Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.

Holy Runaways

Rediscovering Faith After Being Burned by Religion

Audiobook
41 of 41 copies available
41 of 41 copies available
In the past decade, church attendance among US adults has decreased by more than 25 percent. Americans report leaving religious communities because of the institutions' hypocrisy and resistance to change or because of trauma they have experienced in those spaces. Instead of safe havens for people of faith, many churches have become sites of harm-places people feel the need to escape at all costs. In Holy Runaways, psychotherapist Matthias Roberts reaches out to those who, like him, want to understand the religion they've run from and erect a new faith on firmer foundations. He concludes that the best blueprint for a new spiritual home requires reimagining ourselves, God, and our very definition of faith. Roberts blends deeply personal stories, new interpretations of familiar Christian parables, and recent scholarship about the dynamics of trauma to offer a way forward-and a warm, helpful companion-for listeners on their own journeys. He calls out people who perpetuate systems of violence and oppression and suggests ways we can all contribute to a new system built on love-and a new home we can inhabit together.
  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

  • Formats

  • Languages

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      September 4, 2023
      Psychotherapist Roberts (Beyond Shame) offers an impassioned exploration of “how and why we leave our faith and what happens afterward.” When a planned talk in which he intended to come out as gay was scrapped by his Christian college in his senior year, Roberts “felt something crack open inside” and began to distance himself from his conservative Christian upbringing, a process that involved challenging stubborn notions of desire as inherently sinful; probing in therapy the hurt he’d experienced at the hands of unsupportive friends and family; and acknowledging that he wanted to be in a relationship rather than remaining “gay, Christian, and celibate.” In abbreviated, sermonlike chapters that wrap personal testimony around extended metaphors (faith as a safe yet limiting concrete box is a central analogy), the author marshals personal experience, René Girard’s mimetic theory, and the theological writings of James Alison to set out fresh understandings of God, desire, and a Christian love that “can only be learned by loving the victim, the weak, the outcasts, the scapegoats.” Readers seeking substantive advice may feel shortchanged, but others will be intrigued and invigorated by Roberts’s notion that faith means “believing that getting to a place where we are all safe, welcome, and at peace is possible.” Christians who feel alienated from their church communities will find plenty of food for thought.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

Languages

  • English

Loading