Amazon.com: My Fundamentalist Education: Books

This is the next book I will be buying - it sounds really good. There is a link to purchase it on the left and I thank anyone who uses it - it will help me get the book that much quicker. - "Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly Rosen (Preaching Eugenics), a fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, knows her King James Bible backward and forward. For this she thanks the fundamentalist school she attended from kindergarten until eighth grade, when her parents finally figured out 'what we were learning about television, and movies, and, most important, about men and women.' In many respects Keswick Christian School in the 1980s was like fabled Catholic schools of the 1950s: misbehaving students were paddled, girls forced to kneel on the floor to check skirt lengths, boys and girls required to keep a respectful six-inch distance from one another. But to Keswick students, Catholics and even some Protestants weren't true Christians, and it was incumbent upon the children to learn 'strict morals and Bible belief' and then to 'witness' to playmates and families. Alas, writes Rosen, 'by the close of third grade, I found I'd not yet converted a single living soul.' While young Christine was absorbing an ascetic worldview, her erratic mother was discovering—and unsuccessfully trying to interest her daughter in—Pentecostal fervor. Although today Rosen lives 'an entirely secular life,' her tone is affectionate rather than critical, and her subtle humor and ironically accurate descriptions will appeal to others with stringent religious backgrounds. (Jan.) Copyright � Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Rosen, an author (Preaching Eugenics, 2004) and fellow of the Ethics & Public Policy Center in Washington, grew up in a Fundamentalist Christian community in seventies and eighties Florida. In this poignant, unsparing, and funny memoir, she recounts the years between preschool and seventh grade, during which she attended a strict, religious school; embraced Bible teachings; entertained fantasies of becoming a missionary; and anxiously looked for signs of the End Days and the Antichrist. (Ronald Wilson Reagan, whose name contains three parts of six letters each, doesn't escape her suspicion.) Rosen speaks frankly about her growing disenchantment with patriarchal doctrines that ultimately contributed to her break with Fundamentalism, and she allows that, as a preteen girl, 'perhaps I would have done better hearing more about Darwin and less about harlotry.' Still, she speaks with moving appreciation about her religious education's great rewards, and as she pursues direct questions about belief--'How enduring is childhood faith?'--she makes sharp observations about the experience of childhood and how young people learn about the world. Gillian Engberg Copyright � American Library Association. All rights reserved"