Fleeing Fundamentalism: A Minister's Wife Examines Faith

The religion depicted in this absorbing memoir of falsehood and betrayal is fundamentalism gone berserk: it has turned into an inhuman, apocalyptic, darkly controlling force that reshuffles common sense, "jumbling all logic into madness." After indoctrination at a Bible college, Cross finds herself in a marriage from hell replete with abuse, addictions and mental illness. Her husband, a popular young pastor, uses religion to mask the alternate reality he has created, a netherworld that will potentially destroy not only his career but the entire family's safety and sanity. With the courage of a trapped animal, Cross reinvents her life, waiting tables and going on welfare in order to earn a degree and support her three children. For a time discarding God, the Bible and organized religion along with her malevolent husband, she eventually redefines spirituality as "a road of discovery—not of submission to a rulebook." Cross's brief summaries of Christian history are at best simplistic, and some readers will contend that the fundamentalism she portrays is an aberration, not the norm. Still, her heartfelt condemnation of public hypocrisy couldn't be more timely. In her ex-husband's own self-indicting words: "Isn't it ironic, a guy condemning sinful society and completely without a conscience himself?" (Oct.)