Josiah Hesse - On Fire for God

Описание: One part Educated, one part rebuttal to Hillbilly Elegy, On Fire for God explores the ways evangelical Christianity has preyed upon its followers while galvanizing them into the political force known today as the Christian right.

Exvangelical journalist Josiah Hesse grew up in the stifling working-class town of Mason City, Iowa, raised in the institutions of fundamentalist Christianity: a toxic mixture of schools, ministries, and religious camps that taught creationism, instilled sexual shame, and foretold horrific tales of the rapture and the ceaseless agony awaiting sinners in the afterlife. In the churches where he worshiped, greedy pastors siphoned their flocks’ wealth while preaching a doctrine of prosperity and humiliating the poor. Meanwhile, as economic struggles grew in the community around him, his fellow believers lambasted organized labor and shunned the social safety net, an army for God against the evils of progressivism. Like many of his peers, Hesse would find himself a high-school dropout, in and out of a series of dead-end jobs. Only upon escaping Iowa in search of something more would he truly consider the possibility that God didn’t exist, that the world wasn’t going to end, and that he was woefully unprepared for a future he’d never believed would arrive.

Written in vivid prose, On Fire for God is both an unflinching memoir of religious trauma and survival and a stirring examination of the emotional, political, and sociological effects of the Christian right. Returning to his hometown in search of answers about his upbringing, his family history, and the political forces at work in the region, Hesse calls into question prevailing theories about the disappearing working class that point to opioids, automation, or globalism as the culprits. Instead, his story of awakening and escape exposes how conservative Christian conmen have, over generations, trapped working-class believers in an isolated bubble of racism, xenophobia, and martyrdom and stripped communities like his of their wealth and self-esteem, leaving behind a passive, low-wage workforce unable–and unwilling–to demand better. In On Fire for God, Hesse plumbs the depths of his own experience to illuminate, with deep feeling and piercing immediacy, what he describes as the socioeconomic tragedy of the American working class.

Josiah Hesse, author of Runner’s High and the Carnality series, is a freelance journalist out of Denver, Colorado, covering everything from politics, science, and crime, to art, pop culture, and evangelical culture and theology. A regular contributor to The Guardian and Vice, his work has appeared in Esquire, Newsweek, Men’s Health, and Politico, among other publications.

An Iowa native and leading authority on 90s Christian rock, Josiah released his debut novel Carnality: Dancing on Red Lake in 2015. A psychological horror about growing up in an isolated farming community fueled by Pentecostal Christianity and methamphetamine, the book was hailed as “one of the finest novels to come out of Denver’s burgeoning arts scene.”

Josiah just released his second book in the Carnality series, Carnality: Sebastian Phoenix and the Dark Star, which was written in part at Owl Farm in Woody Creek, Colorado – the longtime home of Hunter S. Thompson.