What do you think?
Rate this book
In the Land of Believers: An Outsider's Extraordinary Journey into the Heart of the Evangelical Church
An undercover exploration of the world of evangelicals, offering an extraordinary behind-the-scenes look at the faithful Ever since evangelical Christians rose to national prominence, mainstream America has tracked their every move with a nervous eye. But in spite of this vigilance, our understanding hasn’t gone beyond the caricatures. Who are evangelicals, really? What are they like in private, and what do they want? Is it possible that beneath the differences in culture and language, church and party, we might share with them some common purpose? To find out, Gina Welch, a young secular Jew from Berkeley, joined Jerry Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church. Over the course of nearly two years, Welch immersed herself in the life and language of the she learned to interpret the world like an evangelical, weathered the death of Falwell, and embarked on a mission trip to Alaska intended to save one hundred souls. Alive to the meaning behind the music and the mind behind the slogans, Welch recognized the allure of evangelicalism, even for the godless, realizing that the congregation met needs and answered questions she didn’t know she had. What emerges is a riveting account of a skeptic’s transformation from uninformed cynicism to compassionate understanding, and a rare view of how evangelicals see themselves. Revealing their generosity and hopefulness, as well as their prejudice and exceptionalism, In the Land of Believers is a call for comprehending, rather than dismissing, the impassioned believers who have become so central a force in American life.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published March 2, 2010
11 people are currently reading
761 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 113 reviews
January 2, 2016
Quite mad tribal-Jew Gina Welch decides that despite her atheist views she will infiltrate Jerry Falwell's church and write a book about how these evangelicals really are. I'm about 50 pages in and so far Gina is showing she might have mega brains but is quite doolally and that Jerry's happy-in-the-Lord lot are too, but it in a different way. You just know that she's going to see things their way at some point (even including giving your car over to Jesus so that if it gets wrecked, it was meant to happen and not to worry because He will get it fixed (at a reasonable price) for you anyway). I just wonder if she's going to maintain her atheist stance or give it all up and go in for an immersion baptism and have all her sins washed clean away :-)
Either way so far it is an amusing read, but I don't think it's meant to be.
Either way so far it is an amusing read, but I don't think it's meant to be.
October 18, 2010
I found this book disturbing. Welch is a solid writer and she tells an okay if not overly drawn-out story. That being said, what she did is wrong. I’m not opposed to the going undercover part, but what gets me is the utter lack of respect she has for the culture of Evangelicals. Her decision to get baptized and to participate regularly in Communion—sacred acts for Believers—is completely demeaning and dehumanizing. Would she approve this approach for any other culture—would she think it okay to imitate rituals of a tribal people or Hasidic Jews? It is dishonest and paints her own bias: she doesn’t see these people as people, but as an “other” group not worthy of cultural respect. As a self-acknowledged liberal, this behavior comes across hypocritical and undermines the compassion she claims to have throughout the book.
Because Welch is biased going in, her mode of research is questionable. It is clear that after two years she still hasn’t a clue what it means to be an Evangelical Christian. She defines the group based on externals: a style of worship, a set of political beliefs, a way of talking and dressing, a way of praying, a type of sermon, a particular view of money and how they witness. What she misses completely is that being an Evangelical Christian is about having a set of core beliefs that are non-negotiable. Beyond that, Evangelicals Christians are as varied and diverse as any other group. My jaw dropped at the behavior of the Christians at Thomas Road, and her assumption that because they act and think this way all Christians do is offensive. In the end, she does to Christians exactly what she accuses them of doing to others.
The other huge issue I have with this book is that she chooses the most extreme Evangelical church she can find, and then proceeds to clump all Evangelicals into this group. She is constantly describing how “Christians” act and attempting to analyze why this is so, but all she really accomplishes is an analysis of a particular group. The title of this book should read “An Evangelical Church” not “The Evangelical Church.” She generalizes and stereotypes and does little (beyond bonding with certain individuals and enjoying herself more than she thought possible) to insightfully understand the group she set out to study.
Because Welch is biased going in, her mode of research is questionable. It is clear that after two years she still hasn’t a clue what it means to be an Evangelical Christian. She defines the group based on externals: a style of worship, a set of political beliefs, a way of talking and dressing, a way of praying, a type of sermon, a particular view of money and how they witness. What she misses completely is that being an Evangelical Christian is about having a set of core beliefs that are non-negotiable. Beyond that, Evangelicals Christians are as varied and diverse as any other group. My jaw dropped at the behavior of the Christians at Thomas Road, and her assumption that because they act and think this way all Christians do is offensive. In the end, she does to Christians exactly what she accuses them of doing to others.
The other huge issue I have with this book is that she chooses the most extreme Evangelical church she can find, and then proceeds to clump all Evangelicals into this group. She is constantly describing how “Christians” act and attempting to analyze why this is so, but all she really accomplishes is an analysis of a particular group. The title of this book should read “An Evangelical Church” not “The Evangelical Church.” She generalizes and stereotypes and does little (beyond bonding with certain individuals and enjoying herself more than she thought possible) to insightfully understand the group she set out to study.
April 10, 2010
In the Land of Believers by Gina Welch is such a great story and is incredibly well written (more on that later). Gina, an atheist Yale grad from California, is intrigued by evangelicals and quite curious about their beliefs, way of life and commitment to the church. She decides to go undercover at Jerry Falwell’s Thomas Road Church in Virginia, where she joins a singles group called EPIC and goes on a missionary trip to Alaska. At first, she is confused and disoriented, unfamiliar with the bible stories everyone else has had memorized since childhood and uncomfortable with her new squeaky clean persona.
She has created a convincing tale to explain who she is and how she got to Thomas Road. Along the way she makes wonderful, thoughtful and caring friends, begins to love “Feeling X” (more on that later) and sees constant acts of kindness and love. Of course, on the other hand, she also sees prejudice and meets close-minded people, but not nearly as much as she, or the reader, anticipated. After a few initial missteps, Gina begins to fit in quite well.
Early on, while singing in church, Gina becomes overcome with emotion, a feeling she describes as “Feeling X.” For me, this was a really interesting piece of the book. I have never been able to put my finger on this feeling but as soon as I read Gina’s words describing it, I knew exactly what she meant: “It wasn’t happiness or sorrow, adrenaline or peace; it wasn’t love or lust or misery or hate. It felt like the awakening of a new organ.” She notes that music will often “stir something inside” and I immediately thought of the movie Lean On Me when Morgan Freeman has his entire high school singing, “I’ll be your friend; I’ll help you carry on.” It’s Feeling X and it’s pretty darn powerful. For me, its not God or Church, but an overwhelming sense of belonging and comradery with others.
As part of the church group EPIC, Gina travels to Alaska, where she is tasked with “witnessing” and “evangelizing” and “saving” folks. Gina’s description of the landscape, the love-hate relationship with friends you’re traveling with and her reluctance to “save” children was so well done. While Gina sees beauty and peace in the wilderness of Alaska, her Thomas Road companions see God. Gina feels constricted by the close proximity of the group (she swears each morning under the running water of the shower) and is guilt-ridden by her encounter with a little girl who wants to be “saved,” although she can’t possibly understand the implications of her words.
I loved the story of Gina going undercover at Thomas Road, making friends, and seeing both the wonderful and alarming aspects of the evangelical church. But what made this novel so much more wonderful was the writing. Gina is an entertaining story teller (“No letter or brochure came in the mail, and no one called to welcome me to the flock. Where was my hand-delivered loaf of whole grain bread? Wasn’t I anyone’s friend in Jesus? I was a little annoyed.”), paints the most amazing pictures with her words (“Portage Glacier was a vertical white dash punctuated by the slate gray dot of the cold lake grown fat on its runoff.”) and finds unique ways to say things that ring so true (“I was exhausted by the realization that I was going to have to brush my teeth twice a day for the rest of my life.”) Reading her words made me feel so connected to the story, and to Gina herself.
I really loved this book. It’s an excellent story of how although there are “different strokes for different folks,” we’re all in this world together. Understanding and working with one another, despite our differences, would make the world a whole lot more “Feeling X”-like.
She has created a convincing tale to explain who she is and how she got to Thomas Road. Along the way she makes wonderful, thoughtful and caring friends, begins to love “Feeling X” (more on that later) and sees constant acts of kindness and love. Of course, on the other hand, she also sees prejudice and meets close-minded people, but not nearly as much as she, or the reader, anticipated. After a few initial missteps, Gina begins to fit in quite well.
Early on, while singing in church, Gina becomes overcome with emotion, a feeling she describes as “Feeling X.” For me, this was a really interesting piece of the book. I have never been able to put my finger on this feeling but as soon as I read Gina’s words describing it, I knew exactly what she meant: “It wasn’t happiness or sorrow, adrenaline or peace; it wasn’t love or lust or misery or hate. It felt like the awakening of a new organ.” She notes that music will often “stir something inside” and I immediately thought of the movie Lean On Me when Morgan Freeman has his entire high school singing, “I’ll be your friend; I’ll help you carry on.” It’s Feeling X and it’s pretty darn powerful. For me, its not God or Church, but an overwhelming sense of belonging and comradery with others.
