Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint Paperback – May 18, 2021

First the who, what, where and why facts. The author of Pastrix, Nadia Bolz-Weber, is an ELCA pastor at a church plant in Colorado called House for All Sinners and Saints. You could say she is a second career minister if you accept a prodigal life as a first career. The cover photo gives you the arm tats and the general ancient-future vibe by using the illuminated bible artwork. Pastor Bolz-Weber and her congregation are an interesting blend of that no longer useful word emergent and liturgical churches.This reviewer and the author are bizzaro-world images of each other. We are sharing a path of building congregations and sharing the word Lutheran. Because of that we share a language. When I read or hear her preaching, I can hear the gospel and find myself saying Amen. Hearing the gospel as clearly as I can from her preaching is not an everyday thing. And yet she and I would not see eye-to-eye on many things. And those disagreements would not, at least from my viewpoint, be caused only by general political ideology. We would seem to share the same low anthropology and high Christology that is a reformation and Lutheran must. Sharing that theology, I was hoping to see how she makes it work in a completely different way. I wanted to be able to write a review that was more glowing. Instead I have that quizzical and queasy feeling when people are using important words with strangely different definitions.There are three points that stuck out to me a stumbling blocks or scandals to just shouting Amen at the end. First, while Pastor Bolz-Weber is able to say some nice things about people like her parents or like the LCMS, she seems oblivious to the difference in how she treats them verses how they treat her. She almost always goes back to "beating the fundy" to maintain her differentiation, while they display love. She does this repeatedly throughout the book. What she gives and acknowledges with one hand she punches and takes back with the other. What she says she wants to be, her parents are - welcoming the stranger, even when the stranger is your own little girl. When she actually says something that offends her erstwhile political allies, it is mean old LCMS'er Chris Rosebrough who calls and who flat out stops the attacks and calls her friend. This is a big blindspot in a theological memoir. If she saw it I doubt that it would appear so often.The second item, and the queasiest I got, circled around her pastoral and liturgical reactions to a transgendered parishioner. It is a powerful story (Loc 1430ff), but again a story with a blindspot to the very theological truth the author holds most dearly. The author always returns to the understanding of the Christian life as a series of dying and rising. Deeply true and deeply powerful. But her reactions in this story to this parishioner do exactly the opposite. Instead of the call to die to ourselves and live in Christ, the rite created ends up being about living to our own conception of ourselves and putting down the incarnation or image of God we were created as. Instead of following Jesus and being incarnations, God's creation is denied and the blessings declared on it are appropriated for our own higher spiritual conception. She turns gnostic and not incarnational. Resurrection requires the incarnation.And that brings me to what I might call the third idol in the book. Pastor Bolz-Weber consistently and rightly sees that she falls in love with an image of herself. The one she keeps returning to is the romantic idea of dying young. She is in love with the idea of herself as a "bad-ass". This is something that she has recognized and worked on. Toward the end of the memoir she states what might be the mission statement of House for All Sinners and Saints. If it is not the formal one, it is a guiding idea. "When one of the main messages of the church is that Jesus bids you come and die (die to self, die to your old ideas, die to self-reliance), people don't tend to line the block for that shit." The problem with that is I never actually see her pastoring her people in that way. She is constantly bleeding for people far away - Haiti, New Orleans. She is constantly patting herself on the back for her welcoming the stranger. She herself has experienced a dying and a rising - alcoholism, her dreams of what HFASS is and should be (her story of "rally day" is one that pierces me). But she never proclaims this to "her people". She doesn't say to that transgendered soul that maybe your conception of yourself as a man is what needs to die, and you will struggle with that your entire life, unless God agrees to remove the thorn. She wants to say that HFASS is "a place where difficult truths can be spoken and everyone is welcome, and where we pray for each other (loc 604)", but "The Bible is simply the cradle that holds Christ. Anything in the Bible that does not hold up to the Gospel of Jesus Christ simply does not have the same authority (loc 542)." That is an opening not only for denying the difficult truth, but for the substitution of lies in the form of truth. She says she believes in portents but only in retrospect (loc 669), but her life is full of portents that she still doesn't get like her parents' constant love and that of all those evil bad benighted fundies she bashes. Pastor Bolz-Weber still has an image of herself she is in love with. It is one shared by most of her church as the real loving ones and not those hateful sectarians. The trouble is that it's an idol. As she herself says, "every single time I die to something--my notions of my own specialness, my plans and desires for something to be a very particular way--every single time I fight it and yet every single time I discover more life and more freedom than if I had gotten what I wanted (loc 1987)." The author needs to look at her ministry in that passage.Even given those serious troubles, I can still hear the gospel through Pastor Bolz-Weber and this book. And I think it might go back to her calling story. "It was long before I went to seminary and got ordained, but doing PJ's funeral--as his only "religious" friend--was the first time I realized that God was calling me to be a pastor to my people. (Loc 1736)." What this reviewer and any more orthodox Christian must confront is the experience of hearing the gospel in a place that is exceedingly heterodox. We are not privy to the counsels of the most high. While the actions might grate and the bible be dismissed and all kinds of error not only accepted but endorsed, that might be the volume of the gospel "her people" can hear. And Jesus might have said, "it's enough". And as much as I could be like Peter complaining pointing at John - "what about him", the answer is that is none of my business, work your field. And, Love covers a multitude. If there is one thing you can't deny, it is that Pastor Bolz-Weber loves "her people". Yes, I wish she loved them enough to share a little more truth, but she is sharing what she knows. And we must wrestle with the fact that it sounds like the gospel. Just for that uncomfortable truth the book is highly recommended.

