My Fundamentalist Education: A Memoir of a Divine Girlhood

The school that the author attends in this book reminds me of many parts of my childhood. I didn't go to a Christian school, but in our small town there were many clubs and Sunday Schools and Vacation Bible Schools and Good News Clubs and Pioneer Clubs and so on! My parents loved to get free child care and have us out of the house for a bit, so even if they didn't believe what was being taught to us, they had us attend many of these religious clubs and events. The mostly kind, mostly truly caring people at Christine's school remind me of most of the people I encountered at these clubs---true believers, who did their best to practice what they preached. In this day and age of such separation between blue states and red, believers and not, we often get distorted views of deeply religious people. Although my own beliefs waver often and are not at all fundamentalist, I, like the author, am glad to have had the experience of reading the King James Bible and meeting religious people. This book is very well written, humorous without being flip, and most of all kind. I really enjoyed reading it.

When I read the St. Petersburg Times article announcing this book, I knew I had to read it. When I picked it up at my local library, I gritted my teeth, expecting to be eviscerated by a bitter cynic. Instead, what I found was a thoughtfully written piece about growing up and the influences that shape our world view. I graduated from Keswick while Christine was attending elementary school, but the biggest grin was her reference to the guys by the pickup truck with the Ayatollah sign. All those guys were my friends from my graduating class (we were seniors that year) - and I can tell you that all of them grew up - like Christine - as free thinking, contributing members of society. I guess that having a firm foundation in the bible isn't a bad place to begin your education. The only puzzling but necessary part of the book were the name changes of the teachers and students. I was able to identify most of the people she referenced by her descriptions, including the principal and head master, but it did make for some puzzling reading at first. My experience at Keswick was "mixed" as well, with some pretty horrific experiences, like being banned from the library and the bus my last two years at school, but also positive, like meeting my future wife and having a very weird and memorable time at school. Having boundaries is an important part of growing up - and Keswick certainly created those! What fun is it to misbehave if you don't get in trouble? Christine puts the "FUN" back into FUNdamental education. So, as a fellow Keswickian married to another Keswickian - thank you.

I picked this book up on a whim because its title caught my eye. I'm not a reader of memoirs, but since I also came from a fundamentalist/evangelical background similar in many ways to the author's, I figured it might be of interest. I was right. Rosen has done a superb job in this book and its writing style and charm, coupled with my occasional outbursts of laughter led me to finish it in one afternoon and evening. For those of us who come from this background, it is easy to see reflections of our own life experiences in her memoir. Rosen perfectly captures the mixture of seriousness and comic amusement that accompanies the experience of growing up in fundamentalism. Being of the same age range as Rosen, I can not only relate to the curious lifestyle of fundamentalism (it is definitely a lifestyle) but I remember watching the exact same End Times movies and hearing the exact same historical events she describes used to appropriate apocalyptic prophecy. Its historical context made the book an especially poignant and thoughtful experience for me. And her descriptions of the interactions among the competing views of fundamentalism, evangelicalism, and charismatic Pentecostalism are an accurate depiction of how these worlds intersect in so many ways. Rosen is most brilliant when she subtly conveys the innocent intentions of those who firmly believe that they are doing God's work, while at the same time indoctrinating the minds of young people and stifling independent thought. This environment is a strange mixture of compassion, kindness, love, yet at the same time, dogma, intolerance of dissent, and radical closed-mindedness. It is an environment where individuals, especially young people, can connect in groups of like-minded others, establish deep friendships, and experience real joy, while at the same time the intellectual straitjacket grows tighter and tighter. It is very much a world of dichotomy where all are welcome as equals and saints of God (fundamentalists hold that all believers are saints) and "heresy" is carefully guarded against and rooted out. It is not an environment that welcomes critical thought. Rosen brilliantly portrays this and the perspective of a young child gives this book a sense of charm, deep nostalgia, and subtle comedy. I found myself bursting into barely-controlled laughter at many points. For some of us (how many is unknown, conversion stories to evangelicalism are more popular than are the reverse) there comes a point when a stark choice becomes clear and unavoidable: one must choose the life of the faith or the life of the mind. Choosing the latter entails a sad divorce, because within fundamentalism, one simply cannot pursue both lives with vigor. Like Rosen, I chose the life of the mind, and am no longer a believing Christian, let alone a fundamentalist. But it is not an easy choice. As Rosen so movingly tells us, the life of fundamentalism is one of a comforting straitjacket. It is a life

This is a fun book to read, and sure does hit the nail on the head. It tells it like it is-- what goes on in funadmentalist churches, and Pentecostal churhes. I've been to both, and the author's descriptions of her reactions and feelings matched my own so closely I felt like saying "Yes ! That happened to me too!" She has written a book that most anyone who loves their church can relate to. And those of us who have cringed at the far-out actions of people who get carried away with their emotions can smile at. She tells the good and the silly, and does it in an entertaining way.

The Rapture. The Anti-Christ. Satanic subliminals in rock music. Creation in six days. Fear of sex. Self-loathing. Bad polyesther uniforms. Welcome to Keswick Christian, St. Petersburg, Florida's fundamentalist Christian school. Welcome to your fundamentalist Christian education. In an era where a majority of Americans believe in creationism, the "born-again" President of our country sends "coded" messages to "believers" through speeches on stages in the shape of a cross, "faith-based" non-profits are taking over for governmental services, and "men of god" are making political speeches from their tax-exempt pulpits, Christene Rosen's "My Fundamentalist Education" should be required reading for all those "Blue Staters" trying to understand the mindset of fundamentalist Christians. Her well-written and entertaining memoir strikes home, laying bare what is taught and thought behind the doors of exclusionary fundamentalist churches and schools, and provides insights into the people who read the "Left Behind" series, whose cars have fish symbols and bumper stickers stating "In case of rapture, this car will be empty", whose favorite book is the Bible - which is (of course) literally true, and who believe in the creationist theory of Intelligent Design, in spite of the lack of evidence for it and the preponderance of evidence supporting Darwin's "dangerous idea" of evolution. Rosen's book is an accurate and compelling recount of her time at Keswick Christian while living in the retirement town of St. Petersburg, Florida (its unofficial motto "The old people live in Miami, their parents live here"). How do I know? My three sisters and I went to Keswick at roughly the same time she did (I spent my 5th to 8th grades there - from 1975-1979, my little sister went there until from kindergarten to 8th grade) - however, unlike Rosen's experiences, which she remembers somewhat fondly, mine aren't so benign. As a new kid with few social skills, the "Christianity" of the students there did not seem so evident in their initial bullying of an outsider. The Bible (King James Version, of course), was the major textbook and while the constant memorizing of verses was pedagogically useful, and the school provided a solid education in reading (especially in Olde English) and writing, science was quite lacking, as can be expected from those believing in a 6-day creation. However, what can be considered most disturbing about such an education and the beliefs that derive from it (as I experienced it) is the belief in the inerrancy of the Bible, in spite of multiple internal contradictions, and the willingness of those in power to use its verses, often out of context, to control social behavior, such as how one dressed and acted. In my experience there, religion became a bludgeon, with the ever-present threat of the rapture and being "left-behind" scaring children into unquestioning obedience, the potential for pregnancy through boys and girls holding hands