As part of the church group EPIC, Gina travels to Alaska, where she is tasked with “witnessing” and “evangelizing” and “saving” folks. Gina’s description of the landscape, the love-hate relationship with friends you’re traveling with and her reluctance to “save” children was so well done. While Gina sees beauty and peace in the wilderness of Alaska, her Thomas Road companions see God. Gina feels constricted by the close proximity of the group (she swears each morning under the running water of the shower) and is guilt-ridden by her encounter with a little girl who wants to be “saved,” although she can’t possibly understand the implications of her words.
I loved the story of Gina going undercover at Thomas Road, making friends, and seeing both the wonderful and alarming aspects of the evangelical church. But what made this novel so much more wonderful was the writing. Gina is an entertaining story teller (“No letter or brochure came in the mail, and no one called to welcome me to the flock. Where was my hand-delivered loaf of whole grain bread? Wasn’t I anyone’s friend in Jesus? I was a little annoyed.”), paints the most amazing pictures with her words (“Portage Glacier was a vertical white dash punctuated by the slate gray dot of the cold lake grown fat on its runoff.”) and finds unique ways to say things that ring so true (“I was exhausted by the realization that I was going to have to brush my teeth twice a day for the rest of my life.”) Reading her words made me feel so connected to the story, and to Gina herself.
I really loved this book. It’s an excellent story of how although there are “different strokes for different folks,” we’re all in this world together. Understanding and working with one another, despite our differences, would make the world a whole lot more “Feeling X”-like.
May 27, 2010
An altogether fascinating and through-and-through frustrating book.
I'm glad Ms. Welch took the time, thought, and made the personal sacrifice to get to know religious persons of another ilk and to be able to identify value in religious experience. Her book is peppered with shrewd and reasonable perspective on the harm of hit-and-run evangelism, the frequent hypocrisy of professed faith, and the casual meanness of the church-going. It is also, at times, laughably paranoid and judgmental- most of which the author has the good sense to recognize in herself.
But the author makes a categorical mistake: assuming that as Jerry Falwell's church goes, so do Evangelicals as a whole. Her reasoning is solid: she wanted "to go undercover in a church where the believers were as different from me as possible." And I understand that such a book needs the hook of such a name preacher.
But, by beginning with a large, cultural megachurch, she goes in with her mind turned off (as I too would have) and so is never really challenged or even dialogued with intellectually. Now, that may be in fact indicative of Evangelicalism as a whole. But it's not characteristic of the experience of Evangelicals of Ms. Welch's similar background and education.
Her approach was shrewd, in that it ensured greater book sales; and deficient, in that she circumvented her own spiritual journey by calculating the end result. She's not unfair to the people she encounters; she's unfair to herself.
She writes, "I preferred analysis, reason, and the satisfying realism of hard truths. I didn't mind leaving some corners of the universe cast in the shadow of ambiguity." Yet she never considers that it's possible for those things to be true of a person (like this particular reader) who is also a religious one.
Finally, after gaining their trust and lying to them for two years— and then disappearing for another full year—she comes clean. Do they hang their heads in disappointment, do they tell her to get the hell out? No- all her deceit, and they repay her with kindness. She can accept their forgiveness, but she finally refuses to see anything she's experienced (and written) as evidence of a real, higher love.
Well, the journey's not over. God's not done with Ms. Welch yet.
I'm glad Ms. Welch took the time, thought, and made the personal sacrifice to get to know religious persons of another ilk and to be able to identify value in religious experience. Her book is peppered with shrewd and reasonable perspective on the harm of hit-and-run evangelism, the frequent hypocrisy of professed faith, and the casual meanness of the church-going. It is also, at times, laughably paranoid and judgmental- most of which the author has the good sense to recognize in herself.
But the author makes a categorical mistake: assuming that as Jerry Falwell's church goes, so do Evangelicals as a whole. Her reasoning is solid: she wanted "to go undercover in a church where the believers were as different from me as possible." And I understand that such a book needs the hook of such a name preacher.
But, by beginning with a large, cultural megachurch, she goes in with her mind turned off (as I too would have) and so is never really challenged or even dialogued with intellectually. Now, that may be in fact indicative of Evangelicalism as a whole. But it's not characteristic of the experience of Evangelicals of Ms. Welch's similar background and education.
Her approach was shrewd, in that it ensured greater book sales; and deficient, in that she circumvented her own spiritual journey by calculating the end result. She's not unfair to the people she encounters; she's unfair to herself.
She writes, "I preferred analysis, reason, and the satisfying realism of hard truths. I didn't mind leaving some corners of the universe cast in the shadow of ambiguity." Yet she never considers that it's possible for those things to be true of a person (like this particular reader) who is also a religious one.
Finally, after gaining their trust and lying to them for two years— and then disappearing for another full year—she comes clean. Do they hang their heads in disappointment, do they tell her to get the hell out? No- all her deceit, and they repay her with kindness. She can accept their forgiveness, but she finally refuses to see anything she's experienced (and written) as evidence of a real, higher love.
Well, the journey's not over. God's not done with Ms. Welch yet.
May 12, 2011
First, I want to say that, though I have little first hand knowledge of the evangelical scene, Falwell's church probably wasn't the best place to find out about it. The place seems like a cult to me from her description, with its rules and reliance upon conformity to such an extent. I had never heard of "The Sinner's Prayer" before, but they seem to see it as a Get-Out-of-Hell-Free-Card. She attends a "free dinner" for loyal members, that turns out a time-share-like shakedown for donations. Was Welch cruel to lead them on, being baptized when she was opposed to what they stand for? I'm struck that the folks seemed to actually like her, so how condescending could she have come off? I give her credit for sticking it out as long as she did.
For those who haven't yet read the book, I found the first part - her time at the church in Lynchburg - to be interesting, with only a few "What the heck!" moments. The mission trip to Alaska proved quite sinister, really a hunting trip, bringing back "souls" as trophies. Most of those "saved" were down-and-out (bribed in some cases), as well as largely being non-white. The "Christian magician" and his act for low income Native children horrified me as much as it did the author. There were a couple of folks who challenged the missionaries, which was interesting.
Glad I waited a day to write a review - my first instinct was to blast the author as hopelessly naive in thinking the evangelicals in this book are at all willing to have any sort of "understanding" of the differences in society. Now, I think I see her point. As a slight spoiler, Pastor Ray at the end tells Gina he'd still like to be friends, whether she "accepts Jesus" (for real) or not. Similarly, her friend Alice (who promptly gets shot down by Ray's reactionary wife for questioning why there are no women in leadership roles) accepts the author as she is at the end.
A note on the audio -- Welch reminds us regularly that she's from California, yet the narrator has a Boston accent, which created a disconnect for me.
For those who haven't yet read the book, I found the first part - her time at the church in Lynchburg - to be interesting, with only a few "What the heck!" moments. The mission trip to Alaska proved quite sinister, really a hunting trip, bringing back "souls" as trophies. Most of those "saved" were down-and-out (bribed in some cases), as well as largely being non-white. The "Christian magician" and his act for low income Native children horrified me as much as it did the author. There were a couple of folks who challenged the missionaries, which was interesting.
Glad I waited a day to write a review - my first instinct was to blast the author as hopelessly naive in thinking the evangelicals in this book are at all willing to have any sort of "understanding" of the differences in society. Now, I think I see her point. As a slight spoiler, Pastor Ray at the end tells Gina he'd still like to be friends, whether she "accepts Jesus" (for real) or not. Similarly, her friend Alice (who promptly gets shot down by Ray's reactionary wife for questioning why there are no women in leadership roles) accepts the author as she is at the end.
A note on the audio -- Welch reminds us regularly that she's from California, yet the narrator has a Boston accent, which created a disconnect for me.
September 2, 2011
As a progressive Christian who currently attends an evangelical church, I was intrigued by the idea of Gina Welch’s book, but it only took a few chapters to become offended by the execution. She approaches her experiment of trying to figure out evangelicals as if she’s off to study chimps in Africa, oozing all the condescension of a Victorian explorer. Even after she finds that some of her fellow church members are actually nice people who think and can converse in full sentences, the patronizing tone never lets up. At the end when her Big Secret is revealed, one person asks if there’s anything potentially embarrassing about him in the book. “No, it’s not that kind of book,” she replies. I’m sure he was tickled to read about how he’s a bad tipper who dresses funny.
My other gripe is that the author paints evangelicals with a pretty broad brush. She attends one church, a pretty high-profile one, and, with only a few weak caveats, ascribes their practices and beliefs to evangelicals across the board. If she’d been more careful to admit from the beginning that this project would only focus on one church run by one very controversial fundamentalist pastor, it might have been taken better, but as it is, it’s sloppy and disingenuous.
