In this devilishly entertaining book, Tripp York takes it upon himself to find the Prince of Darkness. Provoked by a wager made in one of his religion classes, York explores whether in proving the existence of Satan, we might in turn prove the existence of God. Admitting the idea is not half-bad (and thus, conversely, only half-good), York enlists the aid of numerous ministers, theologians, spiritual warriors, pagans, shamanists, fortune tellers, and Satanists in his fiendish quest to determine the whereabouts of God's first fallen creature. Part memoir and part theological treatise, The Devil Wears Nada is a compelling and humorous account of the strange, bizarre, and (oftentimes) offensive things we think about God, the Devil, and everything in between.
The Devil Wears Nada: Satan Exposed
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Review
"Tripp York goes searching for Satan in the classrooms and crossroads of America, but what he finds is quite surprising. As he piles up example after hilarious example of people searching for the wrong thing, he almost persuades me that Hell really is other people. In The Devil Wears Nada, York discovers that, in America, Christianity has become more the devil's prisoner than it realizes."
-Jeffrey C. Pugh, author of Devil's Ink: Blog from the Basement Office
"I loved this rollicking journey to hell and back. Tripp York thinks that we ought to take Satan seriously, as long as we mock, deride, and laugh at him the whole time. Sex, money, power, religion--Satan is mixed up with all of it, and in the funniest ways. This book is hysterically funny, absolutely serious, and deeply Christian. If you have never thought of Mennonites as funny (and who has?), then you need to read Tripp York on Satan!"
-Will Willimon, author of Why Jesus?
"I didn't want to read this book. I didn't have time. So I just took a quick glance before moving on to other things. But in that quick glance, temptation came over me and I just kept turning pages. I couldn't put it down. It made me laugh. It made me think. You'd better be careful or the same thing could happen to you."
-Brian McLaren, author of A Generous Orthodoxy
"York . . . attempts to examine the existence of God through a back door, that is, by searching for Satan. The effort offers a lively ride. York captivates the reader with snappy prose and a disarming, at times self-effacing, line of argumentation . . . ."
-Publisher's Weekly --Wipf and Stock Publishers
-Jeffrey C. Pugh, author of Devil's Ink: Blog from the Basement Office
"I loved this rollicking journey to hell and back. Tripp York thinks that we ought to take Satan seriously, as long as we mock, deride, and laugh at him the whole time. Sex, money, power, religion--Satan is mixed up with all of it, and in the funniest ways. This book is hysterically funny, absolutely serious, and deeply Christian. If you have never thought of Mennonites as funny (and who has?), then you need to read Tripp York on Satan!"
-Will Willimon, author of Why Jesus?
"I didn't want to read this book. I didn't have time. So I just took a quick glance before moving on to other things. But in that quick glance, temptation came over me and I just kept turning pages. I couldn't put it down. It made me laugh. It made me think. You'd better be careful or the same thing could happen to you."
-Brian McLaren, author of A Generous Orthodoxy
"York . . . attempts to examine the existence of God through a back door, that is, by searching for Satan. The effort offers a lively ride. York captivates the reader with snappy prose and a disarming, at times self-effacing, line of argumentation . . . ."
-Publisher's Weekly --Wipf and Stock Publishers
About the Author
Tripp York teaches in the Philosophy and Religion Department at Western Kentucky University. His previous books include, Living on Hope While Living in Babylon (Wipf & Stock, 2009), The Purple Crown (Herald, 2007), and Donkeys and Kings (Resource Publications, 2010).
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
I have to confess: I was not as excited to read "The Devil Wears Nada: Satan Exposed" as I was to read York's previous book, "Third Way Allegiance: Christian Witness in the Shadow of Religious Empire." After all, I spend a lot of time thinking about how I will live in this world as someone who wants to follow Christ's teachings, and not as much time thinking about Satan. As a matter of fact, I happen to think Satan is given way too much credit, particularly among the believers with whom I tend to associate.
