Churched: One Kid's Journey Toward God Despite a Holy Mess (Hardcover)

by Matthew Paul Turner (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
“Churched is funny, poignant, and surprisingly moving. In this deft story of his fundamentalist upbringing Matthew Paul Turner proclaims the good news: that even church can't drown out the message of Jesus.”
–Sara Miles, author of Take This Bread


“Turner’s churched lives in that elusive space between whimsical memories of an innocent youth and cringe-inducing flashbacks of life growing up in the church. Like a visit with long-lost relatives, churched reintroduced me to characters anyone who grew up in the church will find familiar, and I was surprised to find that I was glad to see them. Sweet-hearted, funny, and honest, churched had me reminiscing about the little boy searching for God that I once was and gently reminded me I still have some miles to travel.”
–Dan Merchant, writer/director of Lord, Save Us From Your Followers


“Thanks to churched, Matthew Paul Turner’s vivid, often hilarious account of his childhood, I realized that not having grown up in evangelical culture is less of a handicap than I previously thought!”
–Andrew Beaujon, author of Body Piercing Saved My Life and writer for the Washington Post


“Turner crafts an amusing field guide to fundamentalism that’s both a gentle lampoon of hypocrisy and misplaced fervor, and a model of how to survive being ‘churched’ without cynically rejecting the good with the bad, the Founder with his followers.”
–Anna Broadway, author of Sexless in the City


“Matthew Paul Turner’s memoir has the insight of Anne Lamott and the comic honesty of David Sedaris. His stories force us to wonder which of our Christian beliefs and practices come from scripture and which spring up out of our own preferences and fears.”
–Rob Stennett, author o... --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Review
“Churched is funny, poignant, and surprisingly moving. In this deft story of his fundamentalist upbringing Matthew Paul Turner proclaims the good news: that even church can't drown out the message of Jesus.”
–Sara Miles, author of Take This Bread


“Turner’s churched lives in that elusive space between whimsical memories of an innocent youth and cringe-inducing flashbacks of life growing up in the church. Like a visit with long-lost relatives, churched reintroduced me to characters anyone who grew up in the church will find familiar, and I was surprised to find that I was glad to see them. Sweet-hearted, funny, and honest, churched had me reminiscing about the little boy searching for God that I once was and gently reminded me I still have some miles to travel.”
–Dan Merchant, writer/director of Lord, Save Us From Your Followers


“Thanks to churched, Matthew Paul Turner’s vivid, often hilarious account of his childhood, I realized that not having grown up in evangelical culture is less of a handicap than I previously thought!”
–Andrew Beaujon, author of Body Piercing Saved My Life and writer for the Washington Post


“Turner crafts an amusing field guide to fundamentalism that’s both a gentle lampoon of hypocrisy and misplaced fervor, and a model of how to survive being ‘churched’ without cynically rejecting the good with the bad, the Founder with his followers.”
–Anna Broadway, author of Sexless in the City


“Matthew Paul Turner’s memoir has the insight of Anne Lamott and the comic honesty of David Sedaris. His stories force us to wonder which of our Christian beliefs and practices come from scripture and which spring up out of our own preferences and fears.”
–Rob Stennett, author of The Almost True Story Of Ryan Fisher


“Finally! A bona-fide humorist in the North American church! I might be tempted to say Matthew Paul Turner is Christendom’s answer to David Sedaris, but Matthew stands on his own without the comparison. A memoirist who doesn’t take himself or the world too seriously, but still manages to write profoundly and beautifully, Turner gave me a belly-laugh on almost every page. If you grew up believing ‘being conformed not to this world’ meant being the weirdest kid on the block, churched will be the funniest book you’ve read in years!”

–Lisa Samson, award-winning author of Quaker Summer, Embrace Me and Justice in the Burbs

“With his homespun humor and eye for living detail, Matthew Paul Turner’s churched invites readers to rethink the quirks of Christian culture for the sake of uncovering that which is lastingly good and worth holding dear.  Turner’s work is a refreshingly gentle discussion of faith and culture with the potential to spark meaningful conversations.”
–Pete Gall, author of My Beautiful Idol


"If you didn't think Jesus-loving fundamentalist kids were very funny, Matthew Paul Turner proves you wrong."
-- Jason Boyett, author of Pocket Guide to the Bible and Pocket Guide to the Apocalypse.


