When We Were on Fire, by Addie Zierman

I picked up Addie Zierman's book When We Were on Fire: A Memoir of Consuming Faith, Tangled Love, and Starting Over with the anticipation that she would reflect on the simplistic, cliched faith of her childhood and tell the story of how she matured into an adult believer.  That is true, to a certain extent.  But rather than a light-hearted, nostalgic, humorous look at Christian life and culture of her youth, her story is a bitter, ungrateful rejection of her religious upbringing.

I get that many people have been hurt by churches and religious experiences.  Zierman writes about her horrible experiences with evangelical Christianity, which led her to cynicism, depression, alcohol abuse, and despair.  What was her horrible experience?  Molested by a youth pastor?  Church leaders bilked her family out of their life savings?  Beaten with a paddle by her Sunday School teacher?  Actually, none of the above.  Turns out her horrible experience was falling in love with a controlling, more-spiritual-than-thou, "Super Christian" boyfriend.

Now, I know bad relationships can have lasting effects, but it hardly seems fair to tie all of her bad feelings about conservative Christianity to this boy, who is certainly not representative of Christians.  Christians who grew up in the evangelical world of See You at the Pole, True Love Waits, TeenMania, Christian ska bands, and WWJD bracelets will get a chuckle out of her experiences.  Christians who attended a Christian college will nod in recognition with Addie as she recounts the visiting hours at the dorm, the residence hall Bible study leaders, and the student lifestyle covenants that are taken less-than-seriously by many.  It goes without saying that legalism and moralism permeate the church, especially in more conservative circles.  But is all that to be jettisoned, belittled, and pilloried because of a bad break-up?  I don't think so.

Zierman's journey is less theological than cultural.  Little is said about her actual faith or relationship with her savior, except how it is expressed in her culture and surroundings.  The interesting thing about her memoir is that it reflects a larger shift.  Young Christians today are more open to secular music, drinking alcohol, and cursing than the WWJD/SYATP crowd.  Does that make them less Christian?  Not necessarily.  I was bothered by Zierman's implication that the WWJD/SYATP crowd was less Christian.  She writes with a tone of superiority over the childish, immature, rules-following, unthinking people she and her co-believers were.  She is so glad she is above all that now.

Many readers will be able to relate to Zierman's story.  Every Christian has to reach the point at which his or her faith is not just her parents', her church's, her culture's, or her college's, but her own.  She found her faith, and as it turns out, it doesn't seem to look much different from what she grew up with, as little as she would like to admit it.

To the extent that you find your story in hers, you may enjoy When We Were on Fire.  I found it to be rather depressing and not very encouraging.  She has a gift with words, but I have to say one stylistic choice she made drove me nuts.  At times, she wrote all in second person about her own experiences: "You're a little bit weepy. . . . You have caused him to stumble. . . . You are lonely. . . . You inhale sharply and back away. . . . You should have let him kiss you. . . ." and on and on.  I know she is wanting to draw the reader into a shared experience, but I did not like the style.  But this stylistic quibble aside, I still didn't enjoy When We Were on Fire as much as I'd hoped to.


Thanks to Blogging for Books for the complimentary electronic review copy!