Coming out of Fundamentalist Christianity: An Autobiography Affirming Sensuality, Social Justice, and The Sacred [Paperback]

Carolyn Baker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 21, 2007

Coming out of Fundamentalist Christianity is an autobiographical account of one woman’s journey from growing up in a rigid, troubled fundamentalist Christian home where she discovered at an early age her attraction to women, and how she survived and fled the oppression of her family of origin, later coming to terms with and joyously embracing her sexual orientation and a life-affirming spiritual path. It is an account of foolish errors and wise choices on the way to embracing all parts of herself and her total humanity—the people, places, and experiences that shaped those choices and helped form and inform who she is today. Her current deep engagement in social justice activism is informed by and echoes her daunting journey and reverberates through the last section of her book as she takes to task not only Christian fundamentalism, but what she considers the naïve and irrelevant politics of the gay and lesbian community. Reflecting on her personal experience she states, “As a young-adult fundamentalist Christian, agonizing over my sexual orientation, I might have found liberation, comfort, and affirmation had I had access to a book that blessed it and illumined its compatibility with my unquenchable heart’s desire for the sacred.”

An honest account of a woman accepting herself as a lesbian despite a fundamentalist Christian upbringing. As a gay couple we feel less isolated because Carolyn isn’t afraid to criticize the LGBT community for their lack of interest in compelling issues beyond same-sex marriage and AIDS.
—Philip Botwinick & Tom Nielsen, Organizers of the 2006 Local Solutions To The Energy Dilemma Conference, NYC,Woodhaven, New York

Dr. Carolyn Baker’s riveting personal experience and keen intellect combine to illuminate the untruths, oppressions and mean-spirited culture that pervades our society, politics, and religious institutions. “Coming out” stories are legion, and each and every one is to be celebrated. Baker goes even further. It is not only a journey of passionate self-discovery of one’s being and values. It is also an analysis of those cultural and religious systems which on a daily basis, choose to oppress or to honor the diversity and inherent value of each human being. Read, sense, know, and act.
—The Rev. Dr. Susan Beehler, El Paso, Texas, Retired Ordained Clergy, United Methodist Church

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Carolyn Baker grew up in the Midwest and resided in Colorado and California for most of her adult life. She holds a Ph.D. in Health and Human Services and a Masters in History. She has worked extensively in non-profit administration and was a psychotherapist in private practice for nearly two decades. In addition, she is the author of Reclaiming The Dark Feminine: The Price Of Desire and The Journey Of Forgiveness: Fulfilling The Healing Process. In 2006 she published U.S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn’t Tell You. For the past eight years, she has been an adjunct professor of history and is currently managing her website at www.carolynbaker.org as well as writing, traveling, and lecturing.

Product Details

• Paperback: 290 pages
• Publisher: iUniverse, Inc. (June 21, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0595441467
• ISBN-13: 978-0595441464
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,172,671 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Carolyn Baker, Ph.D. was an adjunct professor of history and psychology for more than 10 years and manages the Speaking Truth to Power website at www.carolynbaker.net. She was a psychotherapist in private practice for 17 years and is a student of ritual and mythology and has continued her personal mediation practice for more than 30 years. She is deeply involved with the worldwide Transition movement and maintains a Transition Coaching practice locally and internationally. Her latest book, Navigating The Coming Chaos: A Handbook For Inner Transition (2011) was preceded by Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse (2009). She lives in Boulder,Colorado. Her other books include: U.S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn't Tell You (2006); Coming Out Of Fundamentalist Christianity: An Autobiography Affirming Sensuality, Social Justice, and the Sacred (2007); The Journey of Forgiveness: Fulfilling The Healing Process (2000); Reclaiming The Dark Feminine: The Price of Desire (1996).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Coming Out:" : A metaphor of our culture, July 24, 2007

By 

Barbara Baines (Missoula, Montana) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Coming out of Fundamentalist Christianity: An Autobiography Affirming Sensuality, Social Justice, and The Sacred (Paperback)

Regardless of one's sexual orientation, anyone who has extricated themselves from a nuclear family that adhered to Biblical literalism is sure to identify with Carolyn Baker's thought-provoking autobiography, "Coming Out of Fundamentalist Christianity." As a heterosexual who has finally rid myself of my parents' omnipresent Southern Baptist Devil, I drew many parallels in my own life to Carolyn Baker's sacred and profound journey from repressed homosexuality to divine self-acceptance. We follow Baker on her soul-searching journey as an adult from Midwest Indiana and Chicago, to the California Pacific coast, to the Hopi Reservation of northern Arizona, and to the desert southwest of southern New Mexico. As Baker's often painful yet liberating journey toward self-acceptance unfolds, we meet her parents, extended family members, lovers, professors, mentors and spiritual teachers along the way whose (inter)actions often mirror encounters with similar people in our own life journey.

Coming out of a conservative fundamentalist family myself, I wholeheartedly share Baker's belief when she says, "There is something inherent in Christian fundamentalism that attracts individuals who are fleeing the impact of coming to terms with their sexual orientation, dealing with their own experiences of being sexually abused, or confronting other issues regarding sexuality and that fundamentalism not only draws such individuals but fosters their hypocrisy, thereby exacerbating their suffering and the suffering of everyone close to them." Even at age 60, I'm still peeling off the layers of the onion in terms of the impact that my parent's repressed sexuality has had on me all my life. In a particularly poignant chapter near the end of the book entitled, "My Government, My Family," Baker exposes how the Christian fundamentalist right wing that now dictates our U. S. government policy has not only perpetrated a numbing and dumbing effect on the American citizenry, but exacerbated the suffering of people around the world. Anyone who likes this chapter will want to delve further into the dark side of The American Way by reading Baker's previous book, "U. S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn't Tell You."

As a former social worker in child protective service investigations, I encountered numerous children from families that fit the dysfunctional fundamentalist prototype of Carolyn Baker's nuclear family. Anecdotal evidence of similar families in my caseload, and in caseloads of my peers, indicated that an overwhelming majority of our reported incest cases tended to occur in dysfunctional families where (grand)parents attempted to mask intergenerational sexual abuse, family violence, mental illness, and a plethora of addictions with varieties of religious theologies. Such theologies ranged from vast right wing biblical fundamentalism to far-out, left wing quasi-Christian fantasies of Jesus' second coming from Sirius to Earth in a flying saucer. The socioeconomic and spiritual cost of the negative impact of this dysfunctional fundamentalism on the child victims, their families, the community-at-large and our social institutions is incalculable.

In short, I cannot recommend this book highly enough that draws a clear red line from the personal to the universal in regard to the heartbreaking tragedies caused by Christian fundamentalism in all its varying guises. If you want to discover who you are as a person and who we are as a nation, read Baker's autobiography! Whether you're gay or straight, you won't be disappointed.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Integrating Spirituality and Sexual Orientation, July 6, 2007

By 

Carolyn L. Baker - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Coming out of Fundamentalist Christianity: An Autobiography Affirming Sensuality, Social Justice, and The Sacred (Paperback)

Carolyn Baker opens her heart and her lifestory quite vulnerably in the pages of this very well-written book. It's a story of survival, searching, critical thinking, and a deep longing for joining human love and the sacred that is ultimately satisfied as the author follows the soul's calling through the twists and turns of youthful self-sabotaging choices and on to a deeper wisdom. That wisdom is grounded in life experience and a determination never to just "settle for" a half-lived life. This fascinating page-turner shares with us both the regrets and the triumphs of one courageous woman's emotional and spiritual odyssey. The book is ideal not only for those comfortable with their sexual orientation, but also for those struggling with it.

Willing to walk the thorny path of controversy, Baker takes on the toxicity of the fundamentalist Christian agenda from which she fled in her youth to become her own authentic, integrated human being, but also takes on the LGBT community itself, questioning its myopic focus on gay marriage and HIV-related issues in a world where the very future of humanity and the planet itself are at stake.

I highly recommend this book.