My other gripe is that the author paints evangelicals with a pretty broad brush. She attends one church, a pretty high-profile one, and, with only a few weak caveats, ascribes their practices and beliefs to evangelicals across the board. If she’d been more careful to admit from the beginning that this project would only focus on one church run by one very controversial fundamentalist pastor, it might have been taken better, but as it is, it’s sloppy and disingenuous.
June 9, 2010
I found myself wondering why I'm attracted to these "outsiders trying to get a handle on Evangelical culture & practice" books... I speculated yesterday that it's because I (even though I grew up in Southern Baptist churches and have been in the ministry since the mid-80's) feel like an outsider sometimes myself.
A couple of quick thoughts before I wholeheartedly recommend reading the book:
- Thomas Road Baptist Church isn't a perfect snapshot of the Evangelical movement. Heck, it's not even a particularly good snapshot of Baptist life. But nothing about her account of her two years there "undercover" struck me as false or made up - I've seen many if not all of those things in the churches I've been around, both the good & the bad.
- I really like the way Ms. Welch wrestles with the ethical/moral dilemna of lying about what she believes. This does not come off as an easy process for her.
OK, now go read the book... esp. if you're a part of a more traditional Evangelical church. You may find yourself offended at times - but you may also get some clarity about how we best communicate what we believe through hearing Gina Welch tell her story.
A couple of quick thoughts before I wholeheartedly recommend reading the book:
- Thomas Road Baptist Church isn't a perfect snapshot of the Evangelical movement. Heck, it's not even a particularly good snapshot of Baptist life. But nothing about her account of her two years there "undercover" struck me as false or made up - I've seen many if not all of those things in the churches I've been around, both the good & the bad.
- I really like the way Ms. Welch wrestles with the ethical/moral dilemna of lying about what she believes. This does not come off as an easy process for her.
OK, now go read the book... esp. if you're a part of a more traditional Evangelical church. You may find yourself offended at times - but you may also get some clarity about how we best communicate what we believe through hearing Gina Welch tell her story.
August 12, 2010
I could only get half way through this book. Ms. Welch is so caught up in her own ego and being a Yale alum, that it's hard to take her "insights" as objective.
I also had a hard time with the book since it really isn't about "Believers" and "The Evangelical Church" as she proclaims, but merely, Jerry Falwell's church and whatever local outcroppings she has come across. I find this extremely short sighted and wonder if she's ever gone to an Evangelical church in New York like Redeemer Presbyterian where Ivy league educations seem like a pre-requisite for the 6000 congregants.
She's a new author and young, so I'll chalk it up to her extreme naivety and hope that her next book will be more insightful and intelligent.
I also had a hard time with the book since it really isn't about "Believers" and "The Evangelical Church" as she proclaims, but merely, Jerry Falwell's church and whatever local outcroppings she has come across. I find this extremely short sighted and wonder if she's ever gone to an Evangelical church in New York like Redeemer Presbyterian where Ivy league educations seem like a pre-requisite for the 6000 congregants.
She's a new author and young, so I'll chalk it up to her extreme naivety and hope that her next book will be more insightful and intelligent.
September 1, 2016
I read over 100 pages of this book, but just couldn't bring myself to waste any more time on it. I tried very hard to like it but the condescension was too much. The concept of an outsider trying to understand those she disdains is admirable, but she can't quite get over how smart she is compared with the quaint folks she's judging.
Her method of lying to fit in might fly for the church overall, but the individuals who befriended her seemed genuinely hurt. And evidently, she had no idea that you can visit a church for your entire life if you wish, and not have to join. Instead she mocks sacred ordinances.
Finally, she took one church-and an extreme example at that-and ascribed their methods to all believers.
Her method of lying to fit in might fly for the church overall, but the individuals who befriended her seemed genuinely hurt. And evidently, she had no idea that you can visit a church for your entire life if you wish, and not have to join. Instead she mocks sacred ordinances.
Finally, she took one church-and an extreme example at that-and ascribed their methods to all believers.
June 28, 2014
It's interesting that there was a similar book that came out the year before this one (The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University. Were they both in the works at the same time? Did the authors know about each other's projects? Was it just a coincidence?
Whatever the circumstances, the premise for both is similar except that in this one the author goes undercover as a church-goer over a period of two years and in the other the author goes undercover as a student at Liberty University for a semester. There are more similarities that I won't go into here. But although the books are similar, there are enough differences to make it worth reading both. (I'm actually reading The Unlikely Disciple now, but am only about a third of the way through.)
In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I used to be an Evangelical Christian, although not of the Jerry Falwell stripe. It was interesting to observe a person who basically had no religious upbringing or affiliations grapple with the phenomenon of Evangelical Christianity. This is not an expose of or a diatribe against Jerry Falwell and his followers. On the contrary: Ms. Welch treats the people she got to know with sensitivity and a certain amount of affection.
The author did an excellent job of being objective and trying to remain as open as possible to what she was learning. What I thought the most interesting was the degree to which the author "got into" the spirit and the message of Evangelical Christianity and yet still resisted the strong pull she felt to become a permanent part of the community. I could relate to so much of the feelings she described from when I became a "born-again" Christian forty years ago. So I was actually a little surprised when she ends up rejecting something that she admits made her a better and happier person.
If I have any criticism of the book it is that the author didn't make it clear what she does believe. What kept her from being pulled into the Christian fold? And how does she feel about the world view and philosophy that she does hold? I also wanted to know more about how the experience changed her (if at all).
This book is only incidentally about Jerry Falwell and his church, although that topic is well-covered. What it really seemed to me to be about was how subjecting yourself unreservedly to another belief system can challenge and even change you--up to a point.
Whatever the circumstances, the premise for both is similar except that in this one the author goes undercover as a church-goer over a period of two years and in the other the author goes undercover as a student at Liberty University for a semester. There are more similarities that I won't go into here. But although the books are similar, there are enough differences to make it worth reading both. (I'm actually reading The Unlikely Disciple now, but am only about a third of the way through.)
In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I used to be an Evangelical Christian, although not of the Jerry Falwell stripe. It was interesting to observe a person who basically had no religious upbringing or affiliations grapple with the phenomenon of Evangelical Christianity. This is not an expose of or a diatribe against Jerry Falwell and his followers. On the contrary: Ms. Welch treats the people she got to know with sensitivity and a certain amount of affection.
The author did an excellent job of being objective and trying to remain as open as possible to what she was learning. What I thought the most interesting was the degree to which the author "got into" the spirit and the message of Evangelical Christianity and yet still resisted the strong pull she felt to become a permanent part of the community. I could relate to so much of the feelings she described from when I became a "born-again" Christian forty years ago. So I was actually a little surprised when she ends up rejecting something that she admits made her a better and happier person.
If I have any criticism of the book it is that the author didn't make it clear what she does believe. What kept her from being pulled into the Christian fold? And how does she feel about the world view and philosophy that she does hold? I also wanted to know more about how the experience changed her (if at all).
This book is only incidentally about Jerry Falwell and his church, although that topic is well-covered. What it really seemed to me to be about was how subjecting yourself unreservedly to another belief system can challenge and even change you--up to a point.
June 5, 2015
Kevin Roose's The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University has apparently started a sub-genre of "Ivy League impostors infiltrating Jerry Falwell." As you will know if you read my review of Roose's interesting book, I have a vested interest in Liberty University, so when this became available for review through Amazon Vine I jumped at the chance.
These journeys through Liberty University and Thomas Road Baptist Church (both undertaken explicitly for publication in each case and overlapping in time; perhaps Roose and Welch should meet and compare notes) prove the point Christians have been making the last couple of decades that America is in every way now a secular, post-Christian nation. While founded explicitly on Christian principles, and populated for most of its history by an overwhelming majority who either identified themselves as Christian or understood and accepted Christian tenants of political, social, and familial organization, clearly America is no longer as it was. It is only in this context that these undercover field trips into the wilds of Christianity by the Ivy League make sense, much like the first Westerners to make the Haj to Mecca in the 18th and 19th centuries or tourists today visiting the Amish country in Lancaster, PA. The minority culture doesn't need to infiltrate the majority culture, it is surrounded and immersed in it and in fact draws some of its strength from its reasoned and explicit separatism. Not only has Christianity become a minority, it is now as much an oddity to mainstream America as the horse-and-buggy Amish.
There is one key difference between Roose and Welch: while not an active believer, Roose came to Liberty from a Quaker background so had some conversation with Christian texts and viewpoints, while Welch is a nonpracticing Jew and avowed and practicing atheist of the God-delusion denomination since childhood. She is not only uneducated about Christian texts, principles, and beliefs, but actively opposed to anything attributed to Christians.
