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Jesus Land: A Memoir (Alex Awards (Awards))

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Writing in the present tense, Julia Scheeres writes about her ordeal with two abusive parents who hide their virulent hostility behind an obsession with biblical platitudes. They move their three children Julia and her two adopted brothers, both African American, David and Jerome, to a farm house in Indiana where they encounter cruelty and racism at school and just about anywhere out of their home and receive more cruelty--in the name of the biblicial injunction "to not spare the rod"--inside their home as well. But Julia is spared and she feels guilty for being untouched while her black brothers are whipped and beaten. The abuse is also psychological: Christian radio is blurted into their rooms at six in the morning, spy speakers are on 24 hours a day so all conversations can be heard by the mother from any place in the house, they are force-fed with bible verses, they are subjected to tedious farm labor in the hot humid sun. When her two adopted brothers misbehave, which is often, they are beaten and whipped in the basement with belts, two by fours, and other weapons. Their bare backs have welts and scars. Julia tries to defend her brothers but cannot. She takes to drinking as solace from her sadistic parents. Things get worse when her older brother sexually abuses her. Eventually, she and her younger brother David, who are very close and who are at the center of this book, are sent to a Christian boot camp in Latin America, which is so over-the-top cruel and controlling it could be taken from the pages of Kafka's In the Penal Colony. Not only is Scheeres' book a true account; it's a recent one. I would have thought this kind of abuse and mind-control died over a hundred years ago. I guess I was wrong.

Scheeres' prose is lucid, clear, never full of self-pity. She writes without a chip on her shoulder. Her real motive is to express her undying love for her younger brother David, for whom this memoir is dedicated to.

If you enjoy Scheeres' harrowing account, you might want to check out Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life and Samual Butler's The Ways of All Flesh.

When this title showed up in catalogs and library lists, I was drawn to it in the same way a kid keeps picking at a scab. I grew up in a Christian home in the eighties, and I too saw things wholly incongruous with the gospel the Bible teaches. I too have pictures of me and my sister standing next to a trailer, nearly identical to this book's cover--except that I'm blindingly white.

Julia Scheeres writes with chest-torn-open honesty. The book starts with the faintly disturbing strains of religion gone bad and builds to moments that feel entirely Jim Jones-ish. The real power of this lies in her sympathetic telling of family life, particularly the relationship between her and her adopted black brothers. She never candy-coats the racial issues. She tells it the way it is. And, by the end, she creates an ode to the love and bond that can exist despite evil on every side.

In "Jesus Land," the worst crimes of all are done in the name of religion. This is a crime repeated over and over through the ages, but here it's given a personal feel. The very gospel that Julia's and David's parents and teachers tried to force down their throats is a gospel that speaks against hate and lies and hypocrisy. If Jesus were to walk the grounds of Escuela Caribe, you can imagine him kicking over tables and throwing out the moneychangers.

This book will raise the hackles of those still locked in religious la-la-land, but it should be read by all as a bracing reminder of all that is good and all that is not behind the closed doors of American homes and churches. If Jesus were present in these situations, I think he would be heart-broken and ashamed. Unfortunately, I don't think he is present in most of the activities that bear his name. And without Julia's sort of honesty, we will only continue to perpetuate the worst crimes of all.

Jesus Land is a very powerful and very personal story. No matter what your upbringing was like or how prominent organized religion has been in your life, there is a lot to absorb from this memoir. The issues raised in this book should be familiar to everyone (e.g. a dysfunctional family that seems to have it all, the tyranny of conformity, mistaking individualism for disobedience, unqualified authority figures who rule through fear and violence, misplaced ideals that lead to the suffering of others), but, fewer people have had to live with so many of them in such a short span of time.

As I was reading Jesus Land, I couldn't help thinking that this book ought to be part of a high school or college curriculum. It isn't often that you find such concise writing and vivid descriptions in a first-person account of life surrounded by racism, fanaticism, and injustice in the name of God. In addition, the present tense is used throughout the book to relate the events as they occur to a young girl during her teenage years and includes enough teenager-appropriate dialogue and asides to make you think that Julia either has an incredibly detailed diary or a razor-sharp memory. The narrative's effect is entirely transporting and allows you to understand what life was like in a God-fearing, rural Indiana home and in a Christian reform school in the Dominican Republic.

