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challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
This review is based on a physical review copy provided by the author.
REVIEW
As a lesbian who grew up attending church in the South, this memoir saw me. So many of Kadlec’s own experiences mirror my own, and her examination of the roles white fundamentalism and evangelical Christianity play in American culture made me make so many connections in my own life (like “oh, yeah, that was fucked up—who let this happen??”).
For example, Kadlec discusses her experience with purity culture. As soon as she pointed out that purity culture gave her, as a teen who had no suspicion about her queerness, an excuse to avoid dating boys, I sat straight up in my chair, because holy shit, that happened to me too!
I was raised Methodist, but unlike Kadlec, was not deeply invested in the faith. (I read and reread my favorite books through services and hid in the bathroom during youth group.) Purity culture was a Thing in the church for sure, but my tendency to read books through service and youth group protected me from internalizing too much.
The middle school I went to was public, so it wasn’t officially Christian, but it was, fundamentally, Christian anyway. There were three churches a block down and youth group pastors would regularly come into the cafeteria during lunch to invite non-Christian kids to youth group.
In sixth grade, we had a sex ed class. The boys were sent off to the cafeteria, while the girls shuffled into the gym’s pull-out bleachers.
I grew up in Alabama, so this sex ed class wasn’t a good one. The educator told us that women think like spaghetti and men think like waffles. After signing a paper that said we’d wait until marriage, we were given bracelets (cheap rubber, nothing fancy, with some slogan about abstinence). The V-Card metaphor was explained, with the educator telling us that giving our husband our V-Card on our wedding night would be the best moment of our lives.
I look back and laugh about it—how could I not?
Thing is, all of this “sex ed” was actually right from the fundie playbook. The spaghetti-waffle metaphor is from a book by Bill and Pam Farrel, a married Christian couple who have also contributed writing to the deeply fundamentalist, anti-LGBTQ+ "Focus on the Family." The bracelets were, essentially, purity rings, and the paper we signed was the True Love Waits pledge with a secular veneer. The heavy focus on keeping our “V-Card” is, well, abstinence until marriage (which of course will happen and will be with a man).
Luckily, I was raised by a family who fully rejected purity culture, and laughed when I talked about the Waffle-Spaghetti thing, so I escaped without internalizing too much.
Still, though, I remember imagining this purity card. A white business card, made of thick cardstock, with silver embossed edges. I thought about throwing it away, until I realized: abstinence means I’m not expected to date. And I felt relieved.
In a culture where I was surrounded by the pressure to show interest in men, it was almost a shield. It was something that I could use as a framework to understand my disinterest in men—I wasn’t supposed to be interested in them until it’s time to marry one.
Now, this was before I even knew that gay people existed. I didn’t know how or why the idea of marrying a man was so revolting to me, but it was, and I just wanted to ignore it.
Mind you, the very system that gave me something to shield myself with was also responsible for creating that need in the first place.
The only future I could envision for myself was one without community, because heterosexuality, a nuclear family, and Christianity were requirements I knew I’d never meet, even if I didn’t know how to articulate that yet.
The fact that evangelical and fundamentalist beliefs are part of the school system in America, especially in the South, is something I have been aware of for a long time. I’d never really reflected on its impact on me, though.
Reading this book was a healing experience. Kadlec’s experience as a lesbian is one I connected with, but there were so many others I deeply related to—her search for spirituality, her desire to push back against the idea that rural and religious means uneducated, her knowledge that coming out meant losing people.
Kadlec does such a wonderful job of examining, of processing and deconstructing the ways in which fundamentalism and evangelicalism has infected American culture and politics. She not only does this through her memoir sections, but also through more academic, critical sections, which are sprinkled throughout the memoir.
A point I found fascinating was Kadlec’s discussion of how Christianity makes martyrs, and how those martyrs are then used to create propaganda. For example, Cassie Bernall, whose martyrization is encapsulated in a question asked in Bible studies and sermons alike: “If a shooter pointed a gun at you and asked if you were Christian, would you say yes?”
However, Kadlec notes, this martyrization does not happen to non-white Christians killed for their faith. In fact, many times, when Black Christians are killed for their faith—such as the victims of the The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing—they are not held in the same reverence. This is unsurprising, considering the role white Christianity played in opposing segregation.
(While on this topic, I also recommend Shanspeare’s excellent video “Tradwives and the White Supremacists Who Love Them” for more on white supremacy, heterosexuality, gender, and racism. https://youtu.be/jgQeoMEj0NY?si=DY_50UgwnDiYO9s6)
This is one of the many moments in Heretic where Kadlec analyzes how fundamentalism and evangelicalism support white supremacy, as well as the ways in which Christian opposition to social progress flows into one another—opposition to segregation flowed into opposition to abortion which flowed into opposition to gay rights which have, of course, flowed into the opposition to trans rights, all of which the church has used as fuel for their fire.
The only way we can fight this fire, Kadlec says, is by building something new—a community based not on religion or on legislature but on intersectional queer joy.
As Kadlec quotes from artist Micah Bazant, “No Pride For Some of Us Without Liberation For All of Us.” (https://www.micahbazant.com/marsha-p-johnson)
FINAL THOUGHTS
I’m going to wrap up the review now before I go on for another thousand words.
Heretic is amazing. I suggest it heavily to anyone interested in queer memoirs or are, like me, interested in interrogating the influence of fundamentalism and evangelicalism on American culture.
Readers who love Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House need to pick up Heretic next. And when you do, let me know what you thought—I’m desperate to talk about this book!
To Jeanna Kadlec for reaching out to offer a review copy—thank you, truely.
If possible, support indie bookshops by purchasing the novel from your local brick and mortar or from Bookshop.org!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body shaming, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Misogyny, Racism, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Grief, Religious bigotry, Lesbophobia, Sexual harassment, and Classism