Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint

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.

As a recent graduate from Chicago Theological Seminary, I can attest to the wonderful writing and thoughtful theological applications found in this book. Nadia B-W has become my idol and my "mentor" in a way as I begin my own entry into ministry. I actually had this book in hard copy and autographed by Nadia from when I met her at the beginning of my Seminary experience. Somehow I misplaced it so this paperback copy will have to do. This is fine because over the past few years I have purchased this book for so many other people who also have fallen in love with Nadia! BUY THIS BOOK if you have ever doubted how your own religion speaks to you.PS: Nadia, if you are reading this, feel free to send me another autographed copy.

Took a while to get the book but was in the timeframe indicated. Book is in excellent condition with no visible flaws. Looks like new.

Wednesday September 11th I walked in to church for our evening youth event, and one of the adult leaders already had a copy of Pastrix in her hand. She had pre-ordered it via Amazon so she could start reading it right away.I had a copy of it myself in my saddle bag. I had already read the first chapter, and knew it was going to be even better than I had anticipated.Here's what Nadia excels at, and why our church (the ELCA) simply adores her: She breaks down law-gospel proclamation, a fancy title for the kind of preaching Lutherans of the ELCA variety hope to excel at, and turns it into language that makes sense to pretty much everybody. And she does so with the timing of a comedian. She's gratingly funny.She does law-gospel preaching through a memoir. She lets her life speak.That sounds more saccharine than I intend it. But Nadia is never saccharine. If she ever is, she smells it right away, and drops another expletive and deprecates herself. Even when she gets in the way she doesn't get in the way, because her whole story in here is about the grace extended to her in Christ in spite of the failings of the church, in spite of her own failings as a person and pastor.There's a lot in this book that is deeply emotional. I broke into sobs on page 18, reading how her father very humbly pulled out scripture and spoke words of grace that confirmed her call to become a "pastor to her people."I have to admit: I wish this were a book I had written. People like to say: I could have written a book like that. Usually that's not true. You don't have a book in you just waiting to be written down. To write a book, you have to write a book.I can only imagine that Nadia has bled in the writing of this book, because it is so deeply personal, and yet so profoundly theological. Again and again, she illustrates how pastoral ministry is life in the trenches--wrestling with a biblical text until you get a blessing, blogging and being open to abuse by those who disagree with you, welcoming all kinds of people, even the people you never thought would join you, into your church.It's one woman's testimony of how God made her life a catechism, often in spite of her, and graciously enlivening her. It's the story of a church working out what it means to be church among people who have often been hurt by the church.Nadia also pulls off what very few authors are allowed. She swears like a sailor while proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ. As a farm boy from Iowa, this is so refreshing. Farmers swear less than sailors, but we do swear. We tend to have less tattoos. But it's good for readers to know that pastors swear also.It's also good to know that pastors are real, that church is real, that church will let you down. And that's part of what church IS, if it is made up of people who are always simultaneously saint and sinner.Seriously, you want to read this book, and you want to read it soon. If you are a pastor, your people will already be clamoring to read it with you. Mine already are. I've never had a book (well, maybe The Shack) where so many of my own people wanted to read the book with me. Usually I'm trying to hand books to people and convince them to read it.This book wants to be read, and people want to talk about it.Nadia, you rock, you really rock. Thanks, Nadia, for reminding us that ultimately, it's not about us, it's not even about Nadia. It's about a gracious God. A God who prefers to hang out on the underside, on the other side of whatever line we like to draw between ourselves and others. Thank you for a life story that tells it that way. Because it's true.

It's OK. I didn't find it as good as Accidental Saints. Whether that's because her writing, thinking, or theology have developed, I'm not sure. It has some great chapters, and some that just seem to struggle and meander. Still worth a read for the gems that it does contain.

This book is incredible, couldn’t put it down. Read in 4 days. Really shows jesus’ love and acceptance. Nadia is so inspiration.

WHAT FUN!

Wonderful book. Has had a huge impact on my understanding of the Christian message.

Excellent read.