Julia Scheeres is a prolific journalist, and her writing experience serves her memoir extremely well. This book is dedicated to her brother, David, but for the rest of us, it is a mesmerizing tale of how religion can move some people to act in ways that degrade and dehumanize the lives of others.

Wow, I'm so glad this book was written. I have three half-sisters by my father's second marriage - and after he died, the girls suffered the same fate as Julia Scheers. My born-again Christian step-mother sent them to Escuela Caribe after she realized that parenting got in the way of her obsessive religious activities. I've been to Escuela Caribe twice and heard all the stories from my two sisters who were sent there. Everything Julia says is true and not exaggerated.

However, her book is not a "tell-all" of this terrible place. It's a poignant, beautiful story of survival and ultimately, love. It is also a lovely tribute to her adopted black brother David.

This book could have been heavy and sad but Julia's wry humor really makes you laugh in spite of the desperate situation at home and abroad. And, her recollections of her youth were hilarious (I also was an "80's" teen)!

I highly recommend this book. It's a quick read, but a lasting story.

One couldn't dream up the strangeness, the hypocrisy, and the wrong done in the name of religion that pervaded Julia Scheeres's childhood. In the 1970, when Julia was 3, the Scheeres family adopted a black 3-year-old named David in order to save his soul, to save him from his blackness. Julia loved David as a brother, and she had trouble understanding the racist insults the pair received in town and in school, as well as the fact that she got scolded for any of their mis-adventures while he got abused in the basement. When the two are just children frolicking with a red wagon, a concerned neighbor calls Ms. Scheeres to report that her daughter has run off with the maid's son.

In the name of holiness and soul saving, first David and then Julia are shipped off to a brutal Christian reform school located in the Dominican Republic. Having basic privileges like freedom of movement, freedom to talk, and bathroom privacy removed is part of the process of breaking down these troubled children and building them back up as Christians. Julia, who has tasted Southern Comfort by the age of 14, has to admit to being an "alcoholic and a fornicator" at therapy sessions. She works tirelessly to earn the privilege just to talk to her brother David.

There is another brother in the Scheeres household, another black boy who needs to be saved. While David responded to the turbulence around him with calmness and resolve (always hoping that someday the Scheeres would love him like a son), his brother Jerome responded with anger and violence, leaving the house as a teenager for a life of crime. Jerome exacted his revenge on the Scheeres by sneaking into Julia's room and violating her at night for years. Oh, but it was her "fornication" with her high school boyfriend that got her sent off to reform school.

This is not an angry or bitter book. Julia tells it like it is. Jesus Land is truly a tribute to her brother David. She wrote it to tell his story, and her website has supporting documentation from his journal and their reform school report cards. A quick search of the web reveals that reform school Escuela Caribe, part of the New Horizons Youth Ministries, is alive and well in the Dominican Republic, with complaints being lodged against them well into the 1990's and 2000's.

I was also down there with Julia and David and witnessed the afore-mentioned boxing match with my own eyes. Yes, the Dean of Students did punch the boy to the ground. And that's just the tip of the iceberg with New Horizons Youth Ministries. Try ritual child abuse, staff who preyed sexually on their teenage charges, cultish activities and habitual typhoid. It's a boot camp in the worse sense of the word.

Other former students back Julia's account. Check out newhorizons dash alumni dot org for more accounts about this so-called therapeutic institution that abuses children in the name of God.

