A Reader Writes: I Now Live with No Roof

I’m writing to tell you how absolutely grateful I am for your book, Faith After Doubt. I just graduated from a conservative, fundie, evangelical college with a BA in Christian Ministries, but I’m deconstructing my faith. I’ve felt pretty screwed, but reading your book has given me a fresh peace and hope for what can still be done and experienced in the Church from my expanding outlooks.

Some highlights of your book for me have been the threads of comparative theology, practical theology, ecumenism(!!!), humanism, even universalism at times, and this idea of spiritual entrepreneurship. As a visionary and unity-seeker, I find all of this to be quite enthralling and wildly motivating. I’m an enneagram 8 and an ENFJ on Myers Briggs. I want to pounce on the problems I see and persuade people to change for the better. I heard it for myself when you told Hannah, that “’You may have lost your faith,’ I said, ‘but you sure haven’t lost your fire.’” (189).  I think, at the end of the day, even if I’m disappointed at many demonstrations of faith that I see around me, I will still have the fire that pushes me forward, up and out into the world, through the glass ceiling of gatekeepers and into the expansively mystical, colorful sky of harmony.

Having read your book, I now feel truly encouraged that there is always room to grow. I now live with no roof, floating around, flexible spirit, open-mind, awestruck eyes – perhaps like a bird, or a plane, but definitely not superman. Thank God for that!

Thanks again. I’ll be carrying your words with me.