How does it feel to be the most popular attraction at the zoo? This is the emotion I struggled with as I read Welch (and Roose's) book. At times I teetered between anger and incredulity, especially when Welch states, with apparent sincerity, after a year of misrepresentation, dissembling, and outright lies in her closest personal relationships:
"If we don't love Evangelicals, if we don't make an effort to understand and accept them, to eat the fish even as it wriggles in our hands, we'll always be each others' nemeses. We'll always be trying to drown each other out. Threaten them, ridicule them, celebrate their humiliations, and you create a toxic dump, fertile ground for a ferocious adversary to rise, again and again. But listen to them, include them in the public conversation, understand the sentiments behind their convictions, and you invent the possibility of kinship."
Misrepresentation, dissembling, and outright lies hardly seem a solid foundation for understanding, acceptance, and kinship.
And these were Welch's closest personal relationships, as she admits after she broke away from Thomas Road after her year in Darkest Evangelicalism, suffering a temporary crisis of conscience and periodic nightmares over her lost friendships and mentors. Perhaps this is a fundamental difference between Christians and atheists--atheists are apparently able to base personal relationships on despicable lies, while the Christians who were most hurt by her lies responded with love and forgiveness when they learned the truth.
There is another essential difference between Roose's semester at Liberty, and Welch's year at Thomas Road that puts Welch's effort in a less favorable light--the relationship of a student with a university, while it may have personal, cultural, political, and spiritual components (one's deepest emotional allegiances in these areas are often formed during the college years) is at core an economic one--it is an exchange of money for education. While he wasn't honest with himself, Roose obtained the education he paid for and hurt himself more than anyone else with his false pretenses.
On the other hand, the relationship of a member to a church is a personal relationship, an exchange of personal, cultural, political, and spiritual valued in honesty, integrity and trust--the standard rate of exchange of personal relationships. Welch's kinship was a false relationship paid for with counterfeit money that hurt not only herself but those she spent a year befriending with actively and intentionally misleading lies. As Welch's best friend at church said, when told by Welch in preparation for publication of this book that Welch tried to lie as little as possible, "you lied about the most important stuff." But she forgave and remained Welch's friend, a testimony to the power of forgiveness and Christian principles in action.
In all this unburdening about the problem with the premise at the core of Welch's book, I have said little about the quality of the book itself. It is well written, interesting to read, and often paints Christians in flattering terms, much like Roose's book (we are, after all, the most popular attraction at the zoo for a reason). Welch makes the people we meet interesting and three dimensional and makes no attempt to whitewash her own thought processes as she finds herself enjoying the "feeling X" of Christianity while still disbelieving the theology and truth of it.
But, like a long calculation that is wrong because all the inputs except the first is correct, I can applaud the effort but ultimately I cannot rate it more than three stars. Welch's willingness to lie and defraud so many people for so long displays a disrespect for her subjects such as that that is now widely recognized and excoriated in those earlier Westerrn accounts of the Haj and in boorish tourists trampling the Amish tradition in Lancaster, PA. Until Christians are accorded this respect by Welch and others of her faith, I cannot endorse this book.
These journeys through Liberty University and Thomas Road Baptist Church (both undertaken explicitly for publication in each case and overlapping in time; perhaps Roose and Welch should meet and compare notes) prove the point Christians have been making the last couple of decades that America is in every way now a secular, post-Christian nation. While founded explicitly on Christian principles, and populated for most of its history by an overwhelming majority who either identified themselves as Christian or understood and accepted Christian tenants of political, social, and familial organization, clearly America is no longer as it was. It is only in this context that these undercover field trips into the wilds of Christianity by the Ivy League make sense, much like the first Westerners to make the Haj to Mecca in the 18th and 19th centuries or tourists today visiting the Amish country in Lancaster, PA. The minority culture doesn't need to infiltrate the majority culture, it is surrounded and immersed in it and in fact draws some of its strength from its reasoned and explicit separatism. Not only has Christianity become a minority, it is now as much an oddity to mainstream America as the horse-and-buggy Amish.
There is one key difference between Roose and Welch: while not an active believer, Roose came to Liberty from a Quaker background so had some conversation with Christian texts and viewpoints, while Welch is a nonpracticing Jew and avowed and practicing atheist of the God-delusion denomination since childhood. She is not only uneducated about Christian texts, principles, and beliefs, but actively opposed to anything attributed to Christians.
How does it feel to be the most popular attraction at the zoo? This is the emotion I struggled with as I read Welch (and Roose's) book. At times I teetered between anger and incredulity, especially when Welch states, with apparent sincerity, after a year of misrepresentation, dissembling, and outright lies in her closest personal relationships:
"If we don't love Evangelicals, if we don't make an effort to understand and accept them, to eat the fish even as it wriggles in our hands, we'll always be each others' nemeses. We'll always be trying to drown each other out. Threaten them, ridicule them, celebrate their humiliations, and you create a toxic dump, fertile ground for a ferocious adversary to rise, again and again. But listen to them, include them in the public conversation, understand the sentiments behind their convictions, and you invent the possibility of kinship."
Misrepresentation, dissembling, and outright lies hardly seem a solid foundation for understanding, acceptance, and kinship.
And these were Welch's closest personal relationships, as she admits after she broke away from Thomas Road after her year in Darkest Evangelicalism, suffering a temporary crisis of conscience and periodic nightmares over her lost friendships and mentors. Perhaps this is a fundamental difference between Christians and atheists--atheists are apparently able to base personal relationships on despicable lies, while the Christians who were most hurt by her lies responded with love and forgiveness when they learned the truth.
There is another essential difference between Roose's semester at Liberty, and Welch's year at Thomas Road that puts Welch's effort in a less favorable light--the relationship of a student with a university, while it may have personal, cultural, political, and spiritual components (one's deepest emotional allegiances in these areas are often formed during the college years) is at core an economic one--it is an exchange of money for education. While he wasn't honest with himself, Roose obtained the education he paid for and hurt himself more than anyone else with his false pretenses.
On the other hand, the relationship of a member to a church is a personal relationship, an exchange of personal, cultural, political, and spiritual valued in honesty, integrity and trust--the standard rate of exchange of personal relationships. Welch's kinship was a false relationship paid for with counterfeit money that hurt not only herself but those she spent a year befriending with actively and intentionally misleading lies. As Welch's best friend at church said, when told by Welch in preparation for publication of this book that Welch tried to lie as little as possible, "you lied about the most important stuff." But she forgave and remained Welch's friend, a testimony to the power of forgiveness and Christian principles in action.
In all this unburdening about the problem with the premise at the core of Welch's book, I have said little about the quality of the book itself. It is well written, interesting to read, and often paints Christians in flattering terms, much like Roose's book (we are, after all, the most popular attraction at the zoo for a reason). Welch makes the people we meet interesting and three dimensional and makes no attempt to whitewash her own thought processes as she finds herself enjoying the "feeling X" of Christianity while still disbelieving the theology and truth of it.
But, like a long calculation that is wrong because all the inputs except the first is correct, I can applaud the effort but ultimately I cannot rate it more than three stars. Welch's willingness to lie and defraud so many people for so long displays a disrespect for her subjects such as that that is now widely recognized and excoriated in those earlier Westerrn accounts of the Haj and in boorish tourists trampling the Amish tradition in Lancaster, PA. Until Christians are accorded this respect by Welch and others of her faith, I cannot endorse this book.
January 26, 2015
I very much enjoyed Gina Welch's year-plus foray into the world of Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church - it rings true to my own Evangelical upbringing on many levels. This surprised me, as I was raised in California and figured the Virginia counterpart should be far more extreme. Instead, it felt quite familiar. I also am in the rare position to sympathize with her methodology, as I have joined a number of religious groups as part of a podcast I co-host (and suffered some of the same dilemmas that attend undercover investigations).
Welch's writing is beautifully descriptive, and she has an amazing knack for drawing quick analogies to relatable situations. If I had to gripe, I might say this descriptiveness is sometimes taken to excess, and often unnecessarily flowery. She has a rich internal life, brought to the page with almost frantic descriptions of her own thoughts, as well as the thoughts she suspects to be coursing through the heads of others. Had I been privy to her predicament at the time, my advice might have been to calm down and not assume so much on the part of others. Perhaps too much time was spent anticipating the reactions of her Christian friends and preemptively attempting to mollify their concerns.
Our secular Jewish tour guide goes to great lengths to humanize the right-wing Christians she meets, and paints full portraits of individuals who are kind and caring, yet very devoted to a particular view of the world. While she set out to observe, I feel she was open enough to have become a true believer if the evidence added up. It simply didn't, and Welch can't be faulted for being honest. As she repeatedly notes in the book, you can't force yourself to believe a proposition. At the same time, she found many things to like, and grew personally as a result.
A recommended read for anyone interested in modern Evangelism.
