Growing Pains: Learning to Love My Father's Faith [Hardcover]

Randall Herbert Balmer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2001

Christianity Today 2002 Book Award Winner. Balmer's superb writing and mature theological ruminations deserve a wide audience. -Publishers Weekly

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Balmer (Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory), a professor of American religion at Barnard College, Columbia University, poignantly comes to terms with the fundamentalist Christianity of his childhood by explaining the "lover's quarrel" that he and his father sustained until shortly before Clarence Balmer's death in 1997. Clarence Balmer, a conservative Midwestern minister of some renown, placed his hopes for a successor squarely on the author's shoulders, even providing him with a three-foot-tall wooden pulpit on his fifth Christmas. But in college, Randall Balmer began questioning the faith of his parents (a "ritualized rebellion," he calls it), and decided to pursue an academic career instead of ordination. Balmer beautifully describes the tensions this choice created in his relationship with his father, in his first marriage and in his own self-understanding. Several of the essays are simply piercing; in particular, "Sins of the Fathers," which describes how Balmer's own experiences of fathering two sons helped him to better understand his father, is a pain-filled and deeply moving expression of spiritual growth. But while Balmer is an outstanding writer, the collection lacks cohesiveness. The undated essays, written at different times and for varying audiences, often repeat information and even use the same phrasing. Their chronology can also be confusing; in one chapter, for example, Balmer explains that his grandmother is in a nursing home, but two chapters later she has passed away. This said, however, Balmer's superb writing and mature theological ruminations deserve a wide audience.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Like so many other of the best evangelical Christian writers--see the autobiographical passages of Philip Yancey's Soul Survivor [BKL S 15 01]--Balmer had a troubled early relationship with his faith, compounded by being a pastor's eldest son, expected to follow in his father's footsteps. He didn't, of course, in part because, unlike his parents, who converted as adults, he didn't come to faith with a consciousness of sin serious enough to elicit a powerful reactive sense of being born again in Christ. This provocative insight, which Balmer applies to other second-generation evangelicals like him, informs this essay collection's first, most cohesive part, concerned with the urgency of transferring faith to the next generation. This first part is grounded in beautiful reminiscences, yet the pieces of the second part, "Family Matters," glow even more warmly with personal tenderness. The more desultory writings in the last part weigh the fortunes of grace in postmodern, latter-day California. Balmer's eulogy for his father movingly concludes a book that is consistently a joy to read. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Brazos Press (October 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1587430185
• ISBN-13: 978-1587430183
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #700,820 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A prize-winning historian and Emmy Award nominee, Randall Balmer is professor of American religious history at Barnard College, Columbia University, and formerly a visiting professor at Yale Divinity School. He has lectured at the Chautauqua Institution, the Commonwealth Club of California and the Smithsonian Associates and to audiences around the country. He has been a visiting professor at Dartmouth College and at Rutgers, Yale, Drew, Northwestern, and Princeton universities. He is adjunct professor of church history at Union Theological Seminary, and he has also been a visiting professor in the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Mr. Balmer, who earned the Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1985, has published widely both in academic and scholarly journals and in the popular press. He is an editor for Christianity Today, and his commentaries on religion in America, distributed by the New York Times Syndicate, have appeared in newspapers across the country. He has published opinion pieces in the Des Moines Register, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the San Diego Times-Union, the Dallas Morning News, Slate, the Philadelphia Inquirer, New York Newsday, the Albany Times-Union, the Nation and the New York Times. His first book, "A Perfect Babel of Confusion: Dutch Religion and English Culture in the Middle Colonies," won several awards, and his second book, "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America," now in its fourth edition, was made into a three-part documentary for PBS. Mr. Balmer was nominated for an Emmy for his script-writing and for hosting that series.

His second documentary, "Crusade: The Life of Billy Graham," was aired on PBS and also appeared in A&E's Biography series. "'In the Beginning': The Creationist Controversy," a two-part documentary on the creation-evolution debate, was first broadcast over PBS in May 1995 and then recut and broadcast in fall 2001.

