This is Not About Believers; This is About Gina Welch

A Review for Gina Welch's In the Land of Believers, written on LibraryThing and Amazon

If I were to rate this book by its stated intention, I would have given it two stars. As an attempt to bridge the gap between the secular world and the Evangelical world, the book contributes precious little of substance. Instead I rated this book on its value as a means to draw someone into an experience that is created through words: most of the book was about as interesting as any other well-written book detailing someone's investigation into some part of the world, but the ending actually gave me the nausea that I imagine she must have felt and made my skin crawl the way I assume her skin crawled before making the big reveal.

But again, I'm judging the book based on how well it told the story of Gina Welch, its author; as an investigation into the 'Land of the Believers,' it offers little. The book begins with Welch's preconceptions of who Evangelicals are - the book then proceeds to confirm most of those preconceptions, but with affection. That is to say, Welch confirms that Evangelicals are every bit as homophobic and ignorant as she initially believes, but now they are taking up prime real estate of her Dunbar Number. She loves them, but yeah they are what you think they are.

The book details the adventure of Californian Gina Welch discovering that her liberal worldview does not exclude her from the kind of prejudice she (prejudicially) assumes to be the domain of the Evangelical Christians surrounding her in the state of Virginia. She decides to take an anthropological journey into Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church, going so far as to try to have an experience she can point to as her conversion moment and joining certain smaller groups within the larger church, predominantly a singles ministry. Her heart is progressively won over; her mind remains steadfastly secular. Her journey reaches its zenith in a missions trip to Alaska where she participates in leading 101 people to accept Christ as their Lord and Savior, after which she decides that she can no longer continue lying to the people who have become dear friends to her and consequently bows out of their lives without explanation.

The story as a whole tends to drag. Welch adds a lot of details that I believe were included to add flavor and to make subtle suggestions to lead the reader to certain conclusions (X Woman wore too much Y kind of makeup, implying vanity; I painted my nails in good girl pink before heading to church, implying scrutiny; his chivalry was reaching performance art levels, implying chauvinism), which is perfectly acceptable, reasonable, and desirable in a book like this, but after a while the details just feel like they are mucking up the pace. Then there are times when Welch discards the notion that the story is about the church and just begins talking about her day-to-day existence, which leads me to believe that Welch was aware that the fact that she made this journey was more interesting than anything she might have discovered in the course of it. Ideally I think the book could have shaved off a third of its length and been more effective, but that could just be my attention span talking (I would say the same about this review I'm writing, so, hypocrisy).

By the third portion of the book, which details Welch's trip to Alaska, you become certain that this is no longer about Evangelical culture. She tries to keep the spotlight focused: she throws out general observations about Evangelicals based on particular occurrences with varying degrees of shoehorning, but they cease to feel organic at that point. Soon you realize that this is a story  about the lengths this woman will go to to write a book. It's a story about someone feeling so little about an entire people group that rampant deception in the course of developing intimate relationships seemed perfectly acceptable to her, and then falling in love with those people while still holding onto this devastating deception.

I quickly became bored reading about Alaska, but I didn't stop. The mundane events of the Alaskan mission trip are not interesting, but you feel the tension building because you know she has to reveal what she has done to her friends. The spotlight shifts from the group to Gina herself - who is becoming progressively more aware of the gravity of her deception.

Approach it based on what it advertises and you will be disappointed. Approach it as what it is - a story of the depths one will go to in order to tell a story - and you might find yourself intrigued. Further, and perhaps this is the books greatest contribution, it is a cautionary tale about failing to see those who are different from you as still being people. This seemed to have been one of the goals of the book and this goal the book fulfills by virtue of existing. The book itself is the warning.

An Evangelical World

Currently I have been reading In the Land of Believers by Gina Welch, a book that I deem fully worth every cent of the dollar I paid for it at the Dollar Tree. The book details the adventure of an atheist woman who joins Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church and goes undercover as a Christian to immerse herself in Evangelical culture in hopes of understanding the culture and consequently writing a book about said culture that would help bridge the divide between Evangelical America and secular America. Hitherto I see no evidence to suggest that this book will bridge any divides apart from the divides in Welch's own character (divides that seem to have been created by the experiment rather than preceding it), but the book is certainly interesting and promising to the strange breed of atheist like myself.

