Between a Church and a Hard Place: One Faith-Free Dad's Struggle to Understand What It Means to Be Religious (or Not)

by Andrew Park

Book Overview

Read Andrew Park's post on the Penguin Blog. At age thirty-five, Andrew Park hit a parenting snag. Teaching his children about ethics, good manners, and how to shoot a free throw posed no problem.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1583333711
• ISBN13: 9781583333716
• Release Date: March 2010
• Publisher: Avery Publishing Group
• Length: 210 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 9.5"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

One Man's Story

This is a well-written story of one American's look at religion as he tries to decide how to approach church participation for his children. Andrew Park was brought up by parents who had rejected much that traditional religion has to offer, and he quite naturally accepted their attitudes. However, when his young children started asking questions about God and Jesus, he found himself at a loss as far as what to tell them. This started him on a quest to explore out why he was non-religious and whether his parents' approach would be beneficial for his own children. Obviously he suspected that it was not enough or he would not have embarked on this quest. Sometimes too little religious guidance leaves a child as confused as too much. Park writes well and often humorously. Although he switches back and forth from personal memoir to journalistic reporting, he stays interesting throughout the book. In a way the book is left without a satisfying ending, but that's part of the author's honesty: he is exploring the subject and knows he has only scratched the surface. He doesn't seem to have reached full answers to his questions, although he knows more about what he wants for his children than he did at the outset. Park's honesty and writing skills made the book enjoyable. It's worth reading as long as you are not a person who gets upset every time someone does not share your religious views.

Searching for Answers?

When I heard about Andrew Park's book, I was eager to read it. As someone who was raised an Evangelical Christian, but who has abandoned my religious ties to anything other than a basic belief in God, I was intrigued by the idea that two very different upbringings led to similar questions about how to deal with religion when it comes to raising children. Perhaps I read the book searching for answers, but answers are not what I found. Instead, I found a well-written, often humorous, and sometimes touching account of a fellow parent's journey to figure out the answers to some of life's most difficult questions. I was fascinated as Mr. Parks explored his religious heritage and current mainstream Christian practices. From his experience attending a camp meeting with members of the Pentecostal church started by his great grandfather, to his frank discussion of the events that led to his brother's distance from his family, to his attendance at a Mega Church's discipleship group, I found him enormously respectful, and while not exactly open-minded, certainly mindful of the impact each experience had on his emotions and psyche. I was satisfied as I came to the end of the book and took away from it the idea of influencing my children without indoctrinating them. It pleased me to find a well-articulated phrase to describe my current approach to raising my children. Like Mr. Park's mother, I've never been afraid to talk to my children about living ethically and morally and about what I expect from them regarding their behavior and treatment of other people. I appreciate that this book doesn't offer a plan, because I would have discarded it, anyway. Chances are, anyone truly seeking answers, won't find them between the covers of one book, but rather through a journey of her own.

Terrific Book

This is a very well-written book that explores important issues of faith, family and parenting in a thoughtful and respectful way. Mr. Park is an excellent writer and the narrative is thought-provoking, but also humorous and very engaging. Terrific!

Thoughtful, well-written, just missing one thing...

Like many Volvo-driving, latte-drinking American Democrats (myself included), Andrew Park was perfectly comfortable with his church-free life -- until his young children started talking about God. His kids' questions got him started on a quest to find out whether he and his family were missing something important by not being involved in religion. That quest led him to plumb his own memories, interview family members (including his brother, an evangelical Christian since high school) and research a variety of Christian and humanist organizations. The result is a well-written, involving book that addresses the religious questions facing liberal, "unchurched" parents squarely and thoughtfully. I read it in a day. The problem with the book is that, in Park's world view, there seems to be no middle ground between evangelical Christianity and pure humanism. The liberal Protestants, the Unitarians, and the Quakers are dismissed in a few lines as "watered-down versions of the same old business" and people who "sit silently on the fence while terrible things are done in the name of religion." Park describes his time in high school attending a Presbyterian church with great fondness, but he never even considers visiting a liberal Presbyterian church for his book. Instead he focuses on evangelical megachurches and the Pentecostal "Holy City" that his great-grandfather helped found in North Carolina. This is a huge failing in a book that's aimed at people in the demographic most served by the liberal churches. I'd really like to know what Park would have found if he'd bothered to visit even one. Still, the book is fascinating and well worth reading. Maybe I'll just have to write that other book myself.

What to Tell Our Children?

Those of us who are not convinced by the claims of one or another `one true religion' are likely to be concerned about what to tell our children about the subject. Andrew Park chronicles his search for an answer acceptable to him and his wife, who wanted their children informed sufficiently to make up their own minds about questions of religious faith, but without prejudicing them one way or another. Park prepared himself to discuss religion with his children by a rather extensive investigation (not at all hostile) of various religious beliefs and practices, with a view to being almost completely neutral in discussing religion with his children. But on one subject he is willing not to be neutral. He quotes Dale McGowan (with obvious approval, and I agree) on "the one subject on which [he] dropped his commitment to open-mindedness: hell. Hell, he said, is `a thought-stopper,' a weapon used to injure reason. Instilling fear of eternal damnation for failing to think a certain way was `intellectual terrorism.' " While teaching in a publicly-supported college, I was under the same restrictions Park imposed upon himself, but not saddled with the need to talk to my students about religion; I could and did decline to comment if asked, and otherwise did not bring up the subject. But while teaching in a church-supported college, I was a bit more free to discuss religion, e.g. tell a true anecdote about a coed who, on receiving an advance copy of a test, said piously "Thank you, Jesus!" I felt free to tell my students my non-controversial opinion that helping students cheat on tests was not part of God's work, but of course I would have been out of line to express any disagreement with the theology of my employer. But in discussing religion with my children, unlike Andrew Park, I felt completely free to express my opinions to them, albeit not free to demand that they agree with me. Believing that living in a culture where churchgoing is considered by many the norm, they should have at least some experience of church, I took them to my church (UU) once, and thereafter at their option, which they infrequently exercised. They also attended other churches on occasion, and one even allowed himself to be baptized (LDS), but he soon tired of it. Parents of young children (or expecting, or hoping) who are concerned (as they should be) about how to discuss religion with their offspring might do well to read this book. It is well written, and can be helpful in deciding what to say and how to say it. Even if they choose a different approach than Park's, it can help to realize they are not alone. watziznaym@gmail.com