I should have known better, though. I loved both books, but I laughed a lot more at "The Devil Wears Nada."
I was immediately gratified to see the title of the first chapter, "The Protestant Deification of the Devil," as it seemed to confirm my own previously-espoused belief. But there is much more to love here:
- York's conversations with people who, on the surface, would appear to come from all manner of belief systems, but who we learn actually have a lot in common.
- York's analysis of Biblical accounts, particularly the story of Job and Satan's temptation of Jesus. He often raises more questions than he answers, but that's probably why I enjoy it so much.
- York's skewering of people who need it, e.g. Cindy Jacobs and Pat Robertson, among others. (And he often includes himself.)
- The recounting of conversations in York's classes at Western Kentucky University (an institution somewhat dear to my own heart). These made me wish I could go back to my hometown of Bowling Green, Kentucky and take some of York's classes.
- And there is much more, but you'll have to read the book to discover it.
(However, I am compelled to point out one of my favorite lines in the book: after summarizing Anton LaVey's "The Nine Satanic Statements," York concludes, "Wow, he sure likes Ayn Rand." That one really made me laugh for some reason.)
I could see some people not necessarily appreciating the humor in this book. Religion, theology - however you want to classify it - can be a touchy subject for many people, as York often proves within the pages of the book. People take this stuff seriously and consider it no laughing matter. But I love the way York manages to have me literally LOL-ing one minute and thinking through something in a new way the next.
I plan to try to nag all my friends into buying a copy of this book. Even if they don't read it, it will at least maybe help a brother pay off his student loans.
I should have known better, though. I loved both books, but I laughed a lot more at "The Devil Wears Nada."
I was immediately gratified to see the title of the first chapter, "The Protestant Deification of the Devil," as it seemed to confirm my own previously-espoused belief. But there is much more to love here:
- York's conversations with people who, on the surface, would appear to come from all manner of belief systems, but who we learn actually have a lot in common.
- York's analysis of Biblical accounts, particularly the story of Job and Satan's temptation of Jesus. He often raises more questions than he answers, but that's probably why I enjoy it so much.
- York's skewering of people who need it, e.g. Cindy Jacobs and Pat Robertson, among others. (And he often includes himself.)
- The recounting of conversations in York's classes at Western Kentucky University (an institution somewhat dear to my own heart). These made me wish I could go back to my hometown of Bowling Green, Kentucky and take some of York's classes.
- And there is much more, but you'll have to read the book to discover it.
(However, I am compelled to point out one of my favorite lines in the book: after summarizing Anton LaVey's "The Nine Satanic Statements," York concludes, "Wow, he sure likes Ayn Rand." That one really made me laugh for some reason.)
I could see some people not necessarily appreciating the humor in this book. Religion, theology - however you want to classify it - can be a touchy subject for many people, as York often proves within the pages of the book. People take this stuff seriously and consider it no laughing matter. But I love the way York manages to have me literally LOL-ing one minute and thinking through something in a new way the next.
I plan to try to nag all my friends into buying a copy of this book. Even if they don't read it, it will at least maybe help a brother pay off his student loans.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I've said and written this before, and I still believe it's true: if you want to find out what's really important to your neighbor, ask that neighbor about Hell. I suppose the corollary of that truth is thus: a book about the devil will reveal more of the author than might a book about God. Going with that major premise, and using Tripp York's <em>The Devil Wears Nada</em> as the minor, I'd say that Tripp York is a person who loves his footnotes and worries that his reactions to one folly will land him in a second, more foolish folly. That said, whereas some books leave me wondering whether I live on the same planet as the author, York's is the sort that makes me think that a different choice here, a switch of opportunities there, and I could easily imagine his life and mine switched. That makes for difficult book-reviewing, but it's also the kind of reading that teaches me some things about myself. Yes, O Reader, this book review will be more autobiographical than most of mine, but it's because this book (not unlike Coffeehouse Theology) holds up a mirror to my mind as much as it gives me a funny book to read.
