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Hopes and Fears: Everyday Theology for New Parents and Other Tired, Anxious People
Bromleigh McCleneghan and Lee Hull Moses have written a book about being not-perfect parents in a not-perfect world. The result, Hopes and Fears: Everyday Theology for New Parents and Other Tired, Anxious People, is a joyous celebration of child-rearing in which any parent—no matter how perfect—can share.
"I want to have a happy and healthy marriage, and I want to have happy, faithful kids," proclaims co-author McCleneghan in the introduction to the book. "But I reject the pervasive cultural lie that a happy marriage and the faithful kids are somehow the byproducts of some rigorous and largely unattainable personal or moral perfection."
Thus, Hopes and Fears is neither a "how-to" book nor a mere meditation. Rather, the authors seek to find the beautiful and the spiritual in the sometimes mundane activities that parents have performed since the beginning of history, while at the same time allowing beautiful and spiritual insights of the past to inform and shape the activities of modern parenting. Thus, the words of a hymn can trigger an idea about how to deal with bedtime, and an exercise in baby-naming can lead to a better understanding of a passage in Isaiah. The intertwining of the spiritual and familial in this book constantly surprises and delights: a quote from Paul Tillich can stand next to one from Tina Fey or What to Expect When You’re Expecting.
We are often reminded that the authors, two longtime friends, are ordinary working mothers. Fortunately, they are also experienced and well-read congregational leaders, and they bring that perspective to their reflections. McCleneghan, a United Methodist Elder, works as the Associate for Congregational Life at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel at the University of Chicago and is a frequent contributor to Christian Century. Lee Hull Moses is the pastor of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Hopes and Fears is also about sharing, in the widest and deepest sense of that word. As many parents know, learning to share is one of the most difficult things for many children to acquire. McCleneghan and Moses have decided to teach by example with this book, noting: "we’re hopeful that as we share our lives—the trials and tribulations and incredible joys—other parents will feel inspired to reflect on their own experiences, and perhaps even to consider new ways in which their own faith is relevant to their identities as parents."
Hopes and Fears: Everyday Theology for New Parents and Other Tired, Anxious People is highly suitable for group study as well as individual reflection.
Foreword by Bonnie Miller-McLemore.
"I want to have a happy and healthy marriage, and I want to have happy, faithful kids," proclaims co-author McCleneghan in the introduction to the book. "But I reject the pervasive cultural lie that a happy marriage and the faithful kids are somehow the byproducts of some rigorous and largely unattainable personal or moral perfection."
Thus, Hopes and Fears is neither a "how-to" book nor a mere meditation. Rather, the authors seek to find the beautiful and the spiritual in the sometimes mundane activities that parents have performed since the beginning of history, while at the same time allowing beautiful and spiritual insights of the past to inform and shape the activities of modern parenting. Thus, the words of a hymn can trigger an idea about how to deal with bedtime, and an exercise in baby-naming can lead to a better understanding of a passage in Isaiah. The intertwining of the spiritual and familial in this book constantly surprises and delights: a quote from Paul Tillich can stand next to one from Tina Fey or What to Expect When You’re Expecting.
We are often reminded that the authors, two longtime friends, are ordinary working mothers. Fortunately, they are also experienced and well-read congregational leaders, and they bring that perspective to their reflections. McCleneghan, a United Methodist Elder, works as the Associate for Congregational Life at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel at the University of Chicago and is a frequent contributor to Christian Century. Lee Hull Moses is the pastor of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Hopes and Fears is also about sharing, in the widest and deepest sense of that word. As many parents know, learning to share is one of the most difficult things for many children to acquire. McCleneghan and Moses have decided to teach by example with this book, noting: "we’re hopeful that as we share our lives—the trials and tribulations and incredible joys—other parents will feel inspired to reflect on their own experiences, and perhaps even to consider new ways in which their own faith is relevant to their identities as parents."
