Bringing Up Kids When Church Lets You Down

“This book is about the various places and ways that uncertainty shows up for parents who, having left or altered the faith they once knew, now must decide what to give their kids. It’s about church attendance, Bible memorization, school choices, and sex talks. It’s about forging new paths in racial justice and creation care while the intractable voices in your head call you a pagan Marxist for doing so.” After the spectacular implosion of her ministry career, Bekah McNeel was left disillusioned and without the foundation of certainty she had built her life on. But rather than leaving the Christian faith altogether, she hung out around the edges, began questioning oversimplified categories of black and white that she had been taught were sacred, and became comfortable living in gray areas while starting a new career in journalism. Then she had kids. From the moment someone asked if she was going to have her first child baptized, Bekah began to wonder if the conservative evangelical Christianity she grew up with was really something she wanted to give her children. That question only became more complicated when she had her second child months before White evangelicals carried Donald Trump to victory in the 2016 presidential election. Soon, Bekah found that other parents were asking similar questions as they broke with their fundamentalist religious upbringing and took on new values: Could they raise their kids to live with both the security of faith and the freedom of open-mindedness? To value both Scripture and social justice? To learn morality without shame? In Bringing Up Kids When Church Lets You Down, Bekah gathers voices from history, scholarship, and her own community to guide others who, like her, are on a quest to shed the false certainty and toxic perfectionism of their past to become better, healthier parents—while still providing strong spiritual foundations for their children. She writes with humor and empathy, providing wise reflections (but not glib answers!) on difficult parenting topics while reminding us that we are not alone, even when we break away from the crowd.

"This book is about how American religious parents approach the handing on of their religious practices and beliefs to their children. We know a lot about the importance of parents in faith transmission and factors that influence its effectiveness. But we know much less about the actual beliefs, feelings, and activities of the parents themselves when it comes to the intergenerational transmission of religious faith and practice"--

The Orthodox Christian tradition is filled with wisdom and guidance about the biblical path of salvation. Yet this guidance remains largely inaccessible to parents and often disconnected from the parenting challenges we face in our homes. Parenting Toward the Kingdom will help you make the connections between the spiritual life as we understand it in the Orthodox Church and the ongoing challenges of raising children. It takes the best child development research and connects it with the timeless truths of our Christian faith to offer you real strategies for navigating the challenges of daily life.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NATIONAL BESTSELLER "An intimate window into the world of American evangelicalism. Fellow exvangelicals will find McCammon’s story both startlingly familiar and immensely clarifying, while those looking in from the outside can find no better introduction to the subculture that has shaped the hopes and fears of millions of Americans." —Kristin Kobes Du Mez, New York Times bestselling author of Jesus and John Wayne The first definitive book that names the growing social movement of people leaving the church: the exvangelicals. Growing up in a deeply evangelical family in the Midwest in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Sarah McCammon was strictly taught to fear God, obey him, and not question the faith. Persistently worried that her gay grandfather would go to hell unless she could reach him, or that her Muslim friend would need to be converted, and that she, too, would go to hell if she did not believe fervently enough, McCammon was a rule-follower and—most of the time—a true believer. But through it all, she was increasingly plagued by fears and deep questions as the belief system she'd been carefully taught clashed with her expanding understanding of the outside world. After spending her early adult life striving to make sense of an unraveling worldview, by her 30s, she found herself face-to-face with it once again as she covered the Trump campaign for NPR, where she witnessed first-hand the power and influence that evangelical Christian beliefs held on the political right. Sarah also came to discover that she was not alone: she is among a rising generation of the children of evangelicalism who are growing up and fleeing the fold, who are thinking for themselves and deconstructing what feel like the “alternative facts” of their childhood. Rigorously reported and deeply personal, The Exvangelicals is the story of the people who make up this generational tipping point, including Sarah herself. Part memoir, part investigative journalism, this is the first definitive book that names and describes the post-evangelical movement: identifying its origins, telling the stories of its members, and examining its vast cultural, social, and political impact.

Shares uplifting advice about the virtues of forgiveness, offering strategic and biblically based advice on how to achieve peace and personal fulfillment by letting go of past wrongs.

Helping Christian parents raise their children with grace and the gospel, this book addresses topics such as the law, God's forgiveness and love, and true heart obedience--a great resource for raising grace-filled kids.

Empower Your Kids to Respond Wellto the Hard Questions That Threaten Their Faith It's no secret that children of all ages are being exposed to negative criticism of Christianity as they spend time at school, with friends, or online. Are you prepared to talk with your kids about how they can effectively answer the tough questions that come their way? In Keeping Your Kids on God's Side, you'll find 40 of the most common challenges kids face—along with clear, easy-to-understand responses you can discuss together. This book will help you... encourage open dialogue on issues your kids might hesitate to talk about replace your children's doubts with the confidence only God's truth can give equip your kids to build the good thinking skills essential for today "I almost wish my children were young again so I could use Natasha Crain's book with them." Nancy Pearcey Bestselling author of Total Truth

In this searing meditation on the bonds of family and the allure of extremist faith, one of today’s most celebrated Christian writers recounts his unexpected journey from a strict fundamentalist upbringing to a life of compassion and grace—a revelatory memoir that “invites comparison to Hillbilly Elegy” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). “Searing, heartrending . . . This stunning tale reminds us that the only way to keep living is to ask God for the impossible: love, forgiveness, and hope.”—Kate Bowler, New York Times bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason Raised by an impoverished widow who earned room and board as a Bible teacher in 1950s Atlanta, Philip Yancey and his brother, Marshall, found ways to venture out beyond the confines of their eight-foot-wide trailer. But when Yancey was in college, he uncovered a shocking secret about his father’s death—a secret that began to illuminate the motivations that drove his mother to extreme, often hostile religious convictions and a belief that her sons had been ordained for a divine cause. Searching for answers, Yancey dives into his family origins, taking us on an evocative journey from the backwoods of the Bible Belt to the bustling streets of Philadelphia; from trailer parks to church sanctuaries; from family oddballs to fire-and-brimstone preachers and childhood awakenings through nature, music, and literature. In time, the weight of religious and family pressure sent both sons on opposite paths—one toward healing from the impact of what he calls a “toxic faith,” the other into a self-destructive spiral. Where the Light Fell is a gripping family narrative set against a turbulent time in post–World War II America, shaped by the collision of Southern fundamentalism with the mounting pressures of the civil rights movement and Sixties-era forces of social change. In piecing together his fragmented personal history and his search for redemption, Yancey gives testament to the enduring power of our hunger for truth and the possibility of faith rooted in grace instead of fear. “I truly believe this is the one book I was put on earth to write,” says Yancey. “So many of the strands from my childhood—racial hostility, political division, culture wars—have resurfaced in modern form. Looking back points me forward.”