My friend and former student at Harvard, Sarah Sentilles, has just published a book about her experience of Breaking up with God. Most of the book is about the relationship that precedes the breakup and how intimate it is. Sentilles tells a story that lets you know how hard the rupture will be.

In vivid accounts of her childhood, teen years, and young adulthood, Sentilles describes how deeply her idea about God as a personal Being who is omnipotent and Other wove its way through her every sense and sensibility. Her God is the companion of her inner life, framing what she perceives and how she responds. Her desire to please God finds expression in how she feels about her body (fat), her desires (untrustworthy), her family (in danger), and her task in life (to become a priest). In the name of this God, with and through this God, because of this God, she experiences great love and great judgment, great pleasure and great pain.

Eventually, she can no longer tolerate the pain. In the name of the love she wants, she breaks up with God. Or rather, she breaks up with this idea of God as a personal, all-powerful Beloved that has so thoroughly infused her sensory awareness. 

What happens next? The book offers a few tantalizing clues. She finds a partner and affirms human love. She insists that all talk of God–including her description of “Him” as a partner–is metaphorical. She condemns violence inflicted by Christians on each other, as well as on non-Christian, non-human others. She claims to believe in Mystery. Agency. Creativity. Justice. Accountability. Love.

Continue reading →