Elizabeth Emerson Hancock apparently has some issues with her Southern Baptist upbringing. I picked this up randomly at the library, amused by the title. She tells of her entrepreneurial childhood; during the family yard sale, she offered to baptized all comers in the family pool. Cute. I hoped for some more good stories. The blurbs on the back cover promise "laugh-out-loud funny and touching at the same time" and "hilarious and touching in turn." I can say
Trespassers Will Be Baptized is mildly amusing and sometimes a little touching, but not much more than that. I think I may be the wrong audience, anyway. Perhaps she's aiming for the middle-aged to older female reader.
Hancock distances herself from her Southern Baptist roots, with criticism a little too biting. Her experience in rural Kentucky perhaps tainted her view. I know plenty of Southern Baptists who are intelligent, cultured, and theologically wise. I wonder if her criticisms of Southern Baptists as dumb, moralistic, and simplistic might show her classism against the South, now that she is a Harvard educated east coast lawyer.
I guess I was really more bored than offended by her stories. Whatever the case, I was more than ready to be through with this book.
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