This memoir is one of the most revealing and painfully honest looks inside a so-called "Christian" home and the effects of the relgion's dogmatic powers on Ms. Scheeres' parents and other adults around her during her turbulent childhood and teen years in rural Indiana.
The author doesn't resort to name calling, but rather shares her emotions and innermost secrets with us to tell her story. The primary target of abuse by her parents, especially her surgeon father, whom one would think would be intelligent enough not to allow his religion to take over his psyche so completely, but alas, is totally swept up in the cliches and rituals of the Calvinist Church, is Julia's two black adopted brothers.
Citing the "Christian" thing to do by adopting them, both parents quickly and viciously single out the two boys for their most brutal attacks. As is so often the case, the Bible offers handy excuses for all they do, and even at the end of the book, no hint of remorse or recognition of wrong-doing can be found.
Julia, of course, rebels and finds herself in the Dominican Republic with her youngest brother David at a camp designed to rehabilitate wayward teens. It is scarcely more accomodating than a prison camp, and the behavior exhibited by its staff are nothing short of psychotic.
Rather than attack Christianity as a whole, the focus is strictly personal, as it should be. Not all Christians by any means behave like the Scheeres, and that is good news. However, one suspects that many more ugly stories of abuse of every imaginable type exist under the guise of Jesus and God's names. Arthur C. Clark declared, and I paraphrase, that religion is the most effective and lethal mind virus ever concocted. In this case, religion which should be a tool for living has devolved into a hideous mental disease. A sad but brave tale.

I cried when I read the last line of Julia Scheeres tragic and touching memoir. Scheeres sucked me into her life and I couldn't put the book down for a second. My blood boiled at several points through out the book. Is it truly possible that people can be so heartless and cruel? Is it truly possible that while I was living a carefree childhood, Scheeres (who is only two years older than me) was living in a private hell? Jesus Land reads like a well paced, well written novel but I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn't fiction, this really happened.

Jesus Land touches on many different universal themes of Scheeres life from religious zealousness to blantant racism to misogyny and sexual abuse. It's also a testament to the human spirit and the power of forged relationships. The ties of family not necessarily has to be linked by blood. Anyone, whether you're black or white, male or female, young or old, gay or straight can glean something from this touching, heartfelt and honest memoir. Coming from a fairly religious family myself, I can truly relate with the damage that can be done to individuals and families all in the name of Jesus.

This is a very important work that everyone should read. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

This is one of those heart-breaking books, like Elie Wiesel's Silence, or the stories of Ivan in The Brothers Kharamazov, that make you question not only a given religious authority, but God himself. It is more painful than the book of Job, in a way, because here unrelenting cruelty strikes not an adult, but innocent kids. Yet as other reviewers note, this book also contains hope. Julia Sheeres and her brother slowly overcome the cruelty of parents, a racist town, and what can only be described as a Christian concentration camp in the Dominican Republic, through love of life and of one another. The author has done a wonderful job, telling her story. I could hardly put the book down.

I also grew up in an evangelical Christian family. My parents really follow the teachings of Jesus, though; and I don't think that's so rare. But I think Christians should read this book. Jesus warned about "wolves in sheeps' clothing," who come to "kill and destroy," rather than give life. Sheere's story should encourage us examine our own motives, and also also keep an eye out for children in families like this, even in the church. Kids need real love from someone, God knows.

On the other hand, I don't think readers should identify this kind of abuse with evangelical Christianity too closely, as some seem to below. No matter the ideology or lack thereof, every generation produces horror stories about growing up. M. Scott Peck's analysis of four levels of religion fits this story well. Sheeres' parents, and the thug who ran the camp, appear to have been classic "level two" religious types, who escaped moral (redneck style) anarchy by adherence to rigid authoritarian beliefs. But even number two types often show more love than this.

For those who understandably feel leery of Christianity in general because of such nastiness, I recommend seeking balance by considering the arguments of Vishal Mangalwadi, Carroll and Shiflett's Christianity on Trial, or the chapter in my own Jesus and the Religions of Man entitled "How Has Jesus Changed the World?" The answer to one form of dogmatism is not dogmatism on the other side, but a fearless commitment to truth wherever it lies, and fairness all around.

This memoir of a girl growing up in an ultra-religious family with two adopted black brothers was absolutely riveting. The racial prejudice and misuse of religion were heart-wrenching. Throughout the whole harrowing story, however, Scheeres never lets herself fall into the 'poor me' victim mentality. Her strength and determination are inspiring. This story will remain with me for a long time. I highly recommend this book.