As the title of my review indicates, York seems to take the structure of his book from Morgan Spurlock's documentaries: after a brief narrative setting up the quest to find the real Satan, York travels to churches of all stripes, interviewing evangelicals and unitarians, Pentecostals and liberals, all to find the real Satan. Why find Satan? Because, as the book's setup narrative relates, York has become bored with the classical proofs of God and the safe, mostly sterile discussions that philosophical theology inevitably drift towards. So that he can find an exciting God, he goes where the excitement is: Satan. Unlike Spurlock, he doesn't state his rules at the outset, but there are rules governing the hunt nonetheless: for the duration of the book, he must go to a variety of religious and non-religious people, asking them to explain their claims about Satan and following those claims to their logical conclusions. As he hunts, his aim will always be a face-to-face encounter with Satan, and if the meeting occurs, he will offer his soul in exchange for the immediate repayment of his student loans.
The selling-the-soul riff, like most of the book, has its own theological rationale: York explains, deep in the book, that since he holds to something like a Thomist view of the soul, in which the soul is the ordering principle of earthly (and resurrected) existence rather than a non-corporeal component of the person that one can separate from the body (and thus buy or sell), that he's in no real danger of losing anything of value when he makes his deal. If you, O Reader, think that such a chain of reasons strains a bit, even for a light satire, then you'll likely read as I have read, laughing one moment and calling sleight-of-hand the next.
Whether the dialogue in the book is based on transcripts of recorded conversations or whether York has some Thucydides to him, the conversations with religious people, both conservatives and liberals, are hilarious. Because York is himself an Anabaptist who wrote his master's thesis for someone whose name "rhymes with Schmauerwas" (98), he's just as comfortable poking holes in the liberal (or progressive, if that's what you'd prefer to call it) platitudes of the Unitarian as the Unitarian tries to reduce Satan to a battle with one's self (100) as he does with the Satan-around-every-corner claims of the Nazarenes, even one who claims that Satan made the CD skip during the Sunday morning song service (22). Both sorts of scenes, whether based on real conversations or not, left me laughing hard. Like a Spurlock documentary, though, York has the particular gift of liking (or really, really seeming as if he likes) people from all sorts of backgrounds. In other words, one comes away from the encounters with liberals and conservatives in his book with a sense that, as far as York is concerned, these are good folks who can really get things right when they have their moments but who are laboring under some seriously bad ideas. Think about the way you feel about the pony-tailed Big-Mac addict towards the end of <em>Super-Size Me</em>, and you'll have an idea of the frame of mind within which York approaches people of different faiths.
And by different, I don't just mean Trinitarians and Unitarians. Some of the funniest dialogue is with a self-identified shamanistic healer, someone who takes all of the magick and wiccan business quite seriously, talking him through the nuts and bolts of binding rituals, Tarot cards, and other trappings of the modern-day sorcerer. But to York's chagrin, he takes the soul so seriously that he won't help York to sell his soul in exchange for student-loan money. And here I reproduce the ending of that interview because, like so many other episodes, it ends with York's pointing to what is genuinely likable even in a person who could so easily become a stereotype:
"[...]what I have learned through this whole phase of my life, and the one major conclusion out of all these experiences that I can draw, is that although your loans seem uncomfortable to you, and I know this will sound crazy, but greater things are going to come out of experiencing what you need to experience in order to pay them off."
I stared in disbelief. Of all the things he had told me, this was by far the least credible. Yes, I said to him, as I nodded my head in agreement, you are correct--that sounds crazy."
He laughed and proceeded to tell me I'll be a completely different person than what I would be if I didn't have to pay my loans.
I agreed.
I would be a person with money.
I can't believe it was my conversation with the one-time Satanist turned pagan/shamanistic-healer/drum-playing mystic who would be the one to teach me about character building.
Well, that interview was a bust. (130)
Throughout the book York (whether he's inventing the dialogue or not) points to these moments when, although out of their gourds when it comes to some very important questions, folks who relate to Satan in very different ways nonetheless manage to say things, unwittingly or no, that teach him something about God.