Welch's writing is beautifully descriptive, and she has an amazing knack for drawing quick analogies to relatable situations. If I had to gripe, I might say this descriptiveness is sometimes taken to excess, and often unnecessarily flowery. She has a rich internal life, brought to the page with almost frantic descriptions of her own thoughts, as well as the thoughts she suspects to be coursing through the heads of others. Had I been privy to her predicament at the time, my advice might have been to calm down and not assume so much on the part of others. Perhaps too much time was spent anticipating the reactions of her Christian friends and preemptively attempting to mollify their concerns.
Our secular Jewish tour guide goes to great lengths to humanize the right-wing Christians she meets, and paints full portraits of individuals who are kind and caring, yet very devoted to a particular view of the world. While she set out to observe, I feel she was open enough to have become a true believer if the evidence added up. It simply didn't, and Welch can't be faulted for being honest. As she repeatedly notes in the book, you can't force yourself to believe a proposition. At the same time, she found many things to like, and grew personally as a result.
A recommended read for anyone interested in modern Evangelism.
June 12, 2024
Eh. Slow. Not really much of a story in the end. I did like to see the author discover that people are good and well meaning. That’s what I wish everyone could see about Mormons, that even though the adherence to rules seems strange when that’s all you see, it’s motivated from a place of truly wanting to be good and kind and help others. But yeah, the climax of this book is her going on a mission trip and honestly i can’t take a three week mission trip seriously when I went through a year and a half mission. And then she stresses about how awful she feels about revealing to her friends that she was lying. Yup. Makes sense. The thing is, she didn’t see Christians as real people who it was possible to befriend when she started the experiment. That’s why she didn’t really worry about it. Like squishing a bug. It’s what people do to their enemies throughout history, dehumanizing. This was explored in the poppy war (if you haven’t read it this won’t make sense, but the narrator sees the massacre and realizes the enemy troops didn’t see them as being human). You don’t feel guilt about hurting the feelings of “the bad guys”. I wish politics could somehow do what this girl did - realize that many of “the bad guys” (or at least the opposite political party) are just friends waiting to be made.
July 31, 2010
In the Land of Believers by Gina Welch
Metropolitan Books, 2010
328 pages
Non-fiction; Religion; Memoir
Source: The library
Summary: Gina Welch undertook a journey in to the church founded by controversial preacher Jerry Falwell in order to understand evangelicals in comparison to her own Jewish/atheist liberal background.
Thoughts: I saw several reviews of this in the blogosphere and I enjoyed reading Kevin Roose's The Unlikely Disciple (which I recommend and read pre-blog), which seemed similar. His was only for a semester while hers was more long-term. I was pleased to see it in my library but this book seriously underwhelmed me.
I found Welch's introduction condescending as if evangelicals were lesser than her and those like her and were possibly not even human. But to her surprise, they turn out to be mostly nice people who struggle and mess up just like everyone else! I'm technically an evangelical Christian (although more liberal than those that Welch met) and I'm pretty confident that fundamentalists of all stripes, atheists, agnostics, pagans, etc, are just people who are in many ways similar to me. That's not groundbreaking.
I was also concerned with her deceit; while I've read that she didn't begin this book with a contract, she got it in the middle of writing, I feel like it was written for her profit. I was also uncomfortable with her decision to be baptized without believing. Baptism is important to the Christian faith and I believe very strongly that it is wrong to be baptized without believing. I don't know why she couldn't have attended the church and worked from there without going so far in her deception.
I did identify with her somewhat though in terms of not quite understanding all of the Christian-ese and being uncomfortable praying out loud as I have only been a Christian for two years. Her fear of evangelizing was also convicting for me; I believe in my faith and I should be less hesitant about sharing it with the world. I also identified when she talked about how friendly and warm and nice everyone seems and how it's a little scary. My college Christian community is filled with the nicest, most caring people I've ever met and I've been afraid that they'll look at me and find me wanting but instead I've found myself growing and emulating them (well, really emulating Jesus).
She also had valid concerns about the homophobia which appears. I'm in a more liberal place than she is but even so I've seen disconcerting happenings of homophobia within my particular Christian community.
Overall: 3/5. I found the basic premise somewhat insulting and I didn't think it was particularly well-written.
Cover: I like the plainness and color.
Metropolitan Books, 2010
328 pages
Non-fiction; Religion; Memoir
Source: The library
Summary: Gina Welch undertook a journey in to the church founded by controversial preacher Jerry Falwell in order to understand evangelicals in comparison to her own Jewish/atheist liberal background.
Thoughts: I saw several reviews of this in the blogosphere and I enjoyed reading Kevin Roose's The Unlikely Disciple (which I recommend and read pre-blog), which seemed similar. His was only for a semester while hers was more long-term. I was pleased to see it in my library but this book seriously underwhelmed me.
I found Welch's introduction condescending as if evangelicals were lesser than her and those like her and were possibly not even human. But to her surprise, they turn out to be mostly nice people who struggle and mess up just like everyone else! I'm technically an evangelical Christian (although more liberal than those that Welch met) and I'm pretty confident that fundamentalists of all stripes, atheists, agnostics, pagans, etc, are just people who are in many ways similar to me. That's not groundbreaking.
I was also concerned with her deceit; while I've read that she didn't begin this book with a contract, she got it in the middle of writing, I feel like it was written for her profit. I was also uncomfortable with her decision to be baptized without believing. Baptism is important to the Christian faith and I believe very strongly that it is wrong to be baptized without believing. I don't know why she couldn't have attended the church and worked from there without going so far in her deception.
I did identify with her somewhat though in terms of not quite understanding all of the Christian-ese and being uncomfortable praying out loud as I have only been a Christian for two years. Her fear of evangelizing was also convicting for me; I believe in my faith and I should be less hesitant about sharing it with the world. I also identified when she talked about how friendly and warm and nice everyone seems and how it's a little scary. My college Christian community is filled with the nicest, most caring people I've ever met and I've been afraid that they'll look at me and find me wanting but instead I've found myself growing and emulating them (well, really emulating Jesus).
She also had valid concerns about the homophobia which appears. I'm in a more liberal place than she is but even so I've seen disconcerting happenings of homophobia within my particular Christian community.
Overall: 3/5. I found the basic premise somewhat insulting and I didn't think it was particularly well-written.
Cover: I like the plainness and color.
August 4, 2011
I loved Gina Welch's tales of going undercover at Thomas Road Baptist Church. As another Ivy League educated atheist with a curiosity about the Christian faith (and any religion, really) I was especially interested in seeing another's take on the evangelical world. I was very glad to see that Welch went in not to mock, but with an open mind (and heart) even though she had doubts. She does a great job describing people and events without judging; she manages to put aside any bias and ethnocentrism to show a fair and accurate portrayal of the church, faith, and members. When she does feel uncomfortable - for example, when her TRBC friends make homophobic jokes/observations - she voices her frustration without becoming too angry or judgmental. Her journey starts to come to an end during a mission trip to Alaska with TRBC members to "win 100 souls." As she grows close to a few of her church friends - a Pastor named Ray and a woman named Alice especially - she begins to feel guilt for breaking their trust and ultimately decides to put an end to her time at the church, breaking all ties without explanation. Though the whole book is wonderfully written, the most heartfelt part is the Epilogue in which Welch describes going back to the church in 2009 to talk to Ray and Alice about her true intentions. Their reactions are incredible despite Welch's earlier dishonesty, and you really need to learn here that it doesn't matter what religion we are - people are people and should love and care for one another despite any ideological differences. That's the one thing we need to take away from this book and others like it (Kevin Roose's "The Unlikely Disciple" for example) -- if everyone was this open to seemingly opposing lifestyles and belief systems, the world would be a better place. Definitely worth reading.
July 16, 2013
Growing up Protestant, I've always thought of Evangelicals as the "wrong" or "misguided" kind of Christians, and a label to push as far away as possible. I think, despite my own background and beliefs, I would've gone into the experiment with similar prejudices as Gina.
It was interesting to me to read because she would write with confusion about things I understood, like singing along with hymns with the words projected in front and people raising their hands, but then it would take a turn into something that didn't fit in with my picture of Christianity at all: Jerry Falwell's requests for money, for one thing. In my experience, the "collection" as it's called is something that happens with little preamble. There is always a statement about what the money goes for, which only seemed to happen sometimes at Thomas Road, there was some expectation that it was going directly to God and that rewards in heaven would be directly proportional--something that set off my WRONG! flag. The homophobic messages sent up my wrong! flag, along with the denial of global warming and all the fear mongering about hell and damnation.
I understood what Gina was getting at, though, that because the Thomas Road members believed so fervently that saying the "sinners prayer" was the way out of a horrible punishment that lasted for eternity they want to prevent that happening to as many people as possible. While my own experiences of "Feeling X" have been far and few between, this revelation of Gina's made me, too, realize that evangelicals are people and while they have misguided ideas about a lot of things, they (not all of them, but in many cases) have the best intentions. It's got me thinking about if there's some way we could present ideas of tolerance to evangelicals in a more kinder, tolerant way.
