Product Description
By the age of twelve, Susan Campbell had been flirting with Jesus for some time, and in her mind, Jesus had been flirting back. Why wouldn’t he? She went to his house three times a week, listened to his stories, loudly and lustily sang songs to him. She even professed her love for him through being baptized. In this lovingly told tale, Susan Campbell takes us into the world of Christian fundamentalism?a world where details really, really matter. And she shows us … More >>
Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl
#1 by John K. Currie on September 4th, 2010
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I, too, emerged from a Midwest Fundamentalist upbringing—although more urban than that of Susan Campbell. I thought the primary thrust of her book would indicate great overlap with my roots. As I read her fine book, I found that not to be the case.
I learned from her book that a female raised in Fundamentalism has a DOUBLE DOSE of rules and regulations. Males raised in Fundamentalism still have the advantage of MALE PREROGATIVE. I believe that this male prerogative makes it easier for some males to break out of Fundamentalism—yet there are many males who wish to stay within Fundamentalism in order to benefit from male domination and male dominion.
I applaud Susan’s ability to take a frank look at her Fundamentalist roots. She does so with mixed feelings. She wants to abandon much of that culture—-yet at the same time she has a nostalgia for the close community and music from her Protestant Fundamentalism. I think her description of Fundamentalism as a sword that pierced her—with a broken piece of that sword still residing within her—will resonate with many who have a Fundamentalist background.
Rating: 5 / 5
#2 by Linzi on September 4th, 2010
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Dating Jesus is memoir of growing up as a girl in a fundamentalist Christian church. Susan Campbell was radically involved with her church – teaching youth groups, organizing buses to worship services, “knocking doors.” But she runs into increasing difficulty of finding an acceptable place of her own within the church; as a woman, many positions are simply not open to her. The book chronicles her growing frustration that “if all believers are urged to stay on the straight and narrow, there seems to be an especially narrow road built for women.”
Despite this, the tone of the book is never bitter or mean-spirited (as many recent publications about fundamentalist Christians have been). Campbell recounts her experiences and growth both with respect and an easy humor. And it’s clear how much thought she has put into her faith – how well she knows her way around the Bible and around its rhetoric. As a feminist Christian, I really appreciated Dating Jesus. Not because it offers a solution to reconciling feminism with faith (if there is one), but because it adds a meaningful perspective to the discussion, going back to the Bible to discuss how women were treated and should be treated in the church. A very thoughtful and well-written book
Rating: 4 / 5
#3 by kim harty on September 4th, 2010
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What a delight to read Susan’s book. What could be a dry subject is made engaging with Susan’s personal style. She intercepts thought provoking ideas and historical perspectives with her witty sidebar comments. I especially enjoyed the final chapter where she pulls all of her history together and attempts to make some final conclusions, if that is at all possible. This book should be a must in all religious and feminist studies classes. It encourages the reader to look at their own belief systems.
Rating: 5 / 5
#4 by Dr. Margo Maine on September 4th, 2010
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Dating Jesus demonstrates Campbell’s unrivaled ability to use her personal experience to explore and and expose broader social issues, such as women’s role in traditional Christian religions. While she writes of her experience as a fundamentalist, the struggles, themes, and disappointments will be familiar to so many women who have felt let down by their churches. Raised as a Catholic, I also had a strong relationship with Christ and with my church, until, painfully, I realized I would never be treated fairly there. Campbell poignantly reminds us that Jesus was a feminist and I needed that reminder desperately. This book is a great read for anyone who thinks about gender equity, women’s rights, religion and the role of the church in our lives and in society. I have the privilege of reading Susan Campbell regularly as she writes for my local paper, the Hartford Courant. Her writing is always thought-provoking and gutsy with enriching personal insights and humor. Dating Jesus will get you thinking about your relationship with religion: it has already profoundly affected mine. Thank you Susan!
Rating: 5 / 5
#5 by Ana Mardoll on September 4th, 2010
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Dating Jesus / 978-0-8070-1066-2
When Amazon started recommending “Dating Jesus”, after purchases of books like Quiverfull and The Purity Myth, I mistakenly believed that the book would cover modern fundamentalist objections to dating and basic sex-education, and I was slightly surprised to find that this book has very little to do with dating (except as the author details her life and journey) and much more to do with her discovery of feminism as she grows up in a fundamentalist environment.
I was instantly charmed by the first few chapters of “Dating Jesus”, as Campbell tells her life story and I recognize so much of myself and my own past in her story. Her writing style is folksy and flows nicely, and so much of her writing reminds me intimately of my own history (particularly counting the wood-knots during the countless sermons she sits through). As the book advances, however, the biographical parts become more and more broken up with feminist history, and often in such a meandering tone that I wish this book had been more rigorously edited. Campbell breaks narrative frequently and often to say, basically, “I can’t believe I just wrote that, that makes me sound bad, LOL!” and the effect feels less conversational over time and becomes more affected (or, in other words: one outburst is spontaneous emotion, but a dozen outbursts are planned). Much of the feminist history presented here is interesting and important, but as it is not filtered through the lens of the biography format (“I felt that Susan B. Anthony…”) but rather is just given in a flat textbook format, the flow of the book feels broken and jagged.
Disregarding the non-scholarly material regarding Biblical history and authorship, there is a lot here that is interesting, but the format feels awkward and forced. I wish the feminism information had been framed less in a ‘textbook format’ (“Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote ‘The Woman’s Bible’ in 1898, discuss.”) and more in terms of how Campbell felt, as a girl, upon learning about ‘The Woman’s Bible’ – and what she felt about the contents, then and now. The jumps from biography (how Campbell feels about church, boyfriends, and brothers) to history with very little bridge in-between creates the impression that Campbell does not really remember how she felt, or perhaps does not know how she feels now, but I would much prefer to read Campbell’s piecing together of her likely childhood response to this marriage of her holy Bible and her intuitive feminism, as opposed to the novel equivalent of a Wikipedia page with dates and quotes and factoids.
I wanted very much to like “Dating Jesus”, but by the end of the book I was left with the impression that Campbell didn’t have as much to say on her childhood as I wanted to read. The biography sections are superb, the historical sections are dry but probably factual, the Biblical sections are marked with that fundamentalist blindness that believes Biblical study should occur in a vacuum – beginning and ending only with the ‘approved’ Bible books, and nothing else – but the assortment as a whole fails to mesh, and ends up feeling like three short books wedged uncomfortably into one.
~ Ana Mardoll
Rating: 3 / 5