A Church of Her Own

A Church of Her Own
Sarah Sentilles
Harcourt
ISBN: 9780151013920
Non-Fiction, Religion, Personal Narrative
Reviewed by John R. Clark

What happens when personal faith takes a direct hit? For many, the ultimate reaction is bitterness and a turning away from whatever belief system has failed them. In A Church of Her Own, Sarah Sentilles has tackled her own loss of faith in a unique and literate way. After making a very personal and painful decision to end her path to ordination as an Episcopal priest, she wrestled with the discomfiting question of whose fault was it.
She sums it up in the first chapter: "My plan had (at least) one critical flaw: To be ordained, I had to survive the ordination process. This proved impossible, and when it all fell apart-the process, my faith, my understanding of God-I figured I had been deluded to think being a priest is what I was meant to be, crazy to have dared to believe I might belong. I thought it was about me-that my theology was not traditional enough, my politics not conservative enough. I felt very alone."
At this point, many would have grieved and turned away, seeking another path in life. Instead Sentilles sought out other women who were in, through or had dropped out of the ordination process to see if there were similar stories out there. In the process she worked very hard to hold her own opinions and pain in check and, quite frankly succeeded. What came from her journey was an excellent and amazingly frank and open-minded book, given her own painful experience. As the journey progressed, she found women with similar stories, but also found pieces of her own healing puzzle.
Some like Liz, in the final chapter, were able to start a church from scratch, effectively blazing a new trail and not having to navigate around the historical debris of predecessors. I like the quote from Liz's Hope Church website: "Welcome to all who have no church home, need strength, want to follow Christ, have doubts, or do not believe." This is, in the end a book about rearranging hope to stay sane and will be an excellent addition for public and academic libraries.