Welcome to the Recovering Fundamentalists' Newsletter!
And Yes, I had the Name "Recovering Fundamentalists" first.
(If the button above says “Pledge Your Support,” don’t bother clicking it. This newsletter is free.)
My Journey Out of Fundamentalism
I left Fundamentalism in the 1990’s, transferring from Faith Free Presbyterian Church to a PCA church. My exit was more rational and text-based than that of most people. I had actually been helped by a lot of people in Fundamentalism. I didn’t really have a personal grief or a grudge. I grant you, I had heard my share of incorrect, brutal, and downright stupid ideas thrown at me: that abused children become abusers, that women are unfit for public office or responsible job roles, that to be a proper Christian woman in God’s eyes I had to cram myself into clothing more appropriate for ten year old farm girls going to Sunday service, all that restrictive nonsense.
So I did endure all the bigotry against women and against kids from broken homes. But evev though it was very painful when I was in my early twenties, it effected me less by the time I was in my mid twenties. I have an incredible gift of inborn arrogance. Arrogance is supposed to be a sin, but in many ways it’s a huge labor saving device and and a time saver. You just listen to a preacher preach on libruls and wimmin’s libbers and think, “Wow, what an idiot,” and keep going. It’s very protective.
And I had some amazing gifts that saw me through my exit: First, I was a good reader. I studied the Bible, not devotionally, but intentively. I read the great commentators. I had been an avid student of church history since I was 15. By the way, didi you know that you cannot major in Church History at any Christian Fundamentalist school, not even BJU? That’s because Fundamentalism doesn’t want you to understand church history. Church history shows that Fundamentalism is a power driven, over-sexed, egocentric, wackadoodle offshoot.
Also, I studied martial arts. It helped me control my emotions but also recognize bullying behavior. I learned early what a lot of Fundamentalist young people don’t learn until later, how to hold the garbage in contempt while not confusing the nonsense with authentic Christianity.
I did have my struggles, but for me, God became more and more obvious, especially as I studied Renaissance Astrology and learned about the way that Christian astrologers posited the universe and God’s rule over it.
On 9/11, shaken and repentant after seeing the deaths of thousands of people, I made a commitment to God to document the clergy sex abuse cases in Fundamentalism that I had heard about. That turned into a 13 year odyssey of meeting survivors, doing research on cases, writing furiously, and running two podcasts. One of my podcasts was called The Recovering Fundamentalists podcast. I started it in 2008 and shut it down in 2013 as my health collapsed.
A few years later I saw that two guys had picked up that name for their podcast. I sent them a cheery note about my original podcast. They never answered. I wondered if they were jerks. A few years after that, when they attacked a guy who was helping victims of clergy sex abuse for coming out as an atheist, I realized that yes, they are jerks. And furthermore, they are just repainted fundamentalists. So I am claiming back the name for my newsletter.
1. Organizing my books and making them available
In October 2022 I was diagnosed with Stage 3 cholangiocarcinoma, a terminal cancer. I am doing very well for a person with this cancer, but the doctors still think it will kill me. After a year of incredibly rigorous treatments, I am on disability.
So I have started organizing my books, updating covers, and moving them into publication. Staying busy keeps me from going crazy, and the warm welcome the republished books have received has been a great joy to me.
2. A booklist community
I don’t have the energy to run discussions or settle disputes. But I do want this newsletter to provide the books I created from my research and analysis, as well as the memoirs I have written or collected. So this is really a booklist newsletter.
3. The newsletter is scheduled to go out once every two weeks, on Saturdays.
I don’t want to overwhelm people with lots of newsletters, so I plan to keep the newsletter releases to one every two weeks, sent on a Saturday. Newsletters will announce new releases and special deals.
My goal is to keep the book publications affordable, and some are designed to be entertaining. Fundamentalism is dreadful, brutal, and frightening. But in other ways, it’s actually funny. So I hope, in addition to reading the factual stuff, you will also read the fictionalized memoirs and get a laugh out of them.
4. Some books I offer
Non-Fiction based on research and analysis. The paperback versions of these books are anywhere from $12.99 - $15.99, but the Kindle versions are free on Kindle Unlimited or are just 99 cents. Click the links below to go to their pages on Amazon
Memoirs (Some fictionalized, some not. All under pen names. The following four books are all in the Grace Jovian series. These are fictionalized accounts of the events of the early 1990’s at Hyles-Anderson College (Secret Radio), and then they turn to Grace’s life as she strikes out on her own as a single woman who is supposed to be under her father’s or husband’s headship (A Standard Christian). A lot of humor and adventure and coming of age.
One reader from the Preacher Boys’ Podcast Group has written, I love the characters and how you were able to describe the atmosphere without a ton of side detail. Tho maybe that was me because I went there lol. But how you were able to weave the crazy doctrines we were taught (tho yours was a little different in some ways) without making it too on the nose was good.
5. Visit the Recovering Fundamentalists Home Page to View the Books and Articles Available.
Click here to visit the home page
If you know people who might benefit from these books, please share this newsletter with them. It’s always free and provides a useful array of books designed to do these things:
Help you understand what Fundamentalism actually is. (It is an American populist version of Christianity but is not nearly the same thing as historic or classical Christianity.)
Assess the history of abuses and atheist (yup!) philosophies that undergird Fundamentalism (and no offense to atheists. Fundamentalism’s atheist underpinnings are an outdated, badly understood, Social Darwinism, BF Skinnerism, Pavlovian atheism. So really, Fundamentalism has misunderstood atheism as much as it has misunderstood the Bible. This is what populist religion does.
My deconstruction is a Christian deconstruction of Fundamentalism, but even for non-believers, I unearth a lot of information to help with deconstruction. But I am a Christian and when I deconstructed, Christianity became more real to me, more true, not less. A lot of that has to do with a better understandong of the ancient world but also, the unfolding Word of God, quite literally, is written in broad letters across the heavens. And the Bible even says this. And to an extent I can read it. It is the coolest thing in the world. Let me cut to the chase: there is no rapture. And the earth is timeless. It is not just 6,000 years old. The Bible also says that by implication.
So if you know anybody who migh benefit by any of these books, please share this newsletter with them. And thank you!