TL;DR version: It rang true and it got me thinking. 5 stars.
It was interesting to me to read because she would write with confusion about things I understood, like singing along with hymns with the words projected in front and people raising their hands, but then it would take a turn into something that didn't fit in with my picture of Christianity at all: Jerry Falwell's requests for money, for one thing. In my experience, the "collection" as it's called is something that happens with little preamble. There is always a statement about what the money goes for, which only seemed to happen sometimes at Thomas Road, there was some expectation that it was going directly to God and that rewards in heaven would be directly proportional--something that set off my WRONG! flag. The homophobic messages sent up my wrong! flag, along with the denial of global warming and all the fear mongering about hell and damnation.
I understood what Gina was getting at, though, that because the Thomas Road members believed so fervently that saying the "sinners prayer" was the way out of a horrible punishment that lasted for eternity they want to prevent that happening to as many people as possible. While my own experiences of "Feeling X" have been far and few between, this revelation of Gina's made me, too, realize that evangelicals are people and while they have misguided ideas about a lot of things, they (not all of them, but in many cases) have the best intentions. It's got me thinking about if there's some way we could present ideas of tolerance to evangelicals in a more kinder, tolerant way.
TL;DR version: It rang true and it got me thinking. 5 stars.
March 1, 2012
First of all, this journey isn't really as extraodinary or revolutionary as Welch thinks. Not only has it been done before, it's been done with the exact same subset of evangelicals (see: The Unlikely Disciple). Exposes or explorations of contemporary Evangelical Christianity have been around for years and publishers keep churning out more all the time. This book is just one more addition to that body of work.
So how does it compare to the others? I've read better. My biggest problem with this book was how Welch herself came off: arrogant, condescending, and self-important. Yes, we get it - you went to Yale. If this was supposed to be a look at Thomas Road Christians, there was way too much "me, me, me," and if it was meant to be the chronicle of Welch's faith journey, there was too much churchy minutiae and too many interchangable characters. Also, typically a journey takes you somewhere, and I don't think Welch really got anywhere. She apparently learned that not all Christians are the same and some can even be friends with athiests. Not exactly groundbreaking news...
Thanks to my dislike of the narrator and the been-here-already-read-this feeling I couldn't shake, this one sat on my shelf for months before I finally finished it. If it had been the first book I'd read on the topic, I probably would have liked it more.
Good for East Coast liberals who want to get a frontline look at Evangelical Christians.
So how does it compare to the others? I've read better. My biggest problem with this book was how Welch herself came off: arrogant, condescending, and self-important. Yes, we get it - you went to Yale. If this was supposed to be a look at Thomas Road Christians, there was way too much "me, me, me," and if it was meant to be the chronicle of Welch's faith journey, there was too much churchy minutiae and too many interchangable characters. Also, typically a journey takes you somewhere, and I don't think Welch really got anywhere. She apparently learned that not all Christians are the same and some can even be friends with athiests. Not exactly groundbreaking news...
Thanks to my dislike of the narrator and the been-here-already-read-this feeling I couldn't shake, this one sat on my shelf for months before I finally finished it. If it had been the first book I'd read on the topic, I probably would have liked it more.
Good for East Coast liberals who want to get a frontline look at Evangelical Christians.
May 17, 2017
I hardly know how to rate this...I had a love/hate relationship with this book the whole way through! First of all, I believe her. I spent two years at Thomas Road and all her details ring very true to me. Secondly, her condescending attitude through much of the book, especially the first half, was palpable and somewhat painful to me. Thirdly, I had left TRBC by the time she arrived so she gave me a window into events that happened after I left, but that I knew about and that was priceless. Fourthly, her betrayal to the lovely people she became friends with is unthinkable! There is a presumption in friendship that what I am saying to you is not going to be printed in an expose' book! When she finally comes clean with them, they extend forgiveness, but it is not rocket science to know that some things that were said and published would not have been said if they had known she was not present in the capacity of a friend, but a essentially a spy. Lastly, nothing she uncovers is all that remarkable except possibly to her own intolerant, judgemental self who discovers these people are kind. Glad she had an eye-opening, but it was totally at the expense of others. She felt guilty at the end, as well she should have! I will say I thought Gina is a good writer and I sometimes found her imagery very well done.
did-not-finish
December 28, 2015I only read 50 or so pages of this one before I decided to put it down. The author grated on my nerves too much. She decides to go "undercover" (a term that irritates me to start with, as Evangelicals are not some secret, mysterious society) but apparently does no research and learns nothing about them before jumping in. She appears to be believe that all Evangelicals are carbon-copies of each other in how they dress, talk, and think. And she comes across as incredibly smug, in the "these people are so cute and naive with their absurd beliefs, but of course I know so much more than they do" way.
If she views herself as a journalist, then I would recommend that she learn to be more objective, do her research about her subjects, and show more integrity (see others' comments about her participation in church sacraments in which she does not believe). Maybe the author grew as a person as a result of this project, but there was no way I was going to read the entire book to find out.
If she views herself as a journalist, then I would recommend that she learn to be more objective, do her research about her subjects, and show more integrity (see others' comments about her participation in church sacraments in which she does not believe). Maybe the author grew as a person as a result of this project, but there was no way I was going to read the entire book to find out.
July 21, 2010
While the author wrote very well, I am disturbed by the fact that she blatantly lied to and deceived so many people. I also did not feel that the book ended well, as she started out trying to answer a question and yet could not answer it or even give it closer.
May 25, 2010
Chose this book because I thought it was a look into the world of evangelicals...I didn't realize it was an undercover investigation into their lives by an atheist, a very skeptical atheist,young Gina. It turned out to be quite enlightening, a very open look from the outside in, complete with sarcasm, criticism, and honesty!
She travels to Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church once, sometimes twice a week, to participate in classes and services, even goes on a mission trip to Alaska for a week with a small group. She gets into the nitty-gritty of the conversion process, the praying, the witnessing, baptism, serving. Yet she was faking it. She developed several friendships and became guilty for deceiging them. I was never bored with this, it was well-written and I couldn't wait to see how she felt at the end of the book.
TONS of favorite quotes:
EPIC--short for Experiencing Personal Intimacy with Christ
"I sat on my bed and reviewed the information packet from the Connections class. In it I found Thomas Road's nebulously articulated purpose to 'bring glory to God by making a positive difference in the lives of people' and it's mission statement to 'win the lost, and connect them to the local church where they will develop into servants and worshippers of God.'"
"A preacher in my evangelism class said that the most effective way to make someone a believer was to evangelize like a microwave--heating the nonbeliever in his or her core, letting awareness cook from the inside out. In other words, the nonbeliever arrives at the knowledge rather than having it applied. With Christians, the microwave effect worked its powers on me, and in time, I was nuked into understanding."
"What is the Bible? the Bible is a relationship book, because the Bible enables you to have a relationship with God. Relationships were deepened in cycles. When first meeting people, you define your relationship with them. When you come to know and understand them, you may come to trust them and commit yourself to them. Once that happens, you redefine your relationship and the cycle begins again---define, know and understand, trust and commit.The relationship cycle is the same between man and God. When you're spiritually immature, when you're a new believer, you can't instantly have a deep relationship with God. It grows over time through the cycle."
"If we were having difficulty praying Donny suggested we return to the original prayer: The Lord's Prayer.
Address, awe, succor, protection, guidance, gratitude. Amen "
"You cannot become a Christian by good works. We're not saved by works. We're not saved by a combination of faith AND works. You become a Christian by faith WITHOUT works...but you cannot be saved or become a Christian by a faith that produces no works. ....Being a good person couldn't make you a Christian, but being a Christian was guaranteed to make you into a good person."
"Misty prayed constantly for her to meet a friend: 'someone who understood her but was on fire for Christ.'"
"The lesson in Jonah, Donny told us, was that 'the reason we cannot find the cure is we have not discovered the cause.' It was for Jonah that God created the terrible storm his ship encountered on the way to Tarshish, and it was only Jonah's submission to the storm that would quell it. Storms are inevitable, they are for our testing, and for our discipline."
"We must expect and endure these sudden storms, Dr. Falwell told us. If you've never been to a place in your life when all human hope was taken away, the scripture says, brace yourself. You're likely to go there someday. But so long as we were Christians, we needn't be afraid. A newspaper had recently asked Dr. Falwell if his pulpit was bulletproof. No, he replied, but I am. And so is every believer until he has finished the work God has called him to do. Because God made the storms, he also controlled the extent of their damage. No waters can swallow the ship where lies the master of ocean and earth and skies. Just because things don't make sense to you and me doesn't mean they don't make sense to God. Even when we cannot trace his hand, we can always trust his heart. Trials and calamities are God's tools to perfect our life and character."