As I said, this book was to a great extent a mirror for me, seeing as I wrote my undergraduate senior project for one of Hauerwas's grad students and had as a reader for my master's thesis in Old Testament a Yale-educated theologian. But like some mirrors, this one threw things into relief rather than simply reproducing them. For instance, whereas I tend to read Gospel pericopes through the lenses of N.T. Wright, always situating them within the large narratives of second-temple Judaism and first-century Church, York (in one of his relatively straightforward narrative passages) treats the story of the Gerasene demoniac as merely a "weird story" that tells him something about how people think about demons. He never mentions the name Legion and its connection the Roman presence, never notes the economic boon that gaining a son back would have been for the family, never notes that the presence of pigs in the Decapolis serves in the text of the gospels as a strong mark of foreign occupation. He spends four pages on it (80-83) but never sees fit to situate it very explicitly in its own moment. Such is a matter of emphasis rather than of doctrine, so no biggie. What troubles me more are brief passages in which York too easily conflates "people who are gay, or are of a different race, nationality, or faith tradition (even within Christianity)" (63). Those four categories carry with them the complexities of stories, and to list them flatly as elements within a series strikes me as a bit of sloppy writing, perhaps to demonstrate a point about Southern culture but nonetheless sloppy.
By and large, though, I can recommend this book for a good laugh at the expense of the Devil, who demonstrates his powers mainly through heresy (151) but also by standing back and letting us Christians say what we're going to say about the Devil. And the real gems in this book are related to but not directly in the plotline of the devil-search; as a set of theological reflections, although I had some quibbles, I enjoyed the book as a whole. I didn't come away any more convinced that anyone has anything worth saying about the devil, and perhaps that's the message of the book: with mouths as big as ours, the only wonder is that the devil has to work very much at all.
As the title of my review indicates, York seems to take the structure of his book from Morgan Spurlock's documentaries: after a brief narrative setting up the quest to find the real Satan, York travels to churches of all stripes, interviewing evangelicals and unitarians, Pentecostals and liberals, all to find the real Satan. Why find Satan? Because, as the book's setup narrative relates, York has become bored with the classical proofs of God and the safe, mostly sterile discussions that philosophical theology inevitably drift towards. So that he can find an exciting God, he goes where the excitement is: Satan. Unlike Spurlock, he doesn't state his rules at the outset, but there are rules governing the hunt nonetheless: for the duration of the book, he must go to a variety of religious and non-religious people, asking them to explain their claims about Satan and following those claims to their logical conclusions. As he hunts, his aim will always be a face-to-face encounter with Satan, and if the meeting occurs, he will offer his soul in exchange for the immediate repayment of his student loans.
The selling-the-soul riff, like most of the book, has its own theological rationale: York explains, deep in the book, that since he holds to something like a Thomist view of the soul, in which the soul is the ordering principle of earthly (and resurrected) existence rather than a non-corporeal component of the person that one can separate from the body (and thus buy or sell), that he's in no real danger of losing anything of value when he makes his deal. If you, O Reader, think that such a chain of reasons strains a bit, even for a light satire, then you'll likely read as I have read, laughing one moment and calling sleight-of-hand the next.
Whether the dialogue in the book is based on transcripts of recorded conversations or whether York has some Thucydides to him, the conversations with religious people, both conservatives and liberals, are hilarious. Because York is himself an Anabaptist who wrote his master's thesis for someone whose name "rhymes with Schmauerwas" (98), he's just as comfortable poking holes in the liberal (or progressive, if that's what you'd prefer to call it) platitudes of the Unitarian as the Unitarian tries to reduce Satan to a battle with one's self (100) as he does with the Satan-around-every-corner claims of the Nazarenes, even one who claims that Satan made the CD skip during the Sunday morning song service (22). Both sorts of scenes, whether based on real conversations or not, left me laughing hard. Like a Spurlock documentary, though, York has the particular gift of liking (or really, really seeming as if he likes) people from all sorts of backgrounds. In other words, one comes away from the encounters with liberals and conservatives in his book with a sense that, as far as York is concerned, these are good folks who can really get things right when they have their moments but who are laboring under some seriously bad ideas. Think about the way you feel about the pony-tailed Big-Mac addict towards the end of <em>Super-Size Me</em>, and you'll have an idea of the frame of mind within which York approaches people of different faiths.
