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shoshin's review against another edition
2.0
I remember when her church started and when it failed. It was heavily advertised locally. And it fell apart because it was very apparent very quickly that the ads didn't match the atmosphere. I guess she is very good at ignoring what she doesn't want to see.
I live close to Lenz and always want to like her writing but often don't. This book ignores a lot about our local community, which is frankly often more liberal than she is, and I'm not sure if it's because she can't see it because she moves in the wrong circles, or because she doesn't want to. (I don't dispute that Iowa as a whole is in many ways quite conservative, but she sort of ignores what a patchwork is here, again, especially in her immediate area.) I guess I'm easy to dismiss as adding to the chorus of "You don't know us!" but that's how I feel about this book. Just from the other end of the spectrum.
I live close to Lenz and always want to like her writing but often don't. This book ignores a lot about our local community, which is frankly often more liberal than she is, and I'm not sure if it's because she can't see it because she moves in the wrong circles, or because she doesn't want to. (I don't dispute that Iowa as a whole is in many ways quite conservative, but she sort of ignores what a patchwork is here, again, especially in her immediate area.) I guess I'm easy to dismiss as adding to the chorus of "You don't know us!" but that's how I feel about this book. Just from the other end of the spectrum.
jadeejf's review against another edition
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
What a book. Wild. I felt like I was reading a slight variation on my own story, complete with Lenz starting adulthood in the same denomination I spent my early 20s in.
I was interested to read this missive from a short but particularly interesting era to me as an evangelical - the one where 77% of white evangelicals voted for Trump in 2016, but before the COVID pandemic.
As a former Midwesterner, it was illuminating. There were lots of threads she was able to pull about Midwesternism as an identity that I hadn't really thought through, and about being a woman in evangelical Christianity - a situation where you are both considered "normal" or perhaps privileged externally, and yet still not enough within your own faith tradition.
So much of the book feels achingly familiar, and yet there are subtle differences - I left the Midwest, Lenz stayed. Lenz's faith trajectory led to a divorce, mine has not. Her kids are younger than mine. It was interesting to see those subtle differences *and* to see her sitting at a conference about how pastors trained in urban centers need to understand their rural church communities - and her asking a question I keep coming back to, "Does this work in reverse? Where is the conference to train rural congregations on how to understand their urban counterparts?"
Those kinds of questions are at the heart of this book and I really appreciated the exploration, especially from someone I feel such kinship with. I also passed along some passages (and feel like I will be, for a while) to friends because they did so well at explaining some of my own background (but also the background of an awful lot of people in the flyover states, who, of course, matter, and who people do want to understand).
I was interested to read this missive from a short but particularly interesting era to me as an evangelical - the one where 77% of white evangelicals voted for Trump in 2016, but before the COVID pandemic.
As a former Midwesterner, it was illuminating. There were lots of threads she was able to pull about Midwesternism as an identity that I hadn't really thought through, and about being a woman in evangelical Christianity - a situation where you are both considered "normal" or perhaps privileged externally, and yet still not enough within your own faith tradition.
So much of the book feels achingly familiar, and yet there are subtle differences - I left the Midwest, Lenz stayed. Lenz's faith trajectory led to a divorce, mine has not. Her kids are younger than mine. It was interesting to see those subtle differences *and* to see her sitting at a conference about how pastors trained in urban centers need to understand their rural church communities - and her asking a question I keep coming back to, "Does this work in reverse? Where is the conference to train rural congregations on how to understand their urban counterparts?"
Those kinds of questions are at the heart of this book and I really appreciated the exploration, especially from someone I feel such kinship with. I also passed along some passages (and feel like I will be, for a while) to friends because they did so well at explaining some of my own background (but also the background of an awful lot of people in the flyover states, who, of course, matter, and who people do want to understand).
quitecontrarymary's review
5.0
I am a big fan of Lenz’s newsletter so it was a joy to experience her writing in long form. Her interweaving of the personal and political is, as always, magical.
jhstutzman's review against another edition
5.0
This book lives at a weird intersection of (raw, fresh, bleeding) memoir and sociological examination, as though everything in the book had been planned out and then the author’s life happened, and she just wrote it all in together, and quickly published it. I don’t think I’m too far off in that description. Things like this don’t usually come from a university press, or if they do, they have scholarly reviews of literature in autoethnographic methods. Some things are repetitive, the editing was not very careful, but the effect of the flaws in the book was to create the sense of dislocation and chaos that the book describes.
I’m not Christian, not a woman, and while I’ve spent almost my whole life in the states the author writes about, almost all of that time has also been in the urban areas that are not the focus of her attention. My wife is a pastor though, from those rural areas, we live in one now, and I study religion, so I have other ways into the book. I recognized the people she interviewed, I know them as my neighbors. This book isn’t going to save a church, a denomination, or a rural town. This book is a picture of why those things need saving from themselves though and how their insidery-ness damages the increasing number of outsiders they push away.
I’m not Christian, not a woman, and while I’ve spent almost my whole life in the states the author writes about, almost all of that time has also been in the urban areas that are not the focus of her attention. My wife is a pastor though, from those rural areas, we live in one now, and I study religion, so I have other ways into the book. I recognized the people she interviewed, I know them as my neighbors. This book isn’t going to save a church, a denomination, or a rural town. This book is a picture of why those things need saving from themselves though and how their insidery-ness damages the increasing number of outsiders they push away.
je55ilo's review against another edition
reflective
4.0
I did not grow up religious -- my parents are ex-Catholics, derisive of Christianity and generally agnostic -- so listening to Lyz grapple with her evangelical roots was the most fascinating part of the book for me. I appreciate her analysis of midwestern Trump voters, although it only brushed against the white supremacist patriarchal roots of it (still, not an apologia by any means). As with her newest book, Lyz has such a riveting authorial voice! I really enjoyed the audiobook.
allisonh59's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
4.75