I keenly remember the day my Grandmother died.
My parents picked me up early from afterschool care and before I could ask why, my Mother said “We’re going to your Grandfather’s house.” I asked, “Don’t you mean Grandmommy’s house?” My Mother barely replied, “Your Grandmother died, it’s your Grandfather’s house now.” I climbed into the back of our Dodge Omni hatchback and cried all the way to what was now my Grandfather’s house alone. When we arrived at his home, I composed myself and began doing what any five year-old-would do, collecting my Grandmother’s favorite clothes. She would need them when The Rapture happened. Yes, The Rapture. The one where the trumpets will sound from the heavens, the saints will gather to return to earth, and Jes-us (two syllables) will return.
Maybe I should have prefaced that with what any normal five-year-old who was raised in a fundamentalist church would do. But that’s why I love Susan Campbell’s Dating Jesus, because while reading the pages of her memoir, I didn’t need to explain my normal. Dating Jesus recounts Campbell’s own love-long-lost relationship with fundamentalism specifically, the church of Christ in the middle-of-nowhere Missouri. Her bare-bones account of redneck religion and her dire need to love the Lord is tragically geeky yet, a strikingly accurate account of what it’s like to grow up with Jesus. From “knocking on doors” to bring strangers the good news to suppressing the teenage desires of sex and rebellion, giving your childhood to the Holy Ghost is hard. Living in fear that the world might end tomorrow is hard. Agreeing with holy men who proclaim women “weaker vessels” is hard, but leaving is even harder. But that’s what both Campbell and I did. And there’s no going back, fundamentalism remains with you at every turn—Campbell calls this “Christ haunted” and the theme resonates like a Greek-chorus.
For anyone that’s ever been trained in the way a child should go, Dating Jesus will probably make you cry, a lot —I got teary-eyed when Campbell describes what gender inequity in the church feels like. I balled like a baby when she recounts watching the documentary Jesus Camp. For you heathens who didn’t catch that earlier reference to Proverbs 22:6, don’t worry, Campbell has footnotes. Besides, everyone can relate to what Campbell sought through her whole young adulthood — the complete denial of the self for a love so rapturous that it can only be fictional.
