The deconstruction narrative has a rage problem. Taylor Tomlinson has the antidote.
(RNS) — In 2006, the Reverend Barbara Brown Taylor published “Leaving Church,” a memoir of such quiet, luminous precision that it felt less like a departure than a deeper conversion into the world. It was a mid-life reckoning with a vocation, written by a woman who had stayed in the room long enough to earn the right to turn out the lights. Two decades later, the leaving-church narrative has been downgraded from a high-stakes spiritual crisis to a mandatory merit badge for red-state kids who self-sort into blue metro areas and dream of being writers. New York publishing still handsomely rewards the best versions of this genre. But the sheer volume of lesser entries has created the fantasy that rage pays. It rarely does for long. If you listen to the current crop of “deconstruction” memoirists — many of whom are barely out of their twenties — you would think that a sexually conservative household is a crime scene rather than a typical American Christian upbringing. It’s a trope that validates a certain brand of progressive politics …
