Don't expect any answers, but...
I do have an announcement! (It's Book #2!)
TLDR: Book #2 is in the works! (But don’t worry, you still have two-ish years to read Book #1, aka Nice Churchy Patriarchy, if you haven’t yet.)
One night, in the winter of 2022, when I was focusing on looking for an agent to represent Nice Churchy Patriarchy but also needed something else for my creative little brain to do in the meanwhile, I had an idea.
I imagined a series of personal stories centering on prayer—and how I had no clue what to do with it anymore.
I thought about all the good experiences from my time in evangelicalism that I kind of miss but could also never in good conscience go back to.
I thought about all the confusing experiences that I still don’t quite know what to make of.
And I thought about all the downright ugly experiences, things I wish I’d never wandered into. The manipulative ones, the insincere ones, the fear-driven ones, the other-ing ones. The misleading leaders. The spiritual trauma. The prayers and spiritual posturings that prop up an administration that looks nothing remotely like Jesus as portrayed in the Christian scriptures.
Over the next couple days, I sat down and brainstormed a list of ideas of stories I could tell. I came up with seventy-five.
This could be a whole book, I thought. I could call it I Have No Answers.* Because I really don’t.
Fast forward three years or so. Through hours and months of reading, researching, soul-searching, writing a book proposal. To a whole IG account called @postevangelicalprayers. To an awesome agent (hi Trinity!). To an exciting publishing offer (yaas Broadleaf Books, love them!!). And we’re moving onward in the journey!
I’m so excited to take the next step with what this idea has evolved into. It’s still going to include many of those personal stories. And it’s going to include a lot more than that, too.
I still don’t really know what to do with prayer. But we’re going to dive into it anyway. The good, the bad, the neutral, the confusing, the gnarly.
It’s all part of the post-evangelical journey.
We’re going to get into things like seeing protest as prayer, lament as prayer, and communion with nature as prayer. We’re going to ponder what it could mean to pray like a child—or, for that matter, like a teenager. (I’m thinking about that eyeball emoji.)
We’re going to reimagine church-y sounding things like conviction, confession, and forgiveness, in a get-that-evangelical-nonsense-away-from-me-but-is-there-still-maybe-something-there? kind of way.
We’re going to think about what prayer looks like from different social locations. For example, what does it mean to pray as a woman? As a white person?
And who knows what else. I haven’t written most of it yet.
I welcome your thoughts and your “please please talk about ______,” although of course I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to do it all without making the book a zillion pages long, which nobody wants. But please tell me anyway.
I’ll leave you with these words that I wrote as part of an overview of the book. I stand by them.
“I Have No Answers affirms and encourages everyone who wants to move from fear of the other to welcome of the stranger, from prayer as protection to prayer as openness, from prayer as separation from a profane world to prayer as connection with sacred earth and humanity, and from wanting to have all the answers to realizing that sometimes there are no answers—at least not universal ones that operate in the same way for everyone all the time.”
It’s not lost on me that these hopes directly counter everything white Christian nationalism stands for. Book #2 is for people who have left those ways of thinking behind—or who never really bought into them in the first place, but have still found some value in something about the Christian tradition and maybe would rather reimagine it together than toss it entirely.
Those of us who have spent time in evangelical spaces have often been taught such a limited, limiting view of prayer. Connecting with Creator could be so much more.
If any of this feels right for the journey you’re on, I hope you keep Book #2 in mind when it releases, likely in the spring of 2027. And I’d love to hear your thoughts along the way.
In this with you.
*That’s the tentative title, but it’s likely to change. In the meanwhile I’ll mostly just be calling it “Book #2.”
Congratulations 🎉 Liz. Very excited for and with you.
Oh Liz. I cannot wait to read this next book! I am so stalled in my (non) prayer life right now.