Memoir strives to reconcile boyhood faith struggles

By Kurt Armstrong and ChristianWeek | June 6, 2011

The more time I spend outside the religious looking-glass world of the conservative evangelical subculture, the stranger it starts to appear.

Hamilton Cain knows a lot about the abiding strangeness that permeates much of conservative evangelicalism. This Boy's Faith is a look back at his childhood with the Southern Baptists. His keen eye for drawing out the particular details of his experience help to highlight just how curious evangelicalism can be.

Cain's religious experience almost seems like a caricature of American civil religion. He recounts details about the mid-week prayer meetings, fiercely competitive Sword drills, and the unshakable evangelistic urgency that keeps pushing to the surface of his friendships in school. Everyday life is coloured with a never-ending sense of apocalyptic anxiety, the exciting but terrifying expectancy that Jesus could return at any second. The swirl of Cain's daily life – current events, local culture, team sports, puberty – all passes through the clarifying lens of the religious worldview he receives.

A lot of religious memoirs come off sounding smug or bitter. Cain's detached point of view shows that he's put a fair bit of distance between who he was then and who he is now, but the pervasive feeling of this book is sadness. His relationship with his mother becomes symbolic of his relationship with his faith. Much like his mom, Cain's Christianity is overbearing, demanding, self-absorbed and manipulative. He's able to step back far enough from his mother and his faith to talk about them openly and honestly without trying to get payback for the ways they muddled his childhood. There doesn't seem to be any spite for either of them, but neither is there very much warmth or love.

When a loving friend pulls you to the side and tries to stop you from doing something you know you'll regret, it might not feel very good, but if you've got an ounce of wisdom, you have to be grateful. Reading This Boy's Faith might provide consolation for men and women struggling to reconcile themselves to a religious past they've distanced themselves from. For those of us who strive to be followers of Jesus, it's a sober reminder of how Christianity might look from the outside, and just how un-loving it can sometimes be inside.