The book traces a spiritual journey through that disorienting realization that your childhood faith of platitudes, formulas, and optimistic oversimplifications is simply not working for you anymore, partly because life has proven most of it to be patently untrue. Nothing "works" the way you were taught. There is no "If I... then God" contract. 

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What I realized as I moved through this book was that I was not seeking to leave God behind. What I was rejecting was a System. A system that pretended things were not broken when they were. A system that covered its own tracks of failure by exercising control over its members and keeping far too many secrets. But above all, a system that claimed to have an answer for everything when what it was really doing was suppressing the questions. 

This book was an inspiration for Anderson's book above. The subtitle, "A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life" are similar to the premise of Anderson's "Losing Your Faith..." book. 

A quote I wrote down in the front cover was this: "I don't think you should get rid of your sin until you've learned what it has to teach you. Otherwise it will just keep coming back in other forms" (61). 

He says, The first half of life container is all about impulse controls, traditions, group symbols, family loyalties, respect for authority, civil and church laws, and a sense of the goodness, value, and importance of your country, ethnicity, and religion. It's about believing in some "Big Truth" that makes sense of everything, some pattern. It's about "getting God's name right."

But when you let all this go, you realize "Either God is for everybody and the divine DNA is somehow in all of the creatures, or this God is not God by any common definition, or even much of a god at all. Everything that rises must converge" (109).

Evangelicalism depends on the certainty that the Bible is inspired by God and without error. This inspiration was "plenary" (verbal) and God  miraculously oversaw the process of assembling the canon and translating into numerous languages, etc., in order to ensure that his people had access to his infallible, unadulterated word. 

The doctrine of literal interpretation (unless the text absolutely demanded otherwise) is unquestionable. Any challenge to literalism (such as 7-day creation) threatens the entire Gospel. It is all true or none of it is. 

This book challenges all that, opening up the possibility that the Bible (OT) should be read as a distinctly Hebrew text, and there should be a lot of room left for the influence of the authors, the culture, the context, genre, etc. 

This is a memoir of Evans' experiences growing up in a "church obsessed with apologetics." Her experience includes being shamed for asking questions, and having her unquestioned fundamentals fall apart under scrutiny one by one. 

This book is a memoir about a girl raised in the mountains by a very radical "prepper" with extreme views even by typical Christian standards (such as denying the children necessary medical treatment). The children were all homeschooled and taught to fear and mistrust anything "outside." 

Even though this is FAR different from my experience, the way the author's mind was set free by education and the difficulty she had in extricating herself from the dogma of her indoctrination resonated. 

In the end, three of the siblings "escaped" and got PhD's. The rest at the time of writing were still caught in the snare of radical unfounded anti-science and extremism.

This book traces the progression of a particular brand of Christianity through the many decades of American history --  a distinctly American "brand" that elevates a certain model of masculinity and aggression; relegates women to a subservient position and does not take abuse or assault seriously; has a very strong racist/white supremacist component; conflates patriotism with Christian devotion; glamorizes war; and seeks to align the influences of church at state at every turn. 

This book systematically traces the strong ties between "church and state" as the Republican party sought to make use of the large Christian voter base, and vise versa. 

This book outlines how the "single issue voter" phenomenon (Christians voting for Republican/pro-life candidates even if they are unqualified, immoral people) began during and just after the Civil Rights movement, as a way of galvanizing a voter base around racist issues. 

It reveals that the Christian school movement began as a move to get around desegregation in the South and keep schools legally all white. This is all documented and easily verified. (The fact that Liberty was initially segregated and Bob Jones University did not desegregate until their tax exempt status was threatened is widely known. If there is any question of racism, let's not forget that BJU did not allow interracial dating until the 2000s.)