New Memoir Recounts the Anxiety and Thrills of Growing Up a Conservative Christian
Charles Marsh was a teenager in Laurel, Mississippi, when, on the edge of the woods one day, he came across a jettisoned Playboy. He dared take a look, to see the naked breasts that graced the magazines crumpled, mildewed pages. To, in other words, grievously sin.
It’s a memory that makes multiple appearances in Evangelical Anxiety, Marsh’s memoir, out this week. And it’s a moment that’s emblematic of the freighted nature of the evangelical upbringing Marsh details within the book’s pages, an upbringing steeped in conservative, white evangelicalism and the psychological baggage such an upbringing can bestow. For Marsh, now a professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia, the imperatives of “purity” inherent in his religious education, the ever-present narrative of a cosmic battle between a righteous God and the ruinous temptations of Satan, led to both crippling anxiety and years of afternoons spent on an analyst’s couch. For the reader, the book is an erudite glimpse into the psychology of white evangelicalism and how the current proliferation of white Christian nationalism could spring from the religious imperatives Marsh details. Rolling Stone recently talked with him about religion, mindfucks, and mental health.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/evangelical-christians-1370190/