Hopes and Fears: Everyday Theology for New Parents and Other Tired, Anxious People is highly suitable for group study as well as individual reflection.
Foreword by Bonnie Miller-McLemore.
221 pages, Paperback
First published October 14, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 29, 2012
I read this book to see if it will be a good fit for our faith formation for parents of young children group at church (UCC), and I think it will be! I like how the authors are upfront about who they are - white, upper middle class, educated - and that their perspective is unapologetic (in a positive way) while still deeply and intentionally reflective. I highlighted many passages that I think I'll go back to for a long time to come.
March 28, 2022
Slow start, interesting narrative. I’m glad I stuck with it -
March 10, 2017
Although I was hoping for a more generally useful book about practical lived theology, I was still charmed by this book. It is personal memoir by two women combining ministry with motherhood, during the early years of their children's lives (notice this sort of book isn't usually about teenagers .... the teens themselves rebel at having their personal lives shared with the whole world!). Starting from the personal, the authors muse about some pretty big theological questions, but always grounded in the sort of mundane challenges face like bedtimes. It is well-written and charming, if not groundbreaking or boundary-pushing.
April 10, 2015
I'm a book junkie. Just ask my father-in-law – who recently spent the better part of a day moving my library upstairs to make room for Baby Bradbury downstairs.
I wholeheartedly believe that you learn by reading. Even so, for a variety of reasons, I've refrained from reading many pregnancy or parenting books. In fact, to date, I've read only one, Hopes and Fears: Everyday Theology for New Parents and Other Tired, Anxious People by Bromleigh McCleneghan and Lee Hull Moses. In Hopes and Fears, Bromleigh and Lee write alternating chapters, eliminating some of the confusion about who's actually saying what that is often found in books that are co-authored.
To be clear, Hopes and Fears isn't a how-to book for parents. Instead, it's filled with stories from Bromleigh and Lee's lives that illustrate what they've learned through parenting about God and faith. It's deeply theological, as illustrated by Lee's chapters, Called by Name, which seamlessly weaves together baptism with how we name our children, and Birthdays and Baby Books, which explores the church's ordinary time and in the process reminds us that “It's not just on those big important days that life is holy and precious and wonderful. It's on the ordinary days, too.” Although it's deeply theological, Hopes and Fears is also engaging and incredibly relatable. I found myself both laughing and crying throughout it.
In the book's introduction, Bromleigh poses the question, “Once I was a mom, would I still be me?” which Lee later answers by saying, “Being in a family doesn't mean giving up who you are. It means sharing who you are.” Since there's probably no other question I've wondered about more during this pregnancy than that one, I was hooked from this question on.
Bromleigh's chapter on hope and anxiety in pregnancy is also one that deeply connected with me. It gave voice to much of my experience and reminded me that truly, “God is with us – supplying strength to help us through each day, courage to face the unknown, and love to move us through dark nights and uncertain ultrasounds. If something dreadful happens in these weeks that make the tiny not-quite-a-person growing inside us incompatible with life outside the womb, God will lament with us, sharing in the loss of someone we've somehow come to love in such a very short time. God is not against us, but for us. God does not want us, or our babies, to die, but to live.”
Since both Bromleigh and Lee are pastors, I also connected and related to them as a fellow church worker. As a youth pastor, I've spent countless hours thinking about the faith formation of teens. Since seeing the positive sign on the pregnancy test, I've also begun thinking about the faith formation of my child. My husband and I have wrestled with how to pass our faith onto our daughter and how to do so without making her resent my occupation or the church. To that end, I found comfort in Lee's reminder that “Raising a child in the faith is the task of the whole community”. Thank God we are already blessed with a community who loves both our child and Jesus.
Hopes and Fears is, without a doubt, a book I will refer to often. It's also one I will recommend to moms and dads alike, confident that it will both encourage and help them to encounter God in and through parenting.
