Next bookclub – September 22nd

The bookclub will be meeting Sept 22nd – people are invited to bring any book by Tim Flannery and be prepared to discuss

October will be Harry Potter

People in Glass Houses (shouldn’t throw stones)

Some people attribute the above quotation to Chaucer and its an appropriate title for this book  . We should be skeptical of those who claim to be righteous or have a special religious hotline to God .This pithy little saying could also apply to the author of this book, Tanya Levin as this memoir traces her life in the Australian religious congregation that later became Hillsong .  Its a story that is both funny and sad as we trace Tanya’s journey from a wide eyed naive teenager to disallusioned skeptic . I especially like Tanya’s teenage diary entries which give the reader a flavour of what it was like growing up in the Assemblies of God .

Sunday 4th January 1987

“This is the day I was freed from the Spirit of Rock and Roll . I started up a conversation with John who DJ’s and he told me he despises the music . He told me the worst person Satan had annointed was Bruce Springsteen . I told him he was telling the wrong person . He disagreed . We talked . Rock and Roll is all about fornication , especially Dancing in the Dark  It hit me so hard . He told me to pray when I got home . He released me from the spirit of R n R and seduction and I cried. He told me that God loves me and has so much for me . I came home and for one and a half hours I sat in the dark crying , taking down posters , breaking records and destroying tapes. I’m giving rock music up”.

One of the things that interested me about the book is that it is a story about growing up in the Assemblies of God in Australia – but its also a wider story about growing up in a belief system where there are no other frames of reference – where the world of black and white Christianity is the only world you know .  And the author vividly portrays how difficult it is for those who want to start asking questions .

In one section of the book Tanya writes about how she found it difficult to plan her life – she had been brought up to believe that “the rapture could come at any moment “and  it was “sort of like having a terminal illness for Jesus” . Nothing else mattered .

The book does have some flaws .  Tanya claims that Hillsong has a large back door – this may be true but it would have been helpful to have some comparative figures for other congregations .  She claims that Hillsong is a cult and it may have a authoritarian culture but I felt that this part of the book was not convincing . 

However  this book  is both an indictment and a challenge to churches on how they treat young people especially those who become estranged from their faith .  I noticed that Tanya had quotations from James Baldwin – the original Pentecostal boy preacher and author . I guess this only reminds us that the questions she has raised are nothing new . Hopefully somebody will listen this time .

TBA