Da Capo Teas

Coincidentally, that fan letter (received in the early 1990s before I was using e-mail) arrived in the same post delivery as a note from Mom asking me for another dozen signed hardcover copies of that novel so that my mother could send out more to her friends. Mom’s follower had signed her letter “Repent!” My mother signed her note “I’m so proud of you.” Attempting to unravel the mystery of how my mother managed to have attracted such “fans” (through her many books) and who she really was (and is)—a life-embracing free spirit—nagged me into writing this book. Like many evangelicals, mom was a better person than her theology warranted. Through her I wanted to explore why the “worse” a person is, in terms of consistency to their fundamentalist faith, the better a human being they become.

Third, the rightward tilt of the Republicans after Obama’s election has meant that the path taken by the religious right (the movement that most informs the present day Republican Party) was something I felt needed to be better understood. For instance when I’d be interviewed on NPR or by journalists on MSNBC, it often seemed to me that the questions being asked about religious people and beliefs showed that even at best there is a lack of understanding of what it is that has pushed America to the hard right. I felt that I could explain the issues from the point of view of someone who could say “been-there-done-that” and give an insider’s perspective.

Lastly (and this is harder to explain), I felt that the story of the religious right has been told badly because it’s been treated as either an academic subject (for instance when “explaining” the Reconstructionists in terms of American religious history) or a political subject (say the way MSNBC treats religion as it relates to the Tea Party or so-called culture war).