Jeanna Kadlec - Heretic

Whatever came, she had resolved never again to belong to another than herself.

Kate Chopin, The Awakening

While this memoir incorporates research, journal entries, and the findings of retrospective conversations with kith and kin, its ultimately a constructed narrative of events from my perspective. Its not, nor can it be, wholly representative of any one person. Even the clearest memories are imperfect, rocks shaped by the watery ebb and flow of time.

Some names and identifying details of individuals have been changed to protect their privacy.

The word evangelical has meant many things to many people over the years. As of this writing, there is a strong case to be made for its status as the standard bearer of hard-line fundamentalist Protestant beliefs in American politics and popular culture. Because of this, I have chosen, for simplicitys sake, to use evangelical as shorthand for contemporary evangelicalism and fundamentalism both. While its important to understand that there are historical differences between the two, that is not the project of this book.

It may be helpful for some readers to know that there are scenes and mentions of domestic violence, substance abuse, sexual assault, and suicidal ideation. Take care of you.

I didnt pray. There was nothing left to say. Nothing left to do but down a cup of coffee, slip into my leather jacket, and hop an 87 bus down to the Middlesex County Courthouse to file for divorce. My black cowboy boots thudded heavy on the marble staircase. It felt like a country song, but it was my life: a life I was choosing, even if I was pretty sure this particular choice was going to damn me to hell. Then again, I wasnt even sure I believed in hell anymore. As I walked up to the family courts office on the second floor, Maneater was blaring on the radio, greeting all the spouses- and divorcees-to-be alike. Watch out boy, shell chew you up.

The well-dressed woman in line ahead of me had brought her own lawyer, which felt like overkill, until I realized that she didnt actually have a copy of the legal marriage certificatejust the flimsy church paper. As if a church holds the same authority as the state. I went through my own manila folder, making sure I had everything: the official marriage certificate, my passport (which had both my maiden name, Kadlec, and my husbands surname, which I had legally added to my owna compromise for a progressive but faithful evangelical couple), and our lease, in case I needed to prove residency in Massachusetts since wed been married in the Midwest.

Beware ye who walk in the way of sinners, my husband had told me mere days before I filed. His efforts to correct my path werent working: not the silent treatment, or his prayers that I would simply change overnight back to the woman hed known before. Hence the dispensing of grand statements that began Beware ye when we passed by each other in our six-hundred-square-foot one-bedroom Somerville apartment, reminding me of the eternal consequences of my pending decision.

What are decades of devotion compared with one swift fall from grace? I had been teaching Paradise Lost to undergraduates that semesterhell, that same weekand the parallel was not lost on me. I had also bitten from a Tree of Knowledge, and, like Eve, couldnt unknow the truth. The life-upending, damning realization that had brought me to the county courthouse, where the helpful clerk was now advising me to pay the extra forty dollars (for a grad student, a tremendous sum) to have the police deliver the papers to my soon-to-be ex-husband, was that I was queer.

Trust me. Youll want proof that hes been notified, she said.

The scariest thing wasnt filling in my name as plaintiff in the divorce complaint against my husband, or the fact that I would soon be temporarily living with my best friend (whom I was secretly in love with, and how on earth was I gonna keep that hidden?). It was the implication of what this decision meant for someone known for her faithalbeit one nonbelieving friends still felt comfortable shooting the shit about faith and the universe with while smoking and drinking in a parking lot at midnight. Someone who led Bible studies, someone who had spent a lifetime prioritizing a personal relationship with Jesus.

A devout born-again evangelical Christian for, at the time, my entire twenty-five years of life, the divorce would declare publicly, for my faith community from the Midwest to the East Coast to see, that God was not enough for methat my belief had faltered. Even if trying to suppress my queerness had felt like a kind of death and had driven me to consider taking my own life, I knew these struggles would not matter to my husband, my family, and to fellow evangelicals, to whom it would appear that I was purposefully, belligerently straying from the straight and narrow.

I was leaving the Garden, the evangelical church, and the only version of myself that I had ever known. I was choosing who I wanted to bebut I had no idea who she was.

This had not been the plan.

* * *

Where I come from, faith is one of the few centripetal forces that pulls a community together. Most everyone back home goes to Sunday service; it is unusual to know a family in many Midwestern small towns that doesnt. Your actual investment in the faith may vary, but if you want to have a meaningful support system for when life comes at you sideways: get thee to church.

My early childhood was spent in rural Iowa on an acreage surrounded by farms, a twenty-minute drive from town (which was, in fact, a village of about 1,800 people). Any social life outside of school revolved around church: Sunday school in the early mornings and seeing if I could tag along later with the junior high kids who were in the youth group my mom led, Vacation Bible School in the summer, and evening potlucks with other church families. My Rush Limbaughlistening, lapsed-Catholic father didnt participate in organized religion when I was younger, but he didnt stop my mom from taking my younger sister, Jo, and me to the country church that was a short drive from our house.

All our church involvementreading scripture with Mom before bed, having contemporary Christian music playing in our house and in the carmeant that, despite our attending public school instead of a private Christian school, our framework for understanding the world was ingrained in us at an early age. God created the world. Because we are sinners, he sent his son, Jesus, to die for us. Jesus hung on the cross for our sins. After three days, he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven. He is seated at the right hand of the Father Almighty. He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

Thats a rough paraphrase of the Apostles Creedsomething I repeated by memory my entire childhoodbut it summarizes the Gospels, the Good News of evangelical Christianity, and the foundation of the faith I was raised in: believing in Jesus is the way you are saved from your own depraved sin, and belief is the only thing that keeps you from the temptations of this world and eternal damnation in the next. And given this extraordinary good news, wouldnt you like to tell other people so that they can be saved, too?

The people of faith I grew up around had an abrasive way of communicating this news of Christs love. Why is he yelling, Mommy? I asked during Pastor Dons passionate sermon one Sunday. Loud enough that other congregants in the pew apparently chuckled, but also loud enough that some of them probably looked snidely at my mom, attending church alone with her two small children. Wondering where the father was. Wondering if the reason for the older daughters consistent, unruly commentary on the sermons was because of a lack of paternal guidance.