Overview

A memoir of leaving the evangelical Church and the search for radical new ways to build community, reckoning with religious trauma and Midwestern values as a means to unveil how evangelicalism directly impacts every American--religious or not--and has been a major force in driving our democracy towards fascism. Jeanna Kadlec knew what it meant to be faithful--in her marriage to a paster's son, in the comfortable life ahead of her, in her God--but there was no denying the truth that lived under that conviction: she was queer and, if she wanted to survive, she would need to leave behind the church and every foundational building block she knew. Heretic is a memoir of heretical rebirth. From the story of Lilith to celebrity purity rings, a newly married Kadlec interrogates how her indoctrination and years of piety intersects with her Midwest working-class upbringing as she navigates graduate school in Boston, revealing another insidious truth--that conservative Christianity has both built and undermined our political power structures, poisoned our pop culture, and infected the way we interact with one another. Weaving the personal with powerful critique, Heretic explores how we can radically abandon these painful systems by taking a sledgehammer to the comfortable. Whether searching for community in the face of millennial loneliness or wanting to reclaim a secular form of fellowship in everyday life, Kadlec envisions the brilliant possibilities that come with not only daring to want a different way but actually striking out and claiming it for ourselves.

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Jeanna Kadlec is a culture columnist at Longreads and her writing has appeared in ELLE, O the Oprah Magazine, Allure, NYLON, Literary Hub, Catapult, The Rumpus, Autostraddle, Hyperallergic, Narratively, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. Previously, she was the Director of Content for Chani Nicholas Inc. Raised in the church but left it in her twenties, Jeanna spent her formative years in the Midwest and now lives in New York City. Iva-Marie Palmer is the author of The Summers and The End of the World as We Know It. She grew up in Chicago's south suburbs and now lives in Los Angeles with her husband.

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