However, the book did stir one thing in me that I am not sure if it intended to stir, and that I find I need to be reminded of on occasion: that I would not do well in an Evangelical world, that I do not want to see or live in an Evangelical world.

Knowing that skepticism and doubt are integral to my worldview, that I find value in the emotional shades of happiness, despair, pain, and pleasure rather than believing that a sunny disposition rooted in the confidence that in all things God works for those who love him should be maintained and sought at all times, and that I just plain can not imagine seeing the world in that monolithic way that identifies goodness with Godliness and sees all goodness as being derived from the extent to which God's will is fulfilled, assures me that I just could not breathe that air. This last point, goodness being identical with godliness, may have been one of the things that most drove my heart away from Christianity even while my mind retained loyalties; to me it made the world so tiny, although I am certain that there are many who would insist, citing personal experience, that it makes the world more vast.

To be sure, I imagine that most in the Evangelical world are not eager to breathe my air either. I chalk it up to a difference of natures and a difference of what experiences one finds livable. All the same, though faith and religion are of the utmost importance to me (strange breed of atheist that I am), I don't ever want to interact with that faith wrapped in the body of Evangelical Christianity.

Ambition Tempered by Apathy

Let apathy encompass your life and you will be a nihilist, everything will be equally worthless as everything else and it will be impossible to love or pursue anything in life. On the other hand, let ambition encompass your life and you may find that there is so much that is worthwhile and so much that is lovely that it will likewise be impossible to pursue anything because your love is spread so thin. If no roads are worth walking or if many roads are worth walking, you remain standing still staring at the landscape.

So you let your ambition run wild; you wander around collecting things to care about, ensuring that you stave off nihilism with will and desire. Then you look at your mere twenty-four hour day coupled with an anemic seven day week and your growing collection of fetal projects that just lack the nourishment to make it to term. Then you've got to turn around and go in the other direction: pruning, burning, chiseling. You are going to have to drop some hopes and smother some ambitions so that the others have enough resources to survive.

Remember: You are mortal, therefore finite, therefore particular. You can't be everything; every moment you spend carries a cost.

Repetition Repeated

Because even leaving the whole concept of writing behind, we have to repeat ourselves to maintain any kind of stability in ourselves. We need rituals, we need habits, we need traditions that bring us back to our past. Without this kind of repetition, our present self lacks ties to our past selves and will be equally alien to our future selves. We will constantly spin off in whatever direction seems most lovely at any given time, we will lack anchors to ground ourselves and bring us back to familiar points of view. It is in this way that we have something like a persistent self.

That is why we should not fear redundancy. This is why we should be okay with repetition. This is why we should embrace covering old ground. This is why it is desirable that we should do the same thing again and again.

- Me

You cannot always control the course, and sometimes you veer off in a direction you did not expect. Not necessarily in a dramatic sense, sometimes it is just an arrangement that keeps you from doing what you think you ought to be doing, and in all cases one must work with what is in front of you.

But when the environment is conducive to being rebuilt the way you like it, though, you've got to look back and start repeating yourself lest you lose that past. Go back to what has already been built; return to your past territory. Then go on building and expanding again.

Adoption, Lineage, and Self from the Armchair

GTW: Hey, baby, you know I really want to get back into my blog. I was doing pretty good for a while there, but, like always, meatspace came between me and my internet time. The problem is, I don't have any inspiration yet, can you think of a good question for me to write about?

GF: Well, I can think of a few. How about this one: Is there a deep need for people who are adopted to find their biological parents and if so, what are they hoping to fulfill?

GTW: That's empirical.

GF: What?

GTW: That question can be measured, studied, and answered through the use of empirical data. You could interview adopted people, you could observe their behavior, and then definitively answer to what extent adopted people need to find their biological parents. 

