Expand the Space of the Talkaboutable

Maria Browning and Margaret Renkl have been very kind to me. Maria reviewed The Sacredness of Questioning Everything with Chapter 16 in 2009, and Margaret gave me my first review assignment there about five years ago. Since then, I’ve experienced Chapter 16 as a lovely outpost of thoughtfulness right here in Tennessee. Casey Cep of the New Yorker wrote about it a couple years back. I was extremely grateful to be quoted.

And now I’m honored to receive coverage in the form of an interview with Maria which also marks my visit at Union Ave Books in Knoxville this Saturday at 5. I’m always amazed at what good questions can bring out of a person. In addition to offering me a forum in which to reflect on what inspired my revisions, she gave me an occasion to explain Christian supremacy, the sense in which, according to my definition, religion is and isn’t relative, and what sparked my recent decision to speak more frequently of spiritual abuse. Here’s an excerpt:

I think plain old abuse becomes spiritual abuse the moment I speak or act as if I’m an authority in someone else’s experience. It’s subtle but sometimes not at all subtle. It’s a refusal to honor another person’s boundaries because I believe (or wish to imply) that I’m closer to God or more intimately familiar with God’s purposes than someone else. It’s a form of violence, whether in speech or behavior, in which I try to deny someone the right to assess their own thoughts, feelings, or experiences without me or, more broadly, apart from the community or tradition I imagine I’m adhering or being true to….I don’t have to be conscious of it to be guilty of it. These days, as I try to make sense of the bad behavior of so many pastors, pundits, and elected officials in Tennessee (people I’ve known for most of my life), I’ve come to see that those whose spirits have been crushed by spiritual abuse often mimic the very behaviors they were taught to think of as faithfulness and integrity. It’s ugly as hell.

Here’s the whole thing.

Especially if you’re in Tennessee, consider subscribing to Chapter 16’s weekly newsletter. It’s free! Expand the space of the talkaboutable.

And if you know someone in Knoxville who might enjoy listening to me go on and on, give them a heads-up.

[the above photo is the work of Eric England]