Carolyn Baker - Confronting Christofascism: Healing the Evangelical Wound

Reading this book is not unlike reading other books by survivors of trauma. Only in this case the author is wrestling with a life-time of trauma and recovery around religion, very bad religion, that took over her parents' lives (her parents also being victims of trauma in their past). But the book is not just about the author's harrowing personal journeyshe links her story to the common trauma we are undergoing as a nation ever since Donald Trump appeared on the sceneand, with a big lift from evangelicalsrendered fascism fashionable. The author's insights help to explain January 6. She explains from years inside the belly of the beast what sick religion can do to souls and society alike. She reveals why Trump, himself a victim of a traumatic childhood, appeals to his followers so strongly; why QAnon flourishes among evangelicals; how racism is baked in to the evangelical history; how the worldview of Jesus saves so takes over a soul that reality itself is sidelined. And thinking. And creation. And justice. And compassion.

Matthew Fox, author of Original Blessing and One River, Many Wells

This is a fierce, brilliant, indispensable book by one of our most inspired and lucid guides through our collective dark night. In it, Carolyn Baker weaves together poignant personal testimony and political and spiritual analysis to show us both the terrible danger of Christofascism and the way through and beyond its lethal seductions. Read it and give it to everyone you know who cares about our human future and the future of democracy.

Andrew Harvey, author of The Hope: A Guide To Sacred Activism

Carolyn Baker is a meta-modern surveyor of the psycho-spiritual religious landscape, or at least the particular territory of Western fundamentalism/evangelicalism. Drawing down inspiration from the cultural satellites that orbit, she points the laser locator with unflinching accuracy at the historical context out of which fundamentalism has risen and has come to a dangerous crescendo of political fascism married to fundamentalist religion. Then she turns the laser around. With high doses of vulnerability, she shares her own formative journey in fundamentalism, which parallels my own. Carolyn shows how one can move toward wholeness and healing as one lets go of a story that is way too small and constricting for the soul's longing. Of course the journey does not end. Carolyn, like other healthy pilgrims, recognizes that with curiosity, compassion and courage she continues to explore the mystery of being alive at this threshold time for humanity. Like the poet Rilke, she lives her life in ever widening circles. She may not complete the last one but she gives herself to it.

Dr. Terry Chapman, author of The Sabbath Pause

With extensive research, careful documentation and analysis and an unflinching look at her own personal history, Carolyn Baker details clearly the foundation laid by Christian theology that undergirds the rise and dominance of Christo-Fascism. She shows that extreme nationalism, violence and terror are natural by products of Christian fundamentalism. It is a must-read for all searching for the way forward.

Inelle Cox Bagwell, National Board of Directors, United Methodist Women, 1988-1996; Recipient, Gilbert H. Caldwell Justice Ministry Award, Church Within A Church Movement, 2012

Apocryphile Press

1100 County Route 54

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Copyright 2021 by Carolyn Baker

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 978-1-949643-94-7 | paper

ISBN 978-1-949643-95-4 | ePub

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwisewithout written permission of the author and publisher, except for brief quotations in printed reviews.

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