The following is an email I recently sent to Frank Schaeffer about the impact his book had on me. It was quite a reading experience and well captures the worldview of a survivor of what I can only refer to as religious abuse.
Recently purchased your book at Amazon and could not put it down. I came at the "faith thing" from a completely different angle - atheism - and was probably (!) spared a good deal of what your character endured. My father, the dominant personality in my parents' marriage (because my mother died young) is an atheist and believes perhaps correctly, perhaps not, that religion has been the source of mankind's ills. I came to Christianity through reading Bible stories and religious experiences that compelled me to find a framework into which to make sense of them. However, I did go through a series of steps in my spiritual journey. one of them being to buy too much into fundamentalism and some of the rigidity of Catholic orthodoxy. Your book, especially the last half of it, really helped me to begin to crystallize what that journey has been in a number of ways. I don't often write "fan letters" to authors or to anyone else for that matter, but I have enjoyed reading your posts on the Huffington Post and have purchased others of your books (and will now make sure I read them, LOL:)). Anyway, when you posted something about self-publishing this book, I thought, "why not?" and was very glad I had done so.
There are three things that stand out in your writing for me: your honesty, your courage, and most of all your tenacious love for your family.
Insisting on a "fact-based" reality would seem to be self-evident, but it is sadly surprising how that seems to escape so many people of faith! Your honesty in describing the inner workings, however shocking, of your main character's mind, is breathtaking - and it makes the internal changes he goes through all the more dramatic and heartrending.
As I read what you have written in the Huffpost and in your books (I have read a bit of each, just not completely finished the other two I have - Crazy for God and Sex Mom and God!), I know how much courage it must have taken for you to simply tell the truth as you see it. It must have felt like leaving your family and all that was comfortable behind you. I imagine there must have been some backlash, and here you can see I probably have not done a heck of a lot of research on you, LOL:). I have seen where power is threatened, those in power react and sometimes not in the kindest way. A friend of mine from high school who had been molested for years by a Catholic priest (whom we all idolized, of course) told me of how he had been pretty badly intimidated after he and his family went to the parking lot of a parish to which this priest had been transferred and handed out leaflets telling them what had happened. It wasn't until some 16 years later when he was on a train with Theodore Hesburgh, that my friend John got an actual apology!
What amazes me - and this may either be care on your part or your Christian upbringing - is what appears to be a complete lack of rage in your Huffpost essays. But then I suppose you wish to be effective - and who wants the Religious Wrong (as my Dad calls them) to have another basis to discredit you? I do love the irony of the part of your book when Billy finally curses and screams and discards the God of his youth, that it is then that God truly appears to him amid all that death in the form of the humble Father Dmitry.
Your recent post about your mother was truly the most loving testament I have ever read: it moved me to tears. They say it is a sign of being a grownup when we can love our parents and yet see them as they really are.
Well, I've been rambling on, hopefully somewhat coherently:) so I'm going to close with this: I am currently in a class at my church. It's called EfM - Education for MInistry - a thoughtful (I think) study of theology. The dialogue between Billy and the monks at the end of your book are so moving and such a beautiful statement of theology. As you can imagine, atheism and agnosticism used to threaten my infant faith. Neither do any more. In fact, they enhance it - probably because they keep me honest. Go figure;) I would love to read some of your book to our class.
Thank you.
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