Anthony Pinn was a “miracle baby.”
Doctors had warned his mother not to have another child.
She’d already lost one son and was sickly herself (as was
Pinn’s father), but Pinn was healthy when he was born into
their Buffalo, New York family.
Growing up in a mostly blue-collar neighborhood, Pinn went
to church every Sunday with his mother. Her father was a
deacon in a small Baptist church, and he made sure Pinn
behaved during service and knew God. The church was a
comfort to Pinn – so much so, that at around age 12, he told
his minister that he wanted to be a preacher, too.
His church leaders seized that childhood wish, and began to
teach the boy to preach and minister to a congregation. One
of them became somewhat of a mentor and father figure to
Pinn, whose own father had left the family. Though Pinn
“didn’t enjoy going to Sunday school” and he didn’t like
school in general, he says he loved his church and he
embraced his future role in its leadership.
And yet, there were things he didn’t like about it: the
“fine art of… shunning,” for instance, sexism and
homophobia. That bothered him and his faith began to crack.
Still, he stuck with it. He graduated from high school and
entered college to study sociology and religion. He learned
about other religious traditions and that “The Bible didn’t
matter in the same way” at college that it did in high
school. He began to listen to worldly music, and started to
“unlearn” his fear of life.
“We are screwed-up animals, self-aware, communicative, and
evolving,” he says, which didn’t mesh with the wrathful God
of his childhood. And so, while studying divinity at Harvard
University, he kept asking one question: “Does God exist?”
For author and humanist Anthony B. Pinn, the answer is
personally “no” and in this
controversial-but-thought-provoking memoir, he explains how
he came to that conclusion.
But Writing God’s Obituary isn’t just about religion.
Pinn recalls his parents and grandparents with warmth and
love, telling their stories and savoring the things they
taught him. Those reflections make his journey all the more
poignant; we can sense pain here sometimes, and an emptiness
for what was never experienced and what might have been.
I liked this book, but beware before you pick it up.
It may make you fearful, it might make you angry or
prayerful, but if you’ve ever wrestled with issues of faith,
Writing God’s Obituary may be a book to bring home.
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