Nadia Bolz-Weber is so human, so honest, so amazing, and so real in this account of her life and call to ministry. She opens the door wide for all to come to the table of Jesus. She lays bare her own foibles and regrets. She bears witness to an amazing and loving God. All Sinners and Saints should read this wonderful book.

I will select very carefully who I recommend reads this book. I'll do so for two reasons:1. The language Nadia uses in her book is going to cause problems for some people. She is raw, she is honest, she is herself. And she can express herself with colorful metaphors better than any other pastor I've met. For those who are sensitive to expletives, well...you'd better go read something by somebody else.2. Nadia is telling her story. And Nadia's story is one that moves, sometimes in a single paragraph, from pain to beauty. That can be a little rugged to read. It's the real-deal...This book is to be read cautiously. It is not for everybody, but I wish it was.So here's the thing. When I picked up "Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner and Saint," I had very mixed feelings. I'd heard Nadia Bolz-Weber speak, (including her gig at the ELCA Youth Gathering last summer, where she pretty much hit it out of the park...er...stadium...) and had heard parts of her story. And I wasn't really in the mood to read another autobiographical story of human fall and resurrection.Let me be clear: That is not what this book is about.Pastrix is a book that chronicles an incomplete journey. There is no simple or easy resolution. Like all of us, Nadia lives in a condition of fall and redemption simultaneously. She writes about the journey that to one level or another we all experience. She writes about the Jesus who (though she didn't see it and denied it) climbed into the crap with her. That's why even though her experiences are so foreign to me (puking through my nose?) her understanding of the faith, her questions, her doubts, her wonderings all resonate with me, and with those who listen or read.Nadia's writing style is compelling. It mirrors her preaching.And there is some amazing wisdom. She writes that when she meets with new members at House for All Sinners and Saints, one of the things she tells them (and this is a paraphrase) is: "It is not a matter of if, but when we are going to disappoint you. We will. I will say something...the church will make a decision...something will happen that will cause you hurt. So think now about how you will respond when that happens...because it will happen. And you don't want to be deciding in the heat of the moment how you'll respond." I read that and went straight to my senior pastor and said "we need to say this to our people." Because it's true. It makes me wonder...if we'd had those conversations with people, if the fallout from 2009 would have been different.This book is a story of grace and law, as two sides of the same coin. This is a book that tells Nadia's story, but more importantly the story of God's love working in someone's life. This book is one I loved reading, and was sad when it was over.I'm glad Nadia is a pastor within our church. I'm glad she's shared her story. This is a book for the church, and the world.

I brought the book after hearing Nadia speak at a conference in Sydney. I found her refreshingly honest about her faith and her acceptance of people as human beings made in the image of a loving, compassionate God.The book reflects her views truthfully. For people who find themselves on the edges of the church longing for a genuine, non judgemental community, such a church apparently exists. Nadia sees herself as a pastor not an advocate for justice although one cannot help but feel that theme emanating from the book indirectly e.g. Title of book. Reading the book fills one with hope that a Christianity community does not have to starchy while holding on to traditions. I enjoyed hearing Nadia speak and I enjoyed reading the book. It is easy to read, no heavy theological jargon but plenty of theological issues to reflect on. Worth reading if you are prepared to have some of your ideas about what it means to be a Christian challenged.

Nadia is so honest and open that you feel you can believe her and trust that what she says about God's grace and forgiveness might just apply to you as well.

Aside from the language at times, this was a wonderful read. It provided a different way of looking atsome Bible passages and what we should be about as Christians. Should be a must read for clergy andanyone who is deeply embedded in their church. Could perhaps change the way we welcome people andinclude them in our parishes.

I've recently read a very interesting book by Nadia Bolz-Weber.I saw myself in a lot of the ways Nadia explained some of her struggles. Honestly, I think she and I could be great friends. What I love about this book is that Nadia lays her life bare for her readers. It's beautiful, raw, depressing and happy all rolled into one. There are no great answers to the mystery of life, just an arrow to the cross full of grace.Some of our life experiences are similar, and many are vastly different. Oh those struggles. Yes. Exactly that. Seeing the sacred in the secular? Yes. Sometimes having mouthy reactions to something we don't understand or yet see, or just a straight up honest knee-jerk reaction where we don't want to change or do anything right now? yep. That too.This isn't a book I would readily recommend to most of my fundamentalist family members. Nope. Not up their alley. But people who have become quickly disenchanted with the faith they were raised in due to it's dual messages, punitive parenting and horrible misrepresentations of G-d; yes. I would definitely recommend people who are hurting and trying to crawl back to G-d to read this. It's like a balm to the soul.

I have found a kindred spirit in Nadia Bolz-Webber, who is fabulously sweary, earthy and honest. If you want a book that will speak the truth to you (but not necessarily in love!) reassure you that you are not the only one who doubts, is confused by and angered at what Christians have changed Jesus into, then this is the book for you. It has made me feel reconnected again. It's good to know that I am not the only sweary one out there who loves Jesus...

Nadia is honest and writes alot of what we feel but are too scared to say or admit. How church should be.