“How can a book be so stinkin’ funny and yet so poignant at the same time? Matthew Paul Turner found his voice! After reading churched I wanted to hug him and then toss out all of my son’s clip-on ties.”
–Jennifer Schuchmann, author of Six Prayers God Always Answers


“Who knew that a journey through faith and fundamentalism could be so painfully funny? I laughed out loud many a time while reading churched. Matthew Paul Turner manages to channel both boyhood innocence and wry retrospective through this fast-moving account of growing up with Jesus in late twentieth-century America.”
–Mike Morrell, TheOoze.com


“A funny, heartfelt portrayal of one man’s attempt to find true meaning despite his upbringing among fundamentalists who taught him that Azrael–the cat from The Smurfs–was an agent of Satan. The true miracle of this book is that its author never manages to lose his faith.”
–Robert Lanham, author of Sinner's Guide To The Evangelical Right

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: WaterBrook Press (October 7, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400074711
• ISBN-13: 978-1400074716
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (73 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #135,544 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #41 in	Books > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Theology > Fundamentalism
  #97 in	Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Family & Childhood

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fear / Hope, September 16, 2008

By	Stephen Lamb (Nashville, TN) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

One of my favorite genres of literature to read is religious memoir. Off the top of my head, I can think of six or seven I've read in the last year - Frank Schaeffer's Crazy for God, Lauren Winner's Girl Meets God, Jon Sweeney's Born Again and Again, Barbara Brown Taylor's Leaving Church - A Memoir of Faith, and a couple from Frederick Buechner, The Sacred Journey, Now and Then, and Telling Secrets. Philip Yancey's Soul Survivor might also fit in that category. There are different things that I like about all of them. For some, it's seeing someone else who is close to the end of their journey, looking back at the things that happened in their lives that brought them to where they are now, like Buechner - on the back of his book The Longing for Home, there's a blurb from the New Oxford Review that says, "Journey on, Frederick Buechner. We need your stories to help us make sense of our own." Others, like Lauren Winner's and Donald Miller's, are thought provoking because they are a little further down the path I'm on, or at least a similar path. Schaeffer and Sweeney both come from a somewhat similar background in fundamentalism. Sweeney even begins one chapter in Born Again and Again: Surprising Gifts of a Fundamentalist Childhood by quoting part of a sermon by my Great Grandfather, John R. Rice. (Winner mentions Rice and his book Bobbed Hair, Bossy Wives, and Women Preachers in her chapter on Fundamentalism, but from an historian's perspective instead of a personal one.)

But while I can find similarities between their stories and my own, it's not often that I read someone who not only comes from a similar background but who also has many of the same stories, someone who heard the same preachers growing up (to say nothing of Patch the Pirate). Enter Matthew Paul Turner. I read Matthew's first book, the satiric Christian Culture Survival Guide, back when it was published, in 2004, and found it hilarious. After noticing his stories of Patch the Pirate and about a certain college founded by a friend of my Great Grandfather, with the name changed slightly, I sent him an e-mail. Turned out, he even heard my Great Grandfather preach when he was about 5 years old. In the 4 years since then, Matthew has written ten or twelve books. His newest - his first hardback - is due to hit stores on October 7th. Churched: One Kid's Journey Towards God Despite a Holy Mess is his first memoir, and hopefully the first of several. He sent it to me after he finished the final draft about four months ago, and I read it in two days. And it resonated with me, not only because Matthew started out in a similar place, but because we are both in about the same place now, more so than with any other memoir I've read.

Matthew's trademark humor is evident throughout, although much of it is a little painful because it is so close to the truth. For instance, when he writes about his pastor telling the church how he can spot sin in another person's life just by looking in their eyes, Matthew recounts, "For a fundamentalist, spotting sin was like going to Disney World." And after enduring the yelling of a Sunday school teacher, Matthew ends the story with, "That's when I began seeing a therapist."
On Sunday school: "I was trained in Sunday school to spot the Devil. My teachers told me to watch out for roaring lions, disgruntled angels, women wearing low-cut blouses, and Billy Graham." On his pastor: "Pastor Nolan's sermons were cruel and unusual punishment for people who had imaginations, sensitive eardrums, or someplace better to be." And, on movies: "A few months later Pastor Nolan proved my mother's theory about Hollywood correct. Or at least, he supported it. He preached to my junior church class and told us that it didn't matter if a person went to see a porn movie or Bambi, all of the money eventually trickled down to fund people who made the X-rated stuff.
I didn't know what pornography was, but the way Pastor Nolan described it, I was pretty sure miniskirts were involved."

