I’m sure a lot of people will get a lot out of Nadia Bolz-Weber’s memoir Accidental Saints, but I’m not one of them.
Reverand Nadia Bolz-Weber doesn’t look like your typical Lutheran Pastor. Rocking tattoo sleeves and a foul mouth, she’s a new type of preacher, the type to welcome those who have normally been turned away by the religious establishment. Her church is founded on the principle that humans are going to fuck up (so edgy with the swearing!) but that a good heart is what matters to God the most.
This book gave me flashbacks to the speakers I had to listen to in Catholic school. Every once in a while, the principle would get nervous that Christianity just wasn’t hip enough and hire some 26-year-old with a mushroom haircut and an acoustic guitar who just wanted to talk to us, man, about the best friend a sophomore could ever have…Jesus Christ. He doesn’t care about your SAT grades, man. He cares about your soul. Then he would try to sell us his CDs.
Bolz-Weber’s book is about her church and the revolutionary ideals it espouses (some examples: gay people are people! Assholes are tough to deal with, but we have to be nice to them. I’m hanging out with sinners JUST LIKE JESUS HOW COOL AM I). I concede that most churches (including the one I was raised in) do a terrible job of welcoming the people Jesus would probably want them to welcome, but that doesn’t mean her church is original.
I picked up the book because I was promised it was funny. A former comedian becomes a pastor? That’s weird enough to pique my interest. But in the immortal words of my man Josh “Lemon” Lyman, she “forgot the funny.”
Most of her jokes are weird, not-quite self-deprecating digs at her own originality. Look at these crazy tattoos LOLAMIRIGHT? It sort of turns into humble-bragging. And if I want to listen to people pretend they’re not impressed with themselves, I can close my book and interact with humanity.
If you like religious books, or you’re thinking about switching over to Lutheranism, then pick up Accidental Saints. The rest of you should give it a miss. This book is guilty of a mortal sin-being boring.
I found this book really meaningful, but I suspect being a fomerly Conservative Christian made this book really pointed and relevant. I found Bolz-Weber’s congregation and expansion of grace appealing, because my own faith community is struggling to understand grace in less legalistic terms. I think that Bolz-Weber is writing for current and former Conservative Evangelicals who grew up or believed at one time that Reagan pooped gold and being gay was a choice. If you didn’t grow up in that particular culture, this book is probably not very ground-breaking.
I’m also really dismayed that someone told you this was a funny book. Bolz-Weber certainly has an off-beat sense of humor, but this book is most definitely not funny. It’s actually hard-to-read and kind of sad in parts. Certainly a let-down if you were promised a humor memoir!
Absolutely! I am sure that a lot of people could get a lot out of her book, but as someone who was brought up in a liberal (ish) faith, by nonreligious parents and who isn’t religious today, the story she was trying to tell didn’t speak to me. And yeah, I’m sure the bigger issue is that I thought it was a totally different book was when I picked it up. I’m glad you enjoyed it though!