The author of a dozen books, Mr. Balmer has co-written a history of American Presbyterians, a book on mainline Protestantism, and another book, "Protestantism in America," with Lauren F. Winner. Other books include "Encyclopedia of Evangelicalism," published by Baylor University Press, and "Religion in Twentieth Century America," part of the Religion in American Life series, published by Oxford University Press. A spiritual memoir, "Growing Pains: Learning to Love My Father's Faith," published by Brazos Press in 2001, was named "book of the year" (spirituality) by Christianity Today. More recently, "God in the White House: How Faith Shaped the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush," was released by HarperOne in January 2008, and "The Making of Evangelicalism: From Revivalism to Politics and Beyond" was published by Baylor University Press in 2010.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A touching, personal reflection on a conflicted evangelical heritage, December 1, 2007

By 

Kent Berghuis (Lansdale, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Growing Pains: Learning to Love My Father's Faith (Hardcover)

Randall Balmer emerged several years ago as a significant voice in the analysis of American evangelicalism with his book Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, which became the basis for an acclaimed PBS mini-series documentary of the same name. Balmer's style there was that of a journeyman who recorded his observations--sometimes quizzical, often insightful, and occasionally profound.
That casual-but-serious attitude toward the phenomena of religious belief carries over into this little volume, but the content here is purposely autobiographical. And like Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, in Growing Pains Balmer uses vignettes rather than argumentation to make his points. Most of these are intensely personal, couched in the fabric of family life, church, faith and doubt.
The catalyst for these reflections is Randy's relationship with his evangelical preacher father, whose recent death stirs around these powerful emotional images. We see a six-year-old boy smiling behind a toy pulpit that was his Christmas present, and hear him choke back tears when he can't play baseball good enough for his dad. We grow with him through the awkwardness of being an American teenager from a fundamentalist background, part of a sub-culture that feels more comfortable in the margins of society. We hear his questions and struggles with the faith while he pursues an ever-widening education, moving from small Midwestern towns to an evangelical seminary to Ivy League universities. He even lets us in on messy family squabbles, bittersweet memories of lost love, and the pain of wanting to be accepted but free at the same time. The narrative roams around here and there, but always an undercurrent of yearning brings back the main theme--how the simplistic form of the faith handed him by his father has been at the same time his life's primary source of both frustration and hope. By the end there is a sense of catharsis, and of moving forward in the faith with questions still in hand.
There must be a whole host of adult children of fundamentalists and evangelicals who will find themselves deeply embedded in this kind of narrative. Growing Pains touches a nerve, albeit gently and carefully. Randy's honesty and familiarity penetrate to the heart and soul while respecting the mind, an often difficult combination. Perhaps Randy has found the pastoral calling he never quite heard, by simply telling his story to those of us who share his story. This kind of book can truly minister to countless evangelicals who want to honor their parents' faith in a new generation.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars One Man's Perspective on Evangelicalism, April 10, 2008

By 

Joel S. Frady (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Growing Pains: Learning to Love My Father's Faith (Hardcover)

I am weary of the multitude of books on church abuse and the authors who bemoan their evangelical upbringing. Though there is real abuse and there are real issues with those who are raised in evangelical homes, it is not as if being raised evangelical is the only upbringing which can bring with it potential baggage in adulthood. Randall Balmer, in his book Growing Pains,was refreshing in his commitment to simply reflect without self-pity the blessings and curses of growing up evangelical. This collection of deeply personal essays gives the reader the sense that he or she is sitting with Balmer just listening to him share his experiences and reflections. The essays are not really meant to form a cohesive argument about one topic (this is true especially in the latter half of the book)but are more just a collection of varied thoughts and reflections from the author. Some of the essays (like the one on Postcards) are funny and nostalgic while others (Sins of the Fathers) are heartbreaking. Well worth reading to look into the mind and heart of a child of the evangelical culture.