Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome

March 9, 2015
Exhausted by a mysterious chronic
illness, businesswoman Riley, who once studied at the Focus on the Family Institute to become a Christian counselor, wants to believe in God again. The very thought of going to church, however, triggers dread. Hoping to find spiritual healing, Riley resolves to try 30 different religions before her 30th birthday. This chatty, lighthearted memoir recounts that experiment, in which, among other adventures, she visits a Hindu temple on Diwali, attends synagogue on Yom Kippur, and goes to a Scientology center for an “audit.” Though she circles back to Jesus, he is not the tightly circumscribed Jesus of her childhood Pentecostalism, but a powerful love that is greater than any single religious expression. If the prose leans a bit too heavily on dialogue and the humor occasionally reads as trying too hard, Riley’s debut gently offers doubters a friendly invitation to reconsider the gifts religion has to offer.