GF: Oh, I see. Well I guess if your penis isn't big enough to answer that-

GTW: I'll do it!

Is there a deep need for people who are adopted to find their biological parents and if so, what are they hoping to fulfill?

On the one hand, this is a question that can be investigated empirically, on the other hand I don't do very much of that here. Instead I like to use questions like these as springboards into investigating staples of human experience - even if sometimes those experiences only come to a handful of people. It is my hope that my speculations, investigations, and explanations are accurate and illuminating, but if you are an adopted person and upon reading this you just shake your head and say, 'this guy has no idea what he's talking about,' well, yeah, no argument here. The value in this particular blog, if there is any value, is that hopefully someone can relate to the desires and needs described or will find the desires and needs described interesting and worth contemplating.

A few months back I wrote a kind of pretentious little number about the Self and the Other. The point of it being that something we see as Self in one comparative scheme could be Other in another. Self can be seen as a kind of gamut or gradient (more-Self; less-Self) instead of a binary (Self; not-Self). In that blog I was looking at the individual in relation to sensation and environment, but we can play out another scenario when we compare the individual to other members of society.

I am a man, so, I am mankind rather than, say, animals, rocks, and trees. I am an American, rather than European, African, or Asian, which are Other to me. I am a member of my family, which means I am a Wise and whatever you are is Other. 

For an adopted person, however, it is not clear which is Self and which is Other. You are raised according to the values, traditions, desires, and idiosyncrasies of one family, but your genetic material comes from another. So which one is Self? 

In fact, the one which is Self will depend on the particulars of your own nature. Maybe you do not care about genetics (although, that certainly will not stop genetics from having its say over your life), and consequently it does not matter to you who you birth parents are. Alternately, maybe you believe that your life is written in your DNA, so no matter how your new family raised you, you are not really theirs but rather belong with the people who put you up for adoption. In all likelihood, though, you will find that neither of these viewpoints encompass the whole picture.

The essence of the need to find ones biological parents is the need for a complete picture of oneself. This goes back to my gamut of the Self - in fact there is a great deal of what we consider to be in some way our selves that we are ignorant of. The need to find biological parents is about acquiring more information, finding out things about oneself that may have been previously overlooked.

It could be silly things like discovering that all members of one's adoptive family have to pee as soon as they wake up; it could be deeper matters like discovering a predisposition to addictive behavior in the biological family or finding inordinate bravery among the members of one's biological heritage. It could mean finding sources for known idiosyncrasies (say, finding out that everyone in your family has to unmix the mixed nuts before they can eat them), it could be finding out that you are a part of people groups that you never previously thought to identify with.

So, let me tell you about my birth family... the Goldbergs....

 We can argue about the exact proportions, but it is safe to say that both upbringing and genetics play significant roles in who we are and how we behave. For this reason, the adopted have a desire to know who supplied the genetics. Further, we (even those who are not adopted) desire to trace our ancestry, we feel pride when we find out about the heroic or monumental roles our ancestors played - pride like we somehow found out that we are in some way greater than we were previously. It is all about discovering Self.

And maybe there's just a twinge of hope that we'll find out that there is something awesome in us that we never knew about. Maybe we hope that we'll find some discovery that will give us a brand new vantage point from which to judge ourselves. Maybe we are better than we ever thought possible. We might have that hope, but then, discovering your heritage does not in any way alter your heritage. You still are who you always were, in all your glory and shame, all that would change is your perception of it. 

But then, maybe that perception makes all the difference.

The Fragility of Productivity

This is presumptuous of me to say, since I'm not a writer (except in the sense of these blogs and the, uh, Batman story I've devoted my present life to), but I have come to the conclusion that the writer needs one of two things to pursue his activity: solitude or a close circle of exclusively supportive and understanding people who endorse the writer's desire to write. Naturally the writer can not expect the entire world to support his endeavors, but his close circle, the people he interacts with daily in his free time, must support his endeavors.

