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When Christine Rosen started kindergarten, her ABCs included the Apocalypse, the Bible, and Christ. At Keswick Christian School "the Bible was our textbook," God the guide, and after entering the school gates, nothing was ever quite the same again. Christine learned creation science, dreamed of becoming a missionary to exotic countries, worried about the souls of Jews and Mormons, and experienced unusual methods of sex education. With the threat of nuclear annihilation at the hands of atheistic Russians looming, she also frequently prayed for rapture.
At home, Florida life seemed happily to confirm several literal truths: the story of Moses, with its plagues that afflicted the Egyptians -- from lice, to rivers of stinking dead fish, to hordes of frogs -- might have been describing Christine's back yard.
My Fundamentalist Education is a brilliant, affectionate, child's-eye journey to Rosen's home, school and small town. Set in a time and place when the Living Bible outsold The Joy of Sex, during a girlhood lived as the Lord intended, among the tropical flora and fauna of Florida, its televangelists, irascible elderly, and itinerant preachers, Christine Rosen and her sister, Cathy, uncover the not always godly but surely divine secrets of a Hallelujah-ya sisterhood.
COMMENTS:
"With neither rancor nor rosy eyes, Christine Rosen looks back honestly and movingly to her youth as an evangelical Christian, evoking a world not well known to many, but essential to our understanding of America now and in the future."
- Alan Wolfe, author of One Nation, After All
and The Transformation of American Religion
"A warm, surprisingly entertaining glimpse of fundamentalism through a child's eyes."
- Kirkus Reviews
"Poignant, unsparing, and funny. . . . She speaks with moving appreciation about her religious education's great rewards, and as she pursues direct questions about belief -- 'How enduring is childhood faith?' -- she makes sharp observations about the experience of childhood and how young people learn about the world."
- Booklist
"[Rosen's] tone is affectionate . . . and her subtle humor and ironically accurate descriptions will appeal to others with stringent religious backgrounds."
- Publisher's Weekly
REVIEWS:
". . delightful and compelling. . . beautifully crafted and evocative. . . Rosen's memoir is an affectionate but uncompromising work that may be one of the best descriptions of faith through a child's eyes yet written." (Washington Post, February 26, 2006)
"Exotica, human and otherwise, are a permanent part of a Florida childhood," Christine Rosen says early on in this extremely engaging "Memoir of a Divine Girlhood." She does not say so explicitly, but chief among the exotica was the fundamentalist Christian education she received at Keswick Christian School in St. Petersburg. . . . .we can be glad, as Ms. Rosen is, that she had the experience, for along with her we have learned a lot." (Denver Post, January 1, 2006)
"My Fundamentalist Education" promises a glimpse into a world we soy latte addicts don't understand but can no longer dismiss. Controversy about evolution, Christian blockbusters in Hollywood, a president who speaks in biblical code. . . With her intelligence and tongue-in-cheek tone, she comes across as the ideal liaison . . .With a sharp eye, keen wit and agile prose, Rosen looks back in amusement at Keswick's rituals." (Salon.com, January 3, 2006)
"Many authors who write about their childhoods do so with the obvious hindsight of adult logic and analysis, sprinkled with snippets of memory. Rosen . . .shows a talent for reversing this formula . . . She does not indulge in self-pity or attempt to get the reader's sympathy. Instead, she writes about her turbulent beginnings with heartfelt honesty and affection." (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, January 15, 2006)
". . . the prospect of understanding how any kind of religious fundamentalism works -- especially how it takes hold in a young mind -- lends "My Fundamentalist Education" an air of special relevance. . . Rosen, a straightforward and congenial narrator, guides us ably through her nine years as a student at Keswick Christian School in St. Petersburg, Fla. She offers a multitude of detailed portraits. . . .the book remains powerful on its own terms. . . [Rosen] perfectly capture[s] the indiscriminate ways a child can hunger for explanations about the world." (New York Times Book Review, February 5, 2006)
"Her memoir began, she says, as a conversation that grew out of a question asked by her husband: What do fundamentalists believe? From there flowed a steady stream of detailed recollections, of immersion in a way of thinking and living that became second nature, until she grew old enough to question what it all really meant. Rosen's writing is sharply evocative . . . Her fundamentalist education remains a part of her, and readers will take away a lasting impression as well." (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 12, 2006)
". . insightful and heartfelt. . .Thankfully, Rosen never gets too heavy-handed or preachy in her captivating memoir. Taken on its own terms, My Fundamentalist Education is a surprisingly entertaining book that will rekindle memories (good and bad) of anyone who ever attended any religious school, Sunday school or vacation Bible school." (Denver Rocky Mountain News, February 28, 2006)
