Holy Runaways: Rediscovering Faith After Being Burned by Religion

by Matthias Roberts, Jen Hatmaker (Foreword by)

Overview

Holy Runaways speaks to people who are feeling ignored, oppressed, or rejected by their religious community and church, offering a path forward built on speaking truth, deep listening, and acting with compassion.

In the past decade, church attendance among US adults has decreased by more than 25 percent. Americans report leaving religious communities because of the institutions' hypocrisy and resistance to change or because of trauma they have experienced in those spaces. Instead of safe havens for people of faith, many churches have become sites of harm—places people feel the need to escape at all costs.

In Holy Runaways, psychotherapist Matthias Roberts reaches out to those who, like him, want to understand the religion they've run from and erect a new faith on firmer foundations. He concludes that the best blueprint for a new spiritual home requires reimagining ourselves, God, and our very definition of faith.

Roberts blends deeply personal stories, new interpretations of familiar Christian parables, and recent scholarship about the dynamics of trauma to offer a way forward—and a warm, helpful companion—for readers on their own journeys. He calls out people who perpetuate systems of violence and oppression and suggests ways we can all contribute to a new system built on love—and a new home we can inhabit together.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781506485652
Publisher:	1517 Media
Publication date:	10/03/2023
Pages:	266
Sales rank:	421,385
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Matthias Roberts (he/him) is a psychotherapist specializing in religious and spiritual trauma and the author of Beyond Shame: Creating a Healthy Sex Life on Your Own Terms. He hosts Queerology: A Podcast on Belief and Being and holds two master's degrees from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, one in theology and culture, and one in counseling psychology. His work has been featured by O: The Oprah Magazine, Bustle, Woman's Day, Sojourners, The Seattle Times, and many others. He lives in Seattle.

Jen Hatmaker is the New York Times bestselling author of Feed These People, For the Love and Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire, along with twelve other books. She hosts the award-winning For the Love podcast, is the delighted curator of the Jen Hatmaker Book Club, and leader of a tightly knit online community where she reaches millions ofpeople each week. Jen is a co-founder of Legacy Collective, a giving organization that grants millions of dollars toward sustainable projects around the world. She is a mom to five kids and lives happily just outside Austin, Texas.

Editorial Reviews

09/04/2023

Psychotherapist Roberts (Beyond Shame) offers an impassioned exploration of “how and why we leave our faith and what happens afterward.” When a planned talk in which he intended to come out as gay was scrapped by his Christian college in his senior year, Roberts “felt something crack open inside” and began to distance himself from his conservative Christian upbringing, a process that involved challenging stubborn notions of desire as inherently sinful; probing in therapy the hurt he’d experienced at the hands of unsupportive friends and family; and acknowledging that he wanted to be in a relationship rather than remaining “gay, Christian, and celibate.” In abbreviated, sermonlike chapters that wrap personal testimony around extended metaphors (faith as a safe yet limiting concrete box is a central analogy), the author marshals personal experience, René Girard’s mimetic theory, and the theological writings of James Alison to set out fresh understandings of God, desire, and a Christian love that “can only be learned by loving the victim, the weak, the outcasts, the scapegoats.” Readers seeking substantive advice may feel shortchanged, but others will be intrigued and invigorated by Roberts’s notion that faith means “believing that getting to a place where we are all safe, welcome, and at peace is possible.” Christians who feel alienated from their church communities will find plenty of food for thought. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly