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Teens Questioning Faith: Three Books
By lynmiller-lachmann on 2014-12-22 18:11:28
With Hanukkah and Christmas at hand, this may seem an inopportune time to review books about teens who question the
religious beliefs of their elders. Still, adolescence is a time of questioning, and whatever decision a young person makes
about faith and religious practice will be stronger for the experience of having thought through all sides. In my seventh
grade Sunday school class, my co-teacher and I encourage students to ask questions, argue, and learn more. Sometimes they
are shocked to hear that they can choose what to believe, and discussing their ideas with each other serves as a bonding
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experience as well as a way to develop a personal theology. S hree recent books for teens—
Ellen Hopkins’s Rumble (Simon & Schuster, 2014), Jeri Smith- Ready’ s This Side of Salvation (Simon & Schuster, 2014),
and Karen Finneyfrock’s Starbird Murphy and the World Outside (Viking, 2014)—portray characters who are part of a
religious community. In the first two, it is a fundamentalist Christian church, while Starbird is part of a nature-centered
utopian community. Ellen Hopkins is a popular author for teens, and her visit to the Capital District several years ago was
greeted with widespread enthusiasm. In her latest verse novel, Rumble, Matthew has already lost his faith, and his passionate
essay questioning the existence of God attracts the attention of school authorities. Complicating his situation is the fact that
his father teaches in the district and is the varsity basketball coach—and his younger brother, Luke, a gifted basketball
player, committed suicide the previous year. Luke was gay, and their father refused to have him on the team, or to intervene
in any way when Luke suffered relentless bullying. Like his father, Matthew’s girlfriend is a fundamentalist Christian who
condemns homosexuality, but even though she and her fellow congregants say, “hate the sin but love the sinner,” they
rejected Luke despite the fact that he never had sex. After struggling with his feelings for his girlfriend versus his guilt for
not having helped Luke more, Matthew sees the cruelty practiced by the Christians in his life. How can a merciful God
allow such cruelty to happen? Like others of Hopkins’s best-selling novels-in-verse, Rumble addresses controversial issues
head-on and captures Matthew’s emotions in a way that connects with young people in similar situations. There isn’t a lot of
subtlety here, and those looking for the hypocrisy of the “devout” will find plenty of that in Matthew’s father, his girlfriend,
and the youth minister at his girlfriend’s church. In the end, though, this is a passionate novel that will lead readers to ask
themselves if Matthew can have it both ways—to believe in a merciful God and to know of the brutal acts other humans
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have perpetrated in His name. ~~ This Side of Salvation offers a more nuanced portrait of a
fundamentalist Christian church, one in which the young people have already taken a stand in favor of inclusion and
acceptance of peers who are different. David’s family used to be mainline Episcopalians until the death of his older brother
in Afghanistan. Afterwards, David vandalized a fundamentalist church, but in making restitution he became attracted to the
strong religious community and brought his parents into the fold. Yet while he has become a leader in the youth group (as
well as a loyal ally to his gay friend), his parents, especially his recovering alcoholic father, have fallen under the sway of a
breakaway minister who believes the world is coming to an end. When David rescues his nonbeliever older sister from a
drinking party busted by police, the two return to an empty house and their parents missing. David fears the worst—that
because the world hasn’t come to an end, his parents committed suicide. Smith-Ready’s novel has the forward momentum of
a good mystery, with David’s search for his parents alternating with flashbacks detailing how the family got to this point.
Throughout, David grapples with issues of faith and dogma, seeking a middle ground between nonbelief and the kind of
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absolute obedience to a religious leader that his father has embraced. Less traditional is the
religious community portrayed in Starbird Murphy and the World Outside. Starbird lives on a farm in Washington State
owned by the Free Family, a commune that has been in existence for more than 40 years. Its leader calls himself EARTH
and says he is the interpreter of the Cosmos, but for the past three years, EARTH has gone incommunicado, and the
members of the commune, its two satellite communes, and a natural foods café in Seattle have had to make decisions for
themselves, guessing at what EARTH would want. Starbird’s Calling, it seems, is to move to Seattle, work at the Free
Family café, and attend a public school for the first time in her life. On the Outside, she meets a boy whose parents are
fundamentalist Christians, and little by little she begins to question her own set of beliefs. Like David and Matthew, Starbird
is a bright, likeable teenager who wants to do the right thing for herself and for the people she loves. She has always
believed in the Free Family’s worship of nature, its egalitarianism, its strong communal bonds, and its belief that a utopian
society is possible. But from the Outsiders and former Free Family members, she comes to see the dark side—property
gained through the coercion or brainwashing of well-meaning members, the authoritarianism of EARTH, a refusal to
provide adequate medical care for pregnant or sick community members, and allegations of corruption. Starbird wants to
live in a world where people love and care for each other—the world she had on the farm—but is it possible without
EARTH? And is it possible with him? Taken together, these three books offer opportunities for young readers to delve into
issues of faith, religious practice, and ethics. The holiday season—a time of celebration, reflection, and family and
community togetherness—is as good a time as any to think about what we believe and how we want to live.
