Heretic Quotes

“As an evangelical teenager, I didn't trust my own mind, too afraid to sin. Straying too far away from the early Christian internet could lead to temptation, to lust, to anger, to doubt. Perpetually aware of my own failings and ever the budding perfectionist, I aspired to a nearly ascetic level of spiritual self-discipline, which was in fact self-denial. I believe that I had chosen my faith for myself, not realizing that I had been conditioned all my life to be the ideal, obedient subject.”
― Jeanna Kadlec, Heretic: A Memoir

“One of the most malevolent characteristics of racist thought,” Toni Morrison wrote, “is that it seems never to produce new knowledge.”
― Jeanna Kadlec, Heretic: A Memoir – From Evangelical Indoctrination to Queer Liberation and Secular Community

“The Bible is to the theologian what nature is to the man of science,” Hodge wrote. “It is his store-house of facts.”* It cannot be overstated how much Hodge’s thesis, that the Bible was the completely inerrant, infallible word of God, was an astonishing break with Protestant church fathers and the traditional interpretation of the authority and limitations of scripture. Martin Luther, who had been a theology professor, used to acknowledge that the Bible contained contradictions and historical errors.”
― Jeanna Kadlec, Heretic: A Memoir – From Evangelical Indoctrination to Queer Liberation and Secular Community

“His deconstruction is often accused of nihilism, because for Derrida, to deconstruct is to be willing to live in the tension of the unresolved, to risk never actually (re)constructing. But in the hands of the marginalized, deconstruction looks a little different. As philosopher and Derrida scholar John D. Caputo, writing about Derrida’s Jewish identity, puts it, “The idea of deconstruction is to deconstruct the workings of strong nation-states with powerful immigration policies, to deconstruct the rhetoric of nationalism, the politics of place, the metaphysics of native land and native tongue. . . . The passion of deconstruction is deeply political.”
― Jeanna Kadlec, Heretic: A Memoir – From Evangelical Indoctrination to Queer Liberation and Secular Community

“Purity culture is about normalizing rape culture and calling it good citizenship.”
― Jeanna Kadlec, Heretic: A Memoir – From Evangelical Indoctrination to Queer Liberation and Secular Community

“There is no framework of restorative justice for victims of sexual assault and rape within the cult of sexual purity, no real punishment for abusers, and certainly no chance for the recuperation of what we have dangerously been taught is our primary spiritual good. What’s more, sexually abused, unmarried women and girls are implicitly interpreted as having “asked for it” anyway, our bodies an inherent source of temptation, “dangerous” to ourselves and to others. If you can make a man want you, you’re responsible for what comes next.”
― Jeanna Kadlec, Heretic: A Memoir – From Evangelical Indoctrination to Queer Liberation and Secular Community

“In my experience, what drives belief is often not ignorance, but hope.”
― Jeanna Kadlec, Heretic: A Memoir – From Evangelical Indoctrination to Queer Liberation and Secular Community

“Did I deserve to spend this kind of money on myself? On an item that had no greater purpose than my own pleasure, than feeling good against my skin, that wasn't for the intention of serving someone else's needs?”
― Jeanna Kadlec, Heretic: A Memoir

“Did I deserve to spend this kind of monday on myself? On an item that had no greater purpose than my own pleasure, than feeling good against my skin, that wasn't for the intention of serving someone else's needs?”
― Jeanna Kadlec, Heretic: A Memoir

“...Mary Lambert is singing "Love is patient, love is kind" from 1 Corinthians 13 over and over, repeating "Not crying on Sundays," and I am gone, head fully turned and staring out the car window, trying to hide the tears that are streaming down my face.”
― Jeanna Kadlec, Heretic: A Memoir