"God Land" by Lyz Lenz

Before I downloaded & read my last book, "Belabored" by Lyz Lenz (reviewed here), I had already purchased a copy of Lenz's previous/first book, "God Land: A Story of Faith, Loss, and Renewal in Middle America." I don't remember where I first heard about it, or Lenz (Twitter, maybe?), but there was good buzz around it and, after reading & liking "Belabored," I decided "God Land" would be my next read. 

The small, declining Midwestern towns Lenz writes about here -- in Minnesota, Iowa, the Dakotas -- are familiar territory to me. I'm Canadian, but my great-great grandparents were early settlers in the northwest corner of Minnesota in the late 1870s. The family prospered;  Great-Great Grandfather was known locally as "Squire."  But by the early days of the Great Depression, my great-grandfather (their son) lost first his wife and then his farm. Several of his older children found work (and then spouses) in Iowa, along the Mississippi River, and many of their descendants still live in Iowa today. Great-Grandfather moved the younger children "into town," including my teenaged grandfather. 

That's where my mother was born, and where I spent much of my childhood summers. It's the seat of a rural, agriculture-based county, and even when I was a child in the 1960s and 1970s, it was still a bustling, Mayberry/Norman Rockwell kind of place, where everyone knew everyone, including me & my sister ("those little girls from Canada") -- where the stores stayed open late on Thursday nights and cars lined the main street, where the county fair was the highlight of the summer and maybe even the year, where neighbours regularly dropped by for coffee & my grandmother's home-baked goodies, and where my cousins, friends, sister & I were free to roam so long as we were home for supper. It was almost exclusively white and Scandinavian, with the seasonal exception of the migrant Mexican workers who arrived every summer to work in the sugar beet fields outside of town.  

By the time I went to university in the late 1980s, the town was already starting to decline. The sign as you entered town read "population 1,497" for years and years;  these days, it's under 1,000. There are gaps on the main street where stores used to be, and many of the buildings that remain have long been empty. The pretty, wood-panelled, century-old Episcopalian church my grandparents attended and were buried from disbanded its dwindling congregation a few years ago, and the building was sold to a breakaway group from the local Lutheran church, which split over the issue of LGBTQ ministers.   

(I digress...) 

*** *** *** 

Lenz was born in Texas and brought up in a conservative, evangelical Christian family, who moved to South Dakota and then Minnesota when she was a teenager. Even then, she questioned and chafed against the restrictions of her faith, dying her hair and wearing T-shirts with Marxist slogans.  In Iowa, she & her conservative, evangelical Christian husband went from church to church (and even started their own at one point), searching for a home where they both felt welcomed. Lenz finally found comfort in a liberal Lutheran congregation with a female pastor and a rainbow LGBTQ flag hanging in the entry -- but it proved to be the breaking point in her marriage when her husband refused to attend with her. All this happened just as the 2016 election was taking place (she voted for Clinton, he voted for Trump), tearing apart the country as well as Lenz's family. 

This book intertwines Lenz's personal story with a look at the state of faith in Middle America, and Midwest culture itself.  Lenz visits congregations that have survived despite the odds against them, and some that haven't -- small country churches, multicultural congregations and suburban megachurches. She attends a training session for new pastors serving rural communities, where there's lots of talk about guns (and she wonders why nobody has yet designed a similar course to explain urban living to rural residents). She writes about how many churches marginalize women, LGBTQ people, people of colour & of other faiths. She explores the connection between religion and sports.  And much more. 

It's not a long read (about 170-180 pages, depending on which edition you have) -- I finished it in a little over 24 hours. My enjoyment of the book was marred only by the typos I spotted. It does tend to be episodic -- I suspect some (much?) of the material was probably repurposed from articles Lenz wrote for other publications. 

(ALI note: I also winced when Lenz wrote about using her children as a way to connect to the other women at a pastor training session dinner. What would someone like me do in the same situation??:) 

I feel both at home and wildly out of place. I'm the journalist, not a pastor and not even married to one and at this point, not married for much longer. No one knows what to say to me. But I have kids, so I talk about them. The funny bon mots about my children are the safest conversational currency I have. I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have them to help set people at ease and bridge the divide that they already feel just knowing that I'm a woman alone with an occupation. There is welcome, but there is also an unspoken reserve, and I spend a lot of time trying to put people at ease with my presence. (Chapter 9, "Bridging the Divide")

But overall, I really like Lenz's writing. Lots of books over the past four years have attempted to explain the red/blue divide in America and the psyche of the Trump voter -- e.g., "Hillbilly Elegy," "White Working Class," "Strangers in Their Own Land"....  This one should be added to the reading lists. It's not a comprehensive text by any means, but it's a compelling read, with lots of food for thought. 

Four stars on Goodreads 

This was Book #30 read to date in 2020 (Book #6 finished in August), bringing me to 100%!! of my 2020 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 30 books. I have now completed my challenge for the year, and am (for the moment, anyway...!) 12 (!) books ahead of schedule. :) (I guess I finally found my COVID reading mojo, lol -- and anything I read after this will be gravy.)  ;)  

You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2020 tagged as "2020 books."