"The Christians I knew were masters of letting go. And it didn't take them years to do it. Their minds seemed uncluttered by remorse or bitterness, unhaunted by the idea of what could have been. It wasn't only because they accepted hardship as a character-building rpocess given by God, it was that they believed they'd already been forgiven for what they'd done by the only one who mattered. And besides: why should they stay mired in the sorrows of this life with the bounty of delights awaiting them in the next?"
"Falwell never seemed hollow. Though there's no way one can determine the depth and purity of another's belief, one look at Jerry Falwell's life showed that he was no hypocrite: he lived precisely according to the message he preached."
"A dear friend of mine who was suffering through the loss of a close family member once told me, 'Death is messy.' This seemed to me the truest thing one could say on the subject: the regrettable things we said and didn't say, the mysteries and secrets forever buried, the million filaments of pain and longing, the flotsam and jetsam of belongings and affairs: it's a jagged, unremitting mess. But for Christians, death is different. For Christians, in a way, death is tidy: it fulfills a promise. And ultimately, the dead are better off."
"I told her (my mother) that what I envied most about Christians was not the God thing---it was having a community gathering each week, a touchstone for people who share valies, a safe place to be frank about your life struggles, a place to be reminded of your moral compass. Having a place to guard against loneliness, to feel there are others like you. For some of the people I knew at Thomas Road, it seemed that without church they would have no community at all. And without community, I told my mother, a person might risk losing a grip on the humanity of others, might look into the eyes of humans as if humans were wild animals.
I was beginning to understand the need for certainty, the desire to tighten the straps on the universe by claiming to have a handbook written by the guy to made it. Sometimes I too wanted something to make the wilderness seem hospitable---or at least manageable.
But more specifically I found parts of the Bible helpful even for me, and I thought it was too bad Jesus had been hijacked by religion and politics since the Sermon on the Mount seemed like a pretty good moral code. Jesus had laid out a beautiful plan for responsible personhood, I told my mother, and the Sermon was essentially the skeleton of liberal thought. I thought all these things, and yet she still needn't worry, because thinking them didn't make me a Christian."
"You are not using the blueprint that God has given to you! You are not building up your faith, and you are not studying His word, and you're not obeying His word. You're not doing it! So you have the greatest intentions, but in the end, you build something of no value."
"Leaving also meant having to confront all of the ethically dubious stuff I'd done. I had cultivated intimate friendships on a foundation of lies. That was what I felt worst about: deceiving people I couldn't help but consider true friends. I didn'ti have the stomach for meals and I didn't want to see anyone at all. When I slept, I had unspeakable nightmares. I felt fluish with self loathing. "What's happened is you realized these people are human," my mother told me. I wasnt' sure she ewas wrong, but I knew that wasn't the whole story."
"Could I be satisfied living on the reassurance that God was on my side? I couldn't. I couldn't work back from who I was or what I believed, and in truth, I didn't want to. I preferred analysis, reason, and the satisfying realism of hard truths. I didn't mind leaving some corners of the universe cast in the shadow of ambiguity. MOral structure might have been the key to happiness, but maybe happiness wasn't the only thing worth unlocking. "
Psalm 139...
"The beauty of this psalm unfurled in my like great spools of ribbon. God-love---I felt I finally saw it. Human love was this awkward thing. Sometimes I made you feel desperate and crazed, as though you'd have to become the person to ever have enough of them. But God-love, the love in the psalm, the love in 'Jesus loves you'---that was Mobius strip love, love with no beginning or end, love that was both calm and complete, unflinching in the face of anything you could reveal about yourself. Who wouldn't want that? I certainly did, especially in that moment---knowing the secrets in my own heart, knowing that soon they'd be revealed.
But wanting it still didn't make me believe it."
SPOILER FOLLOWS:
"...a commencement address David Foster Wallace gave a Kenyon college in 2005, for its wisdom on living at peace with others....After describing a similarly aggravating grocery store scenario, Wallace gave this advice: 'if you really learn how to pay attention...it will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer hell-type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down. Not that that mustical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it.'
So this---this became the basis of my love for Evangelicals: I was going to choose to see the mystical oneness. And once I started to see it that way, loving them wasn't very hard to do.
In some sense, these days I'm just as I always was: godless and churchless, sure that hwen we die, we're dead. There is no part of my that's me forever.
And yet everyone who knows me says I'm different. I think it's because in the part of me that's me for now, there IS something new, an invisible socket, a phantom limb extending from it: the friends I had and lost who forever enlarged my view of the world. I can sense them even now."
She travels to Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church once, sometimes twice a week, to participate in classes and services, even goes on a mission trip to Alaska for a week with a small group. She gets into the nitty-gritty of the conversion process, the praying, the witnessing, baptism, serving. Yet she was faking it. She developed several friendships and became guilty for deceiging them. I was never bored with this, it was well-written and I couldn't wait to see how she felt at the end of the book.
TONS of favorite quotes:
EPIC--short for Experiencing Personal Intimacy with Christ
"I sat on my bed and reviewed the information packet from the Connections class. In it I found Thomas Road's nebulously articulated purpose to 'bring glory to God by making a positive difference in the lives of people' and it's mission statement to 'win the lost, and connect them to the local church where they will develop into servants and worshippers of God.'"
"A preacher in my evangelism class said that the most effective way to make someone a believer was to evangelize like a microwave--heating the nonbeliever in his or her core, letting awareness cook from the inside out. In other words, the nonbeliever arrives at the knowledge rather than having it applied. With Christians, the microwave effect worked its powers on me, and in time, I was nuked into understanding."
"What is the Bible? the Bible is a relationship book, because the Bible enables you to have a relationship with God. Relationships were deepened in cycles. When first meeting people, you define your relationship with them. When you come to know and understand them, you may come to trust them and commit yourself to them. Once that happens, you redefine your relationship and the cycle begins again---define, know and understand, trust and commit.The relationship cycle is the same between man and God. When you're spiritually immature, when you're a new believer, you can't instantly have a deep relationship with God. It grows over time through the cycle."
"If we were having difficulty praying Donny suggested we return to the original prayer: The Lord's Prayer.
Address, awe, succor, protection, guidance, gratitude. Amen "
"You cannot become a Christian by good works. We're not saved by works. We're not saved by a combination of faith AND works. You become a Christian by faith WITHOUT works...but you cannot be saved or become a Christian by a faith that produces no works. ....Being a good person couldn't make you a Christian, but being a Christian was guaranteed to make you into a good person."
"Misty prayed constantly for her to meet a friend: 'someone who understood her but was on fire for Christ.'"
"The lesson in Jonah, Donny told us, was that 'the reason we cannot find the cure is we have not discovered the cause.' It was for Jonah that God created the terrible storm his ship encountered on the way to Tarshish, and it was only Jonah's submission to the storm that would quell it. Storms are inevitable, they are for our testing, and for our discipline."
"We must expect and endure these sudden storms, Dr. Falwell told us. If you've never been to a place in your life when all human hope was taken away, the scripture says, brace yourself. You're likely to go there someday. But so long as we were Christians, we needn't be afraid. A newspaper had recently asked Dr. Falwell if his pulpit was bulletproof. No, he replied, but I am. And so is every believer until he has finished the work God has called him to do. Because God made the storms, he also controlled the extent of their damage. No waters can swallow the ship where lies the master of ocean and earth and skies. Just because things don't make sense to you and me doesn't mean they don't make sense to God. Even when we cannot trace his hand, we can always trust his heart. Trials and calamities are God's tools to perfect our life and character."
"The Christians I knew were masters of letting go. And it didn't take them years to do it. Their minds seemed uncluttered by remorse or bitterness, unhaunted by the idea of what could have been. It wasn't only because they accepted hardship as a character-building rpocess given by God, it was that they believed they'd already been forgiven for what they'd done by the only one who mattered. And besides: why should they stay mired in the sorrows of this life with the bounty of delights awaiting them in the next?"
"Falwell never seemed hollow. Though there's no way one can determine the depth and purity of another's belief, one look at Jerry Falwell's life showed that he was no hypocrite: he lived precisely according to the message he preached."
"A dear friend of mine who was suffering through the loss of a close family member once told me, 'Death is messy.' This seemed to me the truest thing one could say on the subject: the regrettable things we said and didn't say, the mysteries and secrets forever buried, the million filaments of pain and longing, the flotsam and jetsam of belongings and affairs: it's a jagged, unremitting mess. But for Christians, death is different. For Christians, in a way, death is tidy: it fulfills a promise. And ultimately, the dead are better off."
"I told her (my mother) that what I envied most about Christians was not the God thing---it was having a community gathering each week, a touchstone for people who share valies, a safe place to be frank about your life struggles, a place to be reminded of your moral compass. Having a place to guard against loneliness, to feel there are others like you. For some of the people I knew at Thomas Road, it seemed that without church they would have no community at all. And without community, I told my mother, a person might risk losing a grip on the humanity of others, might look into the eyes of humans as if humans were wild animals.