The reason I say this is that productivity is easily disrupted; even if the will to write is healthy, distractions derail the process or increase the flaws in the products. To minimize distractions requires an environment where the collective will of the people occupying the space is in agreement that distractions ought to be minimized. Even a single rogue will can lead to disruption... especially since the invention of the TV.

So which is to be preferred? Solitude? Or support? I will not make a judgment here as I do not think that this is a case of worse and better, but a case of different heights and different flavors being produced by different conditions.

But, then, one can not stop being productive simply because conditions are not ideal, but it is always tempting to do so. This is a case of cathartic bitching.

A Single Post for December

Just to maintain a sliver of activity, I'll throw up this post.

Presently I'm working on a story, so most of my creativity and mental energy is going toward the book instead of blog posts.

Plus I'm coming off a pretty nasty stomach flu.

I have nothing of substance to share.

So I'll put this up instead.

So Much Repetition

Sometimes you'll find a thought, a fantasy, or a project large enough to capture every free thought that you have. Your mind will seem to be constantly playing thoughts with the same flavor; you can savor the productivity and the love that's involved in that kind of single-minded pursuit, but at the same time it is easy to begin wanting change for change's own sake.

Especially because at some point the thought will creep into your head whether or not the thing you are focused on actually deserves that much attention. It is here that you have to be cautious - there's going to be an impulse that says it's best to cut your losses and find new mental territory to dwell in for awhile. As with most impulses, there's no clear correct response. Shifting up focus keeps you well-rounded, but staying the course allows for the possibility of reaching an emotional height.

Self vs. Other

I imagine my body and I imagine the surrounding landscape. I observe the sensations of the body, but the landscape I observe only through the impressions it leaves on my senses. The body I call Self - the landscape I call Other.

Go back further. I imagine my mind and I imagine my body. I apprehend the thoughts of the mind directly, but the sensations of the body must be made conscious for me to apprehend them. The mind I call Self - the body I call Other.

Deeper still, the thoughts come when they want. The mind works, what is conscious becomes conscious without any input of mine, and the thoughts pop up. The mind I call Other - what then is the Self? Only the perception.

Wonka the Individualist Ideal and Wonka the Broken Recluse

The fundamental difference between Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka and Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka is their relation to the rest of humanity. 

Gene Wilder's character has attained a kind of superiority, has ascended to a height compared to the rest of us. He acts with full understanding, nothing occurs that is outside of his control or too overwhelming to deal with (see: the Slugworth subplot), and the o

ther characters act to prove themselves to Wonka. The disasters that befall the children are indications that they fail to live up to what Wonka needs in a replacement; when they leave Wonka hints that they may be a little wiser, that is, their encounter with the factory improves them as people. Charlie is only given the factory when he demonstrates that he would not harm Wonka even when it would benefit his family.

Wonka is an individualistic ideal. He shuts himself off from humanity and becomes someone great. He is at no disadvantage, his quirkiness is a manifestation of the fact that he is satisfied in being himself and feels no need to conform to whatever might be expected of a business of his stature or a man of his age.

Johnny Depp on the other hand is a broken man. Depp stands apart from the rest of us, but at a disadvantage. He is different from the rest of us, but his difference is a result of his estrangement from his father, there is no indication that he could have lived as a normal man and instead chose to remake himself. His quirkiness arises from not understanding himself or the world around him. He is a great chocolateer, but in almost every other area he is broken.

The children in Depp's factory are being subjected to punishment because Depp does not trust them and expects them to fail (as Charlie pointed out, the Oompa Loompas seemed to have practiced the songs that correspond to each child's catastrophe), Depp.merely wants whichever one is the least worst to be his heir. The children do not leave Wonka in any way improved - two of them walk away disfigured. When Charlie chooses his family over Wonka, it shatters Depp's perception of the world; Charlie is the teacher rather than Wonka. He had no understanding of his importance or the extent to which he and his craft are valued. Depp in fact needs Charlie to show him that his individualistic existence and his art as a chocolateer do not fully satisfy him - he must be reconciled with his father and he must find a family (which he finds with the Bucket family).