My Journey Out of Religion and into Unconditional Love
By Sheri Pallas
A Review by Dwight A. Moody
The Rev. Dr. Pallas has written two books, and this one volume is a mashup of those two manuscripts.
The first is the narrative of her extraordinary life, up from abuse and dysfunction into achievement and peace. The second is her exploration of religion and especially Christianity with a focus on its shadow side. Both of these are worthy of publication but may have fared better had they been kept separate.
I confess: the story of her life “out of religion” is the more interesting (to me). She writes about her relationship with her super-religious but unlikeable mother, living alone mostly and using guilt and anger to raise her strong-willed child. As she tracks her own evolution in things of life and religion, she recounts a little of her mother’s parallel journey, right up to her death.
I wish she had written more, both of herself and of her mother. I wish she had explained more of her movements round the country and what propelled them and what came of them. I wish she had written more about her educational journey, that big gap between high school and the “University of Sedona” (more on that below).
I wish she had told us where she found love, and inspiration, and direction, and how all that helped her get from where she started to where she is today. In fact, I wish she had told us where she is today: her location, her vocation, her family, her friends, her spiritual community. It is her story that is left incomplete.
What she does, though, is bring us through all the reading she has done in this search to know and be and love, much of it disconnected to her life story. This is the second manuscript that got emmeshed with the first. Here, she ranges far and wide, into the history of biblical interpretation, a review of world religions, and a look at death and what follows.
Little in this second manuscript was new to me; neither was her conclusion: “The church became the antichrist we feared …” (391). At the end, there is a total condemnation of the Christianity she knows or thinks she knows.
I could not help but wonder if she has ever been in a Christian community that practices faith, hope, and love, that follows Jesus, that serves the least of these. She writes, “Christianity has little to do with Jesus’ life” (230). And: “Because of a lack of focus on love, atheists maintain the reason Christians do good is because they are afraid. In contrast, atheists do good because it is the right thing to do” (206). Really?
Those of us in the Christian community are very much aware of the shadow side of our faith and practice; but there is a sunward side, one of truth, courage, generosity, and kindness, populated by thousands of people worthy of imitation. Dr. Pallas seems to have missed so much of this in her reading and in her living.
In fact, she seems at a loss to explain why so many believers, alert as we are to our many shortcomings, nevertheless continue to worship God, follow Jesus, and love our neighbors.
But of her own journey, she does rightly confess: “I did not understand that I was embarking on a pilgrimage that would forever change my life” (379). She is, clearly, a changed woman, and for this we all give thanks. The joy for life that radiates from many pages of this book is infectious, inspirational, and worthy of telling.
I only wish some reader—some proof-reader—had gotten hold of this book before it went to press. See page 298. There are so many formatting failures, from the titles of books to the use of quotations, from the reference citations to the punctuation of her academic degree. And about that degree—the University of Sedona? I have questions about that, and about her apparent leap from high school to doctoral work.
Nevertheless, I salute the personal, intellectual, and spiritual journey the good doctor has recounted in this one book. I suspect that a volume two might be as interesting and even more compelling. Keep learning, Dr. Pallas; keep growing; keep writing; keep seeking the truth.
