Elizabeth Passarella - Good Apple

PRAISE FOR GOOD APPLE

With sly humor, ecumenical warmth, and disarming frankness, Elizabeth Passarella builds bridges between red and blue and North and South. Good Apple makes a strong case for New York City as the kingdom of Godand for handwritten thank-you notes.

ADA CALHOUN, AUTHOR OF ST. MARKS IS DEAD, WEDDING TOASTS ILL NEVER GIVE, AND WHY WE CANT SLEEP

I, a total heathen, love this book. Elizabeth Passarella understands that none of us is as simple as any one of our labels might suggest. Not religious? Not a Southerner or a New Yorker? All the more reason to read Good Apple.

MARY LAURA PHILPOTT, AUTHOR OF I MISS YOU WHEN I BLINK

Elizabeth Passarella is a terrible Christian woman of low breeding and ill repute, which is exactly why you should read this book. Those are my favorite kinds of authors!

HARRISON SCOTT KEY, AUTHOR OF WORLDS LARGEST MAN AND CONGRATULATIONS, WHO ARE YOU AGAIN?

With her wit, warmth, and hilarious transparency, Elizabeth Passarella shows us that Southerners, with their gentility, and New Yorkers, with their grit, both have hearts wide open to the world. Plus, I inherently trust anyone who believes in church clothes, can sing every word of El Shaddai, and professes spiritual truths using the Radio City Rockettes. Yall are going to love Elizabeth and this book.

SARAH STEWART HOLLAND, COHOST OF THE PANTSUIT POLITICS PODCAST AND COAUTHOR OF I THINK YOURE WRONG (BUT IM LISTENING): A GUIDE TO GRACE-FILLED POLITICAL CONVERSATIONS

In the comedic confounded-believer tradition of Anne Lamott, Elizabeth Passarella redefines good faith for mea Jewish, atheist, pro-choice New Yorker. I laughed at all her jokes, dog-eared all my favorite pages, admired her fearlessness, and felt abiding curiosity about her beliefs. Shes building a bridge to get us all to the same human side of thingsand to save us there.

CATHERINE NEWMAN, AUTHOR OF HOW TO BE A PERSON AND CATASTROPHIC HAPPINESS

Good Apple

2021 by Elizabeth Passarella

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Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.Zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Passarella, Elizabeth, 1976- author.

Title: Good apple : tales of a southern evangelical in New York / Elizabeth Passarella.

Description: Nashville : Thomas Nelson, 2020. | Summary: A wickedly smart, utterly hilarious debut from a Southern Living columnist--mother of three, Southerner married to a New Yorker, evangelical Christian, and Democrat--about the absurdity, chaos, and strange sacredness of her life on Manhattans Upper West Side-- Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020020611 (print) | LCCN 2020020612 (ebook) | ISBN 9781400218578 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781400218820 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Passarella, Elizabeth, 1976- | Christian biography--New York. Classification: LCC BR1725.P2728 A3 2020 print) | LCC BR1725. P2728 (ebook) | DDC 277.47/1083092--dc23

Epub Edition November 2020 9781400218820

Printed in the United States of America

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For my dad

CONTENTS

THE THING ABOUT BEING AN EVANGELICAL Christian and also a Southerner living in New York City, raising your children in an apartment where one of them sleeps in a closet, is that there are a lot of people in your life to disappoint.

This is a shame, because I spend an inordinate amount of my time trying to get everyone on my side.

I want my mother to be proud of the life Ive built, even though it looks so different from what she imagined for me. She is, on most days, proud of meI truly believe thatbut then a friend will casually ask her if I still live in New York, and where in the world am I going to put that third baby I just had; or Ill remind her, again, that my children remain in school until the end of June, when most children in the South are returning from a month at sleepaway camp, and shell shake her head and start to chew the inside of her cheek. My dad was always an easier sell, something I attribute to the fact that his ancestors came through Ellis Island and lived for a stint on the Lower East Side before migrating south. He was grateful I landed somewhere with decent bagels and pastrami. (He was Jewish. Well get to that.) But even so, no matter how much they love having a free place to stay in the city me, they are still disappointed. They are disappointed because Im a Democrat.

Almost all of my friends in New York are very happy Im a Democrat, even if Im kind of a baby, centrist Democrat, which I am. There are some that are even okay with the fact that I go to church every Sunday. But toss out a word like evangelical, especially these days, and you will render people speechless. Which is why, after telling people in New York the subtitle of this book, I immediately start my song and dance about being aligned with them politically, the Democrat being a spoonful of sugar for the Jesus.

Its dicey.

There may be some of youmost of youreading this who think you cant be both an evangelical Christian and a Democrat or be fervently in love with God and also New York City, which, by some accounts, is being destroyed (along with the state of California, of course) by liberal nutjobs. I wrote this book for you too. I wrote the book for all of younot to get everyone on my side, although nothing would make me happier, but to give you a perspective you may not have. From someone living in both worlds.

Before we get into the details of how I ended up in this position, however, its important for me to speak directly to some of you.

To those who are still hung up on the evangelical business and cant really get past it: I understand. I grew up in a church that had evangelical in its name, and I still didnt fully get what the word meant until recently. And the word has become more culturally charged in the past decade or so, which is why many Christians who, technically, are evangelical never say the word. Heres how Iand others Ive readthink of it: There are little-e evangelicals and Big-E Evangelicals. The first term, which is what Im talking about, is a theological term. Little-e evangelicals believe in the authority of the whole Bible (not just la carte parts of it), that Jesus is the Son of God, born of a virgin, who died and rose from the dead, and that believers have become believers through a life-changing encounter with God. Big-E Evangelical is a largely white, Republican voting bloc of people who, in my opinion, probably place their identities in their political beliefs more than in their religious ones. Little-e evangelicals are simply Christians who adhere to a few core theological beliefs. And some of us care about a lot of the same (liberal!) social issues that you do. The way society has coopted