On the One-Year Anniversary of BAPTISTLAND

... I'm so grateful to so many of you

BAPTISTLAND is now on sale

BAPTISTLAND has been out in the world for exactly one year. To mark this milestone, BAPTISTLAND is now on sale.

From May 7 through June 10, you can get the paperback of BAPTISTLAND for $15.95 and the ebook for $5.99.

You can buy it direct from Bookshop.org, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble. (Or for an even better deal, ask for it at your local library; even if your library doesn’t have it on the shelf, they may be able to request it from some other library.)

Now is a particularly good time to read BAPTISTLAND, because this sale corresponds with the Southern Baptist Convention’s big annual brouhaha – a meeting at which SBC officials will no doubt continue to spew platitudes and promises while doing near-nothing to hold clergy sex abusers accountable, while still refusing to implement basic common-sense safeguards to protect kids and congregants against predatory pastors, and while continuing to ignore and gaslight survivors.

Institutionally, very little has changed. I hope BAPTISTLAND can help people keep the SBC’s long, duplicitous history in mind so as not be misled by its performative showmanship.

About the BAPTISTLAND cover

As a kid, I wanted to slither outside my skin, to become invisible. But now, I’ve put my skin onto a book cover.

Yes, that’s a representation of my skin on BAPTISTLAND’s cover. Some have asked me about that, and here’s the short answer of what I told journalist Lise Olsen:

The longer explanation is really about the whole of my life.

So much early trauma left a trail of bodily ruination, until finally, in adulthood, when I dealt with the re-abuse that came with speaking out, my very cells rebelled.

Two invasive cancers came along, together with several in situ cancers and precancers – all at the same time.

Intellectually, I know that cancer is a multifactorial process, but emotionally, I experienced it as the cumulative manifestation of all the evil that had been done to me in Baptistland.

Done to my body. Done to my selfhood. Done to my soul.

After two years of living in the cancer kingdom, I decided to reclaim my body. I got a large, vivid-blue tree-of-life tattoo to celebrate what was, if not the certainty of an end, at least the taming of a beast.

The beast of cancer… but also the beast of bodily desecration from a pastor’s repetitive childhood rapes and the beast of so much faith-based hate that followed when I began speaking out with the truth about Baptistland.

It’s all intertwined.

Thanks for helping to spread the truth of BAPTISTLAND

Telling the truth about what was done to me in Baptistland cracked open something bigger – something that exposed how far the Southern Baptist Convention will go to protect itself instead of its people.

BAPTISTLAND is a story of what can happen when we tell the truth about hard stuff – what can happen for ourselves, our families, our institutions, and our futures.

It’s also a story that shows how religiously-rationalized patterns of domination wind up replicating themselves in all kinds of relationships – between pastor and prey, pastor and congregant, husband and wife, parent and child, and even between older siblings and younger siblings.

I’m grateful that BAPTISTLAND has reached as many people as it has – not only among #ChurchToo survivors but among all sorts of people who are tying to find their way out of the thicket of high-control, authoritarian churches and families.

For that, I say “thank you” to so many of you who, in ways big and small, acted as ambassadors for the book. You are the people who helped BAPTISTLAND reach its audience.

Thank you to everyone who wrote a review.

Thank you to everyone who, on social media, shared a favorite quote or posted a picture with BAPTISTLAND.

Thank you to everyone who hosted me for a podcast conversation about BAPTISTLAND. (And what good conversations they were! For those interested, here’s where you can find links to a lot of those podcasts.)

Thank you to everyone who gave me encouragement and support.

Thank you to everyone who recommended BAPTISTLAND to a friend.

Thank you to everyone who read the book and interacted with it.

May we all find ways to honor the truth of our own lived experience.