And by different, I don't just mean Trinitarians and Unitarians. Some of the funniest dialogue is with a self-identified shamanistic healer, someone who takes all of the magick and wiccan business quite seriously, talking him through the nuts and bolts of binding rituals, Tarot cards, and other trappings of the modern-day sorcerer. But to York's chagrin, he takes the soul so seriously that he won't help York to sell his soul in exchange for student-loan money. And here I reproduce the ending of that interview because, like so many other episodes, it ends with York's pointing to what is genuinely likable even in a person who could so easily become a stereotype:
"[...]what I have learned through this whole phase of my life, and the one major conclusion out of all these experiences that I can draw, is that although your loans seem uncomfortable to you, and I know this will sound crazy, but greater things are going to come out of experiencing what you need to experience in order to pay them off."
I stared in disbelief. Of all the things he had told me, this was by far the least credible. Yes, I said to him, as I nodded my head in agreement, you are correct--that sounds crazy."
He laughed and proceeded to tell me I'll be a completely different person than what I would be if I didn't have to pay my loans.
I agreed.
I would be a person with money.
I can't believe it was my conversation with the one-time Satanist turned pagan/shamanistic-healer/drum-playing mystic who would be the one to teach me about character building.
Well, that interview was a bust. (130)
Throughout the book York (whether he's inventing the dialogue or not) points to these moments when, although out of their gourds when it comes to some very important questions, folks who relate to Satan in very different ways nonetheless manage to say things, unwittingly or no, that teach him something about God.
As I said, this book was to a great extent a mirror for me, seeing as I wrote my undergraduate senior project for one of Hauerwas's grad students and had as a reader for my master's thesis in Old Testament a Yale-educated theologian. But like some mirrors, this one threw things into relief rather than simply reproducing them. For instance, whereas I tend to read Gospel pericopes through the lenses of N.T. Wright, always situating them within the large narratives of second-temple Judaism and first-century Church, York (in one of his relatively straightforward narrative passages) treats the story of the Gerasene demoniac as merely a "weird story" that tells him something about how people think about demons. He never mentions the name Legion and its connection the Roman presence, never notes the economic boon that gaining a son back would have been for the family, never notes that the presence of pigs in the Decapolis serves in the text of the gospels as a strong mark of foreign occupation. He spends four pages on it (80-83) but never sees fit to situate it very explicitly in its own moment. Such is a matter of emphasis rather than of doctrine, so no biggie. What troubles me more are brief passages in which York too easily conflates "people who are gay, or are of a different race, nationality, or faith tradition (even within Christianity)" (63). Those four categories carry with them the complexities of stories, and to list them flatly as elements within a series strikes me as a bit of sloppy writing, perhaps to demonstrate a point about Southern culture but nonetheless sloppy.
By and large, though, I can recommend this book for a good laugh at the expense of the Devil, who demonstrates his powers mainly through heresy (151) but also by standing back and letting us Christians say what we're going to say about the Devil. And the real gems in this book are related to but not directly in the plotline of the devil-search; as a set of theological reflections, although I had some quibbles, I enjoyed the book as a whole. I didn't come away any more convinced that anyone has anything worth saying about the devil, and perhaps that's the message of the book: with mouths as big as ours, the only wonder is that the devil has to work very much at all.
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful
By J.L.
Format:Paperback
I was able to snag a review copy of this book, and the only thing better than a free book is a free book that is, hands down, the funniest thing I've read in years. This is, of course, not what makes it such a great book--though that certainly helps. Rather, it's the author's ability to be so provocative while also being both self-assuming and self-deprecating.
