God’s Ex Girlfriend in Kirkus

Gloria Beth Amodeo’s memoir about leaving evangelism received an excellent review in Kirkus:

A former Evangelical Christian reflects on her decision to abandon the church.

Amodeo was a freshman at Fairleigh Dickinson majoring in theater arts and creative writing when she met and befriended Cate, an Evangelical Christian and a staunch member of Campus Crusade for Christ. Having grown up in a frantic household with no moral center, Amodeo, inexperienced and insecure, longed for purpose, connection, and community. She was also desperate for a release from the emotional trauma of her mother’s “prescription pill addiction.” She became Cate’s vision of the ideal candidate for religious conversion, especially after the author intimately shared her hopes and fears. Through a series of lesson plans and intensive training meetings, Crusade members taught Amodeo how to integrate herself into social circles, gain the group’s trust, and then follow Jesus’ “Great Commission” by proselytizing about the joys of Evangelical Christianity. She emerged as a militantly focused believer, openly cheerleading her belief system and focusing on converting as many of her friends and colleagues as possible through the “strategic empathy” tactics she was taught. Amodeo writes with a smooth combination of brutal honesty and wry humor. Her chronicle of Cate’s subtle manipulation and “intimidating sense of judgement that she swung around when she was debating morality or anything that made her feel righteous” is both sad and disturbing. The author’s epiphany arrived after a particularly eye-opening, monthslong Summer Project program and a series of requirements from the church that conflicted with her identity as a woman who believed in free will. Furthermore, she writes, she was experiencing “an attraction to other women that whipped through my mind, a bisexual identity I hadn’t allowed myself to have.” Religious readers with open minds will appreciate Amodeo’s candidly written personal journey, whether they condone her decisions or not.

An enlightening, cautionary tale about the seductive, sometimes manipulative strategies of Evangelicalism.