I wholeheartedly believe that you learn by reading. Even so, for a variety of reasons, I've refrained from reading many pregnancy or parenting books. In fact, to date, I've read only one, Hopes and Fears: Everyday Theology for New Parents and Other Tired, Anxious People by Bromleigh McCleneghan and Lee Hull Moses. In Hopes and Fears, Bromleigh and Lee write alternating chapters, eliminating some of the confusion about who's actually saying what that is often found in books that are co-authored.
To be clear, Hopes and Fears isn't a how-to book for parents. Instead, it's filled with stories from Bromleigh and Lee's lives that illustrate what they've learned through parenting about God and faith. It's deeply theological, as illustrated by Lee's chapters, Called by Name, which seamlessly weaves together baptism with how we name our children, and Birthdays and Baby Books, which explores the church's ordinary time and in the process reminds us that “It's not just on those big important days that life is holy and precious and wonderful. It's on the ordinary days, too.” Although it's deeply theological, Hopes and Fears is also engaging and incredibly relatable. I found myself both laughing and crying throughout it.
In the book's introduction, Bromleigh poses the question, “Once I was a mom, would I still be me?” which Lee later answers by saying, “Being in a family doesn't mean giving up who you are. It means sharing who you are.” Since there's probably no other question I've wondered about more during this pregnancy than that one, I was hooked from this question on.
Bromleigh's chapter on hope and anxiety in pregnancy is also one that deeply connected with me. It gave voice to much of my experience and reminded me that truly, “God is with us – supplying strength to help us through each day, courage to face the unknown, and love to move us through dark nights and uncertain ultrasounds. If something dreadful happens in these weeks that make the tiny not-quite-a-person growing inside us incompatible with life outside the womb, God will lament with us, sharing in the loss of someone we've somehow come to love in such a very short time. God is not against us, but for us. God does not want us, or our babies, to die, but to live.”
Since both Bromleigh and Lee are pastors, I also connected and related to them as a fellow church worker. As a youth pastor, I've spent countless hours thinking about the faith formation of teens. Since seeing the positive sign on the pregnancy test, I've also begun thinking about the faith formation of my child. My husband and I have wrestled with how to pass our faith onto our daughter and how to do so without making her resent my occupation or the church. To that end, I found comfort in Lee's reminder that “Raising a child in the faith is the task of the whole community”. Thank God we are already blessed with a community who loves both our child and Jesus.
Hopes and Fears is, without a doubt, a book I will refer to often. It's also one I will recommend to moms and dads alike, confident that it will both encourage and help them to encounter God in and through parenting.
November 19, 2012
Lee and Bromleigh are two of my dearest friends and colleagues, and the arc of my motherhood and ministry thus far has in many ways been parallel to both of theirs. (My older daughter is a few months younger than theirs, and my baby was born the same month as Lee's.) I have accompanied them in the living of many of these stories and even mulled over many of these insights, in conversation and sneak previews of various chapters. Reading their book, Hopes and Fears: Everyday Theology for New Parents and Other Tired, Anxious People, has made me miss them both terribly (I live in Nicaragua now), but more importantly, the book offers a taste of the humor and thoughtful reflection that I so cherish in them to a much larger audience.
Despite my familiarity with them, I found for myself a freshness in their writing, a much-needed reminder of what is good and true and important in this life as lived with small children. Because their theology is incarnational (made flesh), based in rather than removed from the stuff of everyday life, they are able to remind us of these things without denying any of the parts that are mundane, exhausting, or even sticky.
Reading this book was like being preached to, being spiritually fed. So much of parenting literature, even when there is nothing remotely religious about it, leaves one feeling preached at (a.k.a. scolded).
Both Hull Moses and McCleneghan are formidable preachers, so it is no surprise that their writing, like good preaching, takes you on a journey with them, and uplifts and inspires even as it names complex, often literally messy problems. (Are cloth diapers worth it? How do we navigate parenting together? Will the children ever sleep?) They address all these themes drawing on a delightful variety of sources of wisdom: Tina Fey and Immanuel Kant appear in adjacent endnotes.