Based on a wager made in one of his religion classes, York decides to search for Satan as a means of finding God. His hunt includes countless interviews with exorcists, Pentecostals, Unitarians, Satanists, Wiccans, Baptists, pagans, shamans, spiritual warriors, Nazarenes, and everything in between, while also engaging in some things that he hopes his mother never discovers (too late, I'm guessing). In case he does find Satan, he is prepared to try and make a pact with him in order to pay off the student loans he obtained while earning a PhD in theology. That, if nothing else, is the kind of irony that makes this book worth reading.
At times, it's hard to know when he is serious, when he is just messing around or how hell-bent he really is on finding the devil (though he certainly goes to great lengths), but that's what makes this book so interesting. He is providing a different sort of lens on how, in particular, religious people in the United States construe the world in terms of good and evil. And, yes, he makes fun of everyone along the way--while, also, poking fun at himself. And it's on this latter part that some may be turned off by his tone, but once you realize that he turns it on his own self you see that the tone is merely part of the search and is what makes the book such a compelling read. The humor does not distract from its serious nature; I think it actually forces the reader to really come to grips with what that person either does or does not believe.
All in all, this is an incredibly accessible and witty book. I definitely recommend it.
Based on a wager made in one of his religion classes, York decides to search for Satan as a means of finding God. His hunt includes countless interviews with exorcists, Pentecostals, Unitarians, Satanists, Wiccans, Baptists, pagans, shamans, spiritual warriors, Nazarenes, and everything in between, while also engaging in some things that he hopes his mother never discovers (too late, I'm guessing). In case he does find Satan, he is prepared to try and make a pact with him in order to pay off the student loans he obtained while earning a PhD in theology. That, if nothing else, is the kind of irony that makes this book worth reading.
At times, it's hard to know when he is serious, when he is just messing around or how hell-bent he really is on finding the devil (though he certainly goes to great lengths), but that's what makes this book so interesting. He is providing a different sort of lens on how, in particular, religious people in the United States construe the world in terms of good and evil. And, yes, he makes fun of everyone along the way--while, also, poking fun at himself. And it's on this latter part that some may be turned off by his tone, but once you realize that he turns it on his own self you see that the tone is merely part of the search and is what makes the book such a compelling read. The humor does not distract from its serious nature; I think it actually forces the reader to really come to grips with what that person either does or does not believe.
All in all, this is an incredibly accessible and witty book. I definitely recommend it.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent
I received my book, very quickly. I have only read the first five pages and I am already in love!
Published 2 months ago by LovingIt
2.0 out of 5 stars
Didn't care much for this one
I bought the book because it was featured as a class subject by my church group. The author writes a bit too "cutesy" for my taste. Read more
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Remarkably Funny, Deeply Serious!
This is one 'hell' of a book... ;) York often raises more questions than answers, but with his varied interviews and sharp theological teaching, he gives readers tools for... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Nicholas
4.0 out of 5 stars
Waiting for Satot
In his book `The Devil Wears Nada' Tripp York takes an entertaining ride through the American religious landscape (it looks a little like a strip mall in case you are wondering). Read more
Published 9 months ago by Madjockmcferson
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Published 11 months ago by Jean-Paul A. HELDT
5.0 out of 5 stars
I'm sad it's over
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Published 12 months ago by Justin Underwood
5.0 out of 5 stars
Irreverent, Funny and Serious
I suppose there must have been some mention of Satan or the devil when I was in my Lutheran catechism class (a very long time ago), but I can't recall any specifics. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Glynn Young
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fast, thought provoking, at times hilarious, read
I bought this book based on a review elsewhere. Thoroughly enjoyed it and read it in two settings within 24 hours! Read more
Published 14 months ago by Chris Callahan
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Dubious Disciple Book Review
TRIPP! Tripp, I'm beggin' ya man, please keep me on your list of reviewers for future books! I haven't laughed this hard in a long time. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Dubious Disciple
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