential adulteress. For years I wore a minimum of neck to knee clothing and never a swimsuit. It didn’t matter that I am a homebody who has no interest in luring men in general. It didn’t matter that, practically speaking, I did not see any of this behavior play out in my life as I related to my own friends. It didn’t matter that I stayed faithful to a serial cheater even at my loneliest points in our marriage. I still viewed myself this way. The church taught me to, and I believed the church.
Now, I hear the “but…but…but”. Yes, affairs can develop in many of these scenarios. Let me be clear, I know cheating happens but when it happens, it happens first in the mind when both people make a conscious choice to do it. It isn’t a magical, irresistible force that happens when a man and a woman stand in the same room together – no matter what Billy Graham thought.
Now, back to that day.
Imagine my nervousness when the group of trainees I had been meeting with were going out to lunch together and it dwindled down to just three – me and two men. To say I was anxious is a very big understatement and I almost made an excuse about needing to run an errand so I could leave. But I had been working on not responding to the intrusive messages that my brain sends to me. And I knew I was going to have to adjust to life in a secular, professional environment. So, I messaged my significant other and told him that I was going to go out to lunch with two men. I did it because I try to be honest with him and because I knew he would totally understand just how big of a step this was for me.
The three of us agreed to walk to the deli across the street and after ordering, we sat down with the two of them on one side of the table and me on the other. And thus began a meal that I just might remember for the rest of my life, not because the food or conversation were particularly great, but for the battle that went on in my mind.
Here’s a small sample.
Brain: Oh, he mentioned his plans with his wife this weekend. He’s married. You might make him *stumble*.
Me: Ridiculous. I’m doing nothing to make him stumble. If he has an issue, it will be his own to deal with.
Brain: Did you button up the top button on your blouse?
Me: I’m dressed professionally.
Brain: But you could have an *affair*! Shame!
Me: Ridiculous. I love my partner.
Brain: But what about…
Me: Go away, thoughts! I’m in control here.
I slayed a giant that day and somehow, as that battle went on in my mind, I kept up with the conversation. We were professional; shared about our families and interests; explained our job history and responsibilities to each other; and built a little bit of healthy workplace camaraderie.
And wonder of wonders, there have been no suggestive glances from either of them even as we have continued to work together. I have not sought them out to lead them astray. All our clothing has always remained on when we’re in a room together. There have been only completely professional coworkers behaving completely professionally. Which is, I am learning, normal in the workplace though contrary to the images offered by my leaders over the years. We have never shared another meal, though I am sure that I could again with the exact same results.
I am a different woman today – at least usually. Occasionally, those nagging little devils of evangelical dogma rear their ugly heads. But I know how to handle them and myself now.
Former evangelical homeschool mom and one-time missionary and pastor’s wife, Stephanie Logan, aka Snicklefritz, writes from her life story and four decades of experience in the evangelical movement. Her views and stories are her own.
Snicklefritz Chronicles 