I was beginning to understand the need for certainty, the desire to tighten the straps on the universe by claiming to have a handbook written by the guy to made it. Sometimes I too wanted something to make the wilderness seem hospitable---or at least manageable.
But more specifically I found parts of the Bible helpful even for me, and I thought it was too bad Jesus had been hijacked by religion and politics since the Sermon on the Mount seemed like a pretty good moral code. Jesus had laid out a beautiful plan for responsible personhood, I told my mother, and the Sermon was essentially the skeleton of liberal thought. I thought all these things, and yet she still needn't worry, because thinking them didn't make me a Christian."
"You are not using the blueprint that God has given to you! You are not building up your faith, and you are not studying His word, and you're not obeying His word. You're not doing it! So you have the greatest intentions, but in the end, you build something of no value."
"Leaving also meant having to confront all of the ethically dubious stuff I'd done. I had cultivated intimate friendships on a foundation of lies. That was what I felt worst about: deceiving people I couldn't help but consider true friends. I didn'ti have the stomach for meals and I didn't want to see anyone at all. When I slept, I had unspeakable nightmares. I felt fluish with self loathing. "What's happened is you realized these people are human," my mother told me. I wasnt' sure she ewas wrong, but I knew that wasn't the whole story."
"Could I be satisfied living on the reassurance that God was on my side? I couldn't. I couldn't work back from who I was or what I believed, and in truth, I didn't want to. I preferred analysis, reason, and the satisfying realism of hard truths. I didn't mind leaving some corners of the universe cast in the shadow of ambiguity. MOral structure might have been the key to happiness, but maybe happiness wasn't the only thing worth unlocking. "
Psalm 139...
"The beauty of this psalm unfurled in my like great spools of ribbon. God-love---I felt I finally saw it. Human love was this awkward thing. Sometimes I made you feel desperate and crazed, as though you'd have to become the person to ever have enough of them. But God-love, the love in the psalm, the love in 'Jesus loves you'---that was Mobius strip love, love with no beginning or end, love that was both calm and complete, unflinching in the face of anything you could reveal about yourself. Who wouldn't want that? I certainly did, especially in that moment---knowing the secrets in my own heart, knowing that soon they'd be revealed.
But wanting it still didn't make me believe it."
SPOILER FOLLOWS:
"...a commencement address David Foster Wallace gave a Kenyon college in 2005, for its wisdom on living at peace with others....After describing a similarly aggravating grocery store scenario, Wallace gave this advice: 'if you really learn how to pay attention...it will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer hell-type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down. Not that that mustical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it.'
So this---this became the basis of my love for Evangelicals: I was going to choose to see the mystical oneness. And once I started to see it that way, loving them wasn't very hard to do.
In some sense, these days I'm just as I always was: godless and churchless, sure that hwen we die, we're dead. There is no part of my that's me forever.
And yet everyone who knows me says I'm different. I think it's because in the part of me that's me for now, there IS something new, an invisible socket, a phantom limb extending from it: the friends I had and lost who forever enlarged my view of the world. I can sense them even now."
March 3, 2019
The subtitle here is pretty accurate. The author spent considerable time as a prospective, and then full, member of Jerry Falwell's church in her attempt to gain an understanding of these churches. There is a lot of good material on the personal and community side of things. These people (almost all) truly believe their version of the Bible and Christianity, and also that those who do not accept the one main tenet of their faith are not Christians. The seductiveness of group-think works; they are nice to each other and prospective recruits, don't have much time for anyone else (and are notorious skinflints when it comes to tipping at restaurants), and don't seem to have much sympathy for anyone else either.
There is pretty much nothing on the implications and effects of their beliefs and behavior on the world outside their community, with the exception of some mention of family relations when not all are evangelicals. This is not necessarily within the scope of what Welch intended to write, but is a major failing, because evangelicals have had a major influence on US politics, and therefore world affairs also. A chapter or two at the end could have balanced the book; instead, Welch's concern was that her actions likely would offend those who were her friends for two years, a relatively minor issue compared to the impact of evangelical politics on the world.
The core tenet of the evangelicals, according to Welch, is that one must profess that Jesus Christ is one's savior, and believe that all your sins past, present, and it seems future are forgiven. Given that profession, one has a guaranteed ticket to heaven, no remorse or penance or restitution required. (The Good Samaritan, on the other hand, was barred, which I suspect is contrary to the intended message of that passage of the Bible.) Personally, I find this belief to be far deadlier than the 40 virgins passage in the Koran. Near the end of the book, we find Pastor Ray participated in the killing of millions of innocent people. Nobody considered that that was the expected result of what he and his wife said he did, not even Welch. I note Welch is a Yale graduate, the school of two Bush Presidents and unknown numbers of CIA operators, whose motto seems to be "we are the good guys, because we are not as bad as the Nazis were".
There is pretty much nothing on the implications and effects of their beliefs and behavior on the world outside their community, with the exception of some mention of family relations when not all are evangelicals. This is not necessarily within the scope of what Welch intended to write, but is a major failing, because evangelicals have had a major influence on US politics, and therefore world affairs also. A chapter or two at the end could have balanced the book; instead, Welch's concern was that her actions likely would offend those who were her friends for two years, a relatively minor issue compared to the impact of evangelical politics on the world.
The core tenet of the evangelicals, according to Welch, is that one must profess that Jesus Christ is one's savior, and believe that all your sins past, present, and it seems future are forgiven. Given that profession, one has a guaranteed ticket to heaven, no remorse or penance or restitution required. (The Good Samaritan, on the other hand, was barred, which I suspect is contrary to the intended message of that passage of the Bible.) Personally, I find this belief to be far deadlier than the 40 virgins passage in the Koran. Near the end of the book, we find Pastor Ray participated in the killing of millions of innocent people. Nobody considered that that was the expected result of what he and his wife said he did, not even Welch. I note Welch is a Yale graduate, the school of two Bush Presidents and unknown numbers of CIA operators, whose motto seems to be "we are the good guys, because we are not as bad as the Nazis were".
August 8, 2021
Overall it wasn’t my favorite of the books in the genre of books that detail secular individuals trying understand Christianity. While I appreciate the authors mindset and definitely found the book interesting, it reads more like a memoir of her own journey to find Community atThomas Rhodes, rather than an explanation which sheds light on why Christianity is the way it is. I found the book by the Brown student who went to Liberty University to be more insightful and covering a wider range of topics.
June 21, 2019
This book weirdly tries to humanize and get us to understand evangelicals while also treating them like an alien culture. (News flash! they're just like most christians just more homophobic!) As a catholic tho I've always been interested in religious traditions different from my own so I ended up eating this book up anyway.
January 26, 2020
I was excited to read this as it was a novel idea. However, the book got lost in intricate detail after detail, making it hard to wade through the 328 pages. The author also seemed to lump thousands of evangelical Christians under one umbrella, which I struggled with. I hope to finish the book sometime but put it away about, halfway through, for now.
June 24, 2017
first third I hated as the author was lying so, second third I disliked as it was like lets go to the zoo and watch the evangelicals, and the third third I really really liked. Helped for me that the last part was in Alaska a lot. I think I was actually feeling the emotions the author intended to evoke.
UPDATE: After book club meeting i dropped my rating.. we discussed the betrayal aspects, and also the many many times the author described the beliefs of Falwell and his congregation as the beliefs of all christians. So there was a distinct level of just not researching the book.
Still think it was worth the read.. but it is somewhat troublesome that a book on betrayal on people's religious views kickstarted an academic career
UPDATE: After book club meeting i dropped my rating.. we discussed the betrayal aspects, and also the many many times the author described the beliefs of Falwell and his congregation as the beliefs of all christians. So there was a distinct level of just not researching the book.
Still think it was worth the read.. but it is somewhat troublesome that a book on betrayal on people's religious views kickstarted an academic career
August 5, 2024
impressive
I don’t have this authors background but I did grow up an atheist. I had to admit I was wrong about many things and issue apology’s to those I had wronged. This was a wonderful reminder of how important humility and respect for those you disagree with really is.
I don’t have this authors background but I did grow up an atheist. I had to admit I was wrong about many things and issue apology’s to those I had wronged. This was a wonderful reminder of how important humility and respect for those you disagree with really is.
Read
March 30, 2025I recently read "The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University" so I didn't quite enjoy "In the Land of Believers" as much as I could have. I would recommend "Unlikely Disciple" before "In the Land of Believers."
March 30, 2020
I had slight hope, but she didn’t live up to it. As Saint Augustine said, “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”
November 22, 2023
Pros - fascinating premise, character growth of the narrator
Cons - serious ethical issues related to gathering the info for the book
Cons - serious ethical issues related to gathering the info for the book
Displaying 1 - 30 of 113 reviews