Mya Frazier writes for Aeon on the “heaven tourism memoir” (seen in books such as Heaven is for Real and The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven) and what its popularity as a genre suggests about the 21st century’s conceptualization of deities/gods/God.
Reading these books catapulted me back into my evangelical past life, reminding me of who I might be still, had I not sought relief from the dissonance of biblical literalism. For me, the genre’s popularity was not a sign of resurgent faith, but symptomatic of faith’s waning – a last gasp at belief, a signal of a coming break.
