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Spare Me that Old Time Religion:
Fundamentalism in Memoir and Fiction
Memoir of a Misfit:
Finding My Place in the Family of God
by Marcia Ford
Jossey-Bass, 2003. 189 pages.
The Devil and Daniel Silverman: A Novel
by Theodore Roszak
Leapfrog Press, 2003. 329 pages.
Marcia Ford claims to be a misfit, and makes a pretty strong case for herself. A baby boomer coming of age in the 1960s, she did it all -- drugs, alcohol, early, failed marriage, fundamentalist Christianity. Like many of her generation she was caught amid the expectations of her parents, the upheavals of the Vietnam era, and sea changes in perception of self, community, and God. In Memoir of a Misfit she tells her story openly and wittily and, notably, without resort to picturing herself as anybody’s victim.
It is tempting to greet a self-proclaimed misfit with skepticism. Ford’s opening line, “People look at me funny. They always have,” is easily met with “Methinks she doth protest too much.” Who among us has not felt like a round peg in a square hole, and who among us has not exaggerated that feeling? But as Ford’s story progresses, with example after relentless example of her misfit status in culture, counterculture, and church, it begins to seem as though she doth protest just right.
But the truth of the situation is ultimately more subtle than that. Ford tries desperately to fit into a Christian world that is dysfunctional and destructive. Try as she might, she cannot. Like many in similar situations she spends a great deal of time blaming herself and failing to notice that the very communities in which she yearns to fit implicitly reject the Jesus of the Gospels in favor of manipulative personality cults. (Ford avoids going into great detail about these communities; however, it takes little effort to read between the lines of her spare descriptions.)
It is refreshing to reach the end of Memoir of a Misfit with the good feeling that there is something beyond the submissive fundamentalism that captures many who wish to follow Jesus. Ford’s book should warn others that the misfit feeling may well be a symptom, not of one’s personal flaws but of the flaws of the community, and that sometimes the only effective treatment is simply to leave.
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Daniel Silverman is an out-of-print former bestselling novelist who specializes in alternative views of famous stories. In his novel Deep Eye, for example, Moby Dick speaks for himself, and Madame Bovary in does the same for herself in I, Emma. Silverman is also gay, Jewish, and nowhere near a bestseller list, so it comes as a surprise when he is offered a large fee to speak at Faith College, a Bible-thumping, homophobic institution of higher learning owned by the Free Reformed Evangelical Brethren in Christ in northern Minnesota. He has been invited to represent the “Jewish humanist” perspective in an “experimental Religious Humanism Program.” Without knowing precisely what is expected of him, but pleased with the in-one-day, out-the-next itinerary, Silverman accepts the gig and the fee and heads to the frozen north to give his speech on the eve of the new millennium.
Faced with a gay, Jewish novelist who is also pro-choice and pro-Darwin, the Faith College audience becomes restless and hostile. And when an enormous snowstorm imprisons the faculty, students, and the hapless Silverman on the remote campus, tempers inevitably heat up in the majority population, while the outsider begins to fear for his life.
Theodore Roszak treats this ugly situation in a way that is at once wise and comic and hugely entertaining. The Faith College faithful are, admittedly, somewhat easy targets. Their real-life counterparts do indeed pose danger to the practice of free and intelligent faith. They are fair game for parody. At the same time, it is clear that they are not entirely beyond the pale in Roszak’s universe and are not exempt from the possibility of a form of redemption that could ultimately free them, their faith, and their savior from the chains of literalism.
Silverman is drawn in greater detail than are his hosts. But despite being multi-dimensional, he finds he must examine his own prejudices and assumptions. He, too, is open to change and growth. After a conversation with one of the less-bigoted members of the college faculty,
he found himself going back over the encounter again and again, and each time feeling more depressed than before. At last it came home to him. Damned if he hadn’t been proselytizing. For what? Not for the gay way, but for life, freedom, joy. Even now, in his thoughts, he was struggling to win her over. But he had failed miserably. If anything, he had confirmed her worst fears and strengthened her most foolish convictions. Oh, shit, he thought, I’m a lousy missionary. He had pitched his strongest beliefs and left her more certain than ever that he was the devil’s spawn.
The tension between fundamentalists and religious progressives are played out neatly within the confines of snowbound Faith College. In the process, Daniel Silverman re-examines his own religious baggage, which leads him to a more deeply-grounded life. In the fundamentalist-progressive continuum it is clear where author Roszak stands, and it is not within the realm of dysfunctional community or theology. As Marcia Ford found in her memoir, sometimes it is a blessing not to fit in.
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