The book closes with a chapter Matthew has titled "Benediction." The first words you read in the chapter are, "Fundamentalism has little to do with Jesus." And I'd have to agree, at least the brand of Fundamentalism that Matthew and I grew up with. It wasn't about Jesus or Hope or Resurrection or a better way, it was about scaring people until they looked and acted exactly like us.

In his 20's, for the first time, he tells us, Matthew found a small community in Maryland where he found hope, "a Jesus kind of hope." He writes, "The pastor wasn't the most dynamic preacher, not according to fundamentalism standards, but every time he spoke about the good news, he cried. He felt something. He couldn't always communicate the hope effectively, but he felt it. I had moments when I felt it, too... [F]or the first time in my life, I worshipped God without feeling afraid."

The chapter, and the book, ends with a sentence that I've been quoting every time I've told friends about the book. It sums up a key difference between what Matthew and I grew up believing, and what we believe now. Fundamentalism is about fear. And if I had to give you one word to sum up what I believe now, it would be "hope."

In Matthew's words, "Last Sunday Jessica and I went to church. It was Easter. A couple people got baptized. The guy sitting next to me took two smoke breaks. I closed my eyes during the praise and worship. Pete gave a sermon about hope. We took communion.
I wasn't afraid."

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Reflective Comedy About Growing Up Baptist, September 29, 2008

By	Kevin Currie-Knight "PhD Student in Education" (Newark, Delaware) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

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In the present age, the word "fundamentalist" is thrown around so much that it has become a caricature. Matthew Paul Turner's memoir is likely to reinforce many outsider's stereotypes of fear-reveling Baptist fundamentalism, but it will also put a human face on it, no matter how tragically comic that face might be.

"Gettin' to Glory is what our lives were all about." Here begins a sometimes scary, hilarious and introspective retelling of Matthew Turner's Baptist youth. In recalling various memories - a sermon on the evils of Whitney Houston, the sunday-school teacher's "Barbie burning fiasco," the competition to save souls in under 90 minutes - Turner makes comedy out of a quite bizarre upbringing. (In fact, the feel he creates is much the feel of movies like "A Christmas Story," with a sarcastic and introspective kid tells the story of his strange existence.)

A reviewer below wonders who the target market of this book is. Yes, fundamentalists will dislike it for the negative light it casts on them. However, this book will most certianly appeal to a liberal Christian base who, like our author, can look at fundamentalism as having it wrong. (In full disclosure, I am an atheist with a liberal Lutheran fiancee, and both of us very much liked the book.)

The reason, however, that I could not give five stars to "Churched," was that, at a little over 200 pages, I found it a bit too short and episodic. Not only do we jump from sixth grade to 9th grade in half a chapter, but occasionally, it even happens that we skip - unchronologically- from a later to an earlier memory. Also, while Turner ultimately rejects fundamentalism, we hear virtually nothing about his jouney. In the second to last chapter, he is a believing Baptist (with a doubt here or there). In the last chapter, it is many years later and he is not a Baptist. I wish the book would have focused a little more on the 'in between' years - his progression from Baptist faith to a more liberal view. In brief, the book could have been longer and a bit more thorough.

In the end, Turner concludes that "Fundamentalism has little to do with Jesus." He can certainly say it with authority because, as we can see, he lived it and breathed it. And his is a journey that's as entertaining as it is astonishing.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book that will be a comfort to many whose religious beliefs are no longer those of their childhood, September 29, 2008

By	Suzanne Amara (MA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

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What I liked most about this book was how evenhanded it was. The author is not a blamer. He understood why his parents chose the fundamentalist church they did, and they are portrayed as caring, loving people who really felt they were taking the right route for this children. Turner's slow realization that the church is flawed is revealed so calmly and in such a matter of fact way. The last straw, although he doesn't call it that, is realizing that the church leaders are counting souls saved like accountants, and fudging figures here and there. Another touching moment in the book is when, out to save souls door to door, Turner meets a woman whose love of God doesn't involve fear, and he realizes for the first time that is a possibility.

I also liked it that even at the end, Turner hasn't found an ideal church, and isn't even sure one exists, but he knows he loves God and needs to belong to a church community. This kind of quiet testimony is a wonderful thing to read for those of us in similar situations.