Hopes and Fears, like the best preaching, doesn't just apply theological wisdom to our daily lives (although it does that). What these wise, wonderful writers do is locate their stories, and our stories, in the Great Story of the Bible and Christian tradition. They assure us that these questions of how we live together in families do matter. So you will find in these pages more than just funny, true stories you can easily relate to if you are, have been, or have known a new parent. You will also find here glimpses of God's dream for our lives, the assurance of grace, hope that our redemption truly works itself out in the midst of our gloriously imperfect lives.
This review is also on my blog: http://sheepheaven.blogspot.com/2012/...
Despite my familiarity with them, I found for myself a freshness in their writing, a much-needed reminder of what is good and true and important in this life as lived with small children. Because their theology is incarnational (made flesh), based in rather than removed from the stuff of everyday life, they are able to remind us of these things without denying any of the parts that are mundane, exhausting, or even sticky.
Reading this book was like being preached to, being spiritually fed. So much of parenting literature, even when there is nothing remotely religious about it, leaves one feeling preached at (a.k.a. scolded).
Both Hull Moses and McCleneghan are formidable preachers, so it is no surprise that their writing, like good preaching, takes you on a journey with them, and uplifts and inspires even as it names complex, often literally messy problems. (Are cloth diapers worth it? How do we navigate parenting together? Will the children ever sleep?) They address all these themes drawing on a delightful variety of sources of wisdom: Tina Fey and Immanuel Kant appear in adjacent endnotes.
Hopes and Fears, like the best preaching, doesn't just apply theological wisdom to our daily lives (although it does that). What these wise, wonderful writers do is locate their stories, and our stories, in the Great Story of the Bible and Christian tradition. They assure us that these questions of how we live together in families do matter. So you will find in these pages more than just funny, true stories you can easily relate to if you are, have been, or have known a new parent. You will also find here glimpses of God's dream for our lives, the assurance of grace, hope that our redemption truly works itself out in the midst of our gloriously imperfect lives.
This review is also on my blog: http://sheepheaven.blogspot.com/2012/...
January 11, 2013
These two women have wonderful writing styles - conversational AND theological. They delve into their daily experiences as parents, "keeping it real", offer both funny, poignant, and painful stories and thoughtful reflections on the messiness of being a family with small children, and yet, its inherent grace. To be honest, I'm not sure this book is for ALL "other tired, anxious people." As someone with my share of fatigue and anxiety, but without children, I'm not sure I saw much of myself in it, without squinting, anyway. Still, I respect that they wanted to draw the boundaries wide, and I certainly enjoyed reading it!
November 22, 2012
Lee and Bromleigh are impressive women-- working moms who take the time to reflect and write about how their faith and beliefs inform parenting and how becoming parents has changed them. Reading this book is like spending time with your really smart, open-minded friends. Lee and Bromleigh write alternating chapters exploring different themes on the intersection of parenting and faith. It is fun journey to take with them. As their families expand, they help make sense of the overwhelming (and stressful) first years of parenthood. A great read.
December 26, 2016
I think I would have set this aside except I am working toward my 2016 reading goal. It's strong enough on the theology, and I'm certainly not a theologian, but I am a more experienced parent than these two women so some sections seemed overly dramatic and even eyeroll-inducing. Just not super relevant for me. Probably better for women who've just had first babies.
January 10, 2013
It was amazing. It was hands down the best book I read in 2012.
April 8, 2014
It's fine.
It is for super-specific audience...one that I'm technically part of, but just couldn't stay that interested.
I'd recommend it for young female clergy.
It is for super-specific audience...one that I'm technically part of, but just couldn't stay that interested.
I'd recommend it for young female clergy.
September 6, 2016
I loved this book.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews