Jamie Marich is committed to helping people and systems flourish. Marich is also the author of a courageous memoir, “You Lied to Me About God.” To learn more about their work and witness, visit https://jamiemarich.com/.
Starlette Thomas: The memoir begins with a list of words that might be used to describe you all/you once persons read our/your memoir. Book in print and in circulation, what is our/your self-definition?
Jamie Marich: Ah, yes, the “list.” I opted to start the memoir with a list of words that are traditionally hurled at people, especially women, who speak out against the church or men in authority: bitter, unforgiving, unrepentant, hateful, manipulative, resentful, sinful, troubled, entitled, immoral, dramatic, narcissistic, self-absorbed, egotistical, ungrateful, unholy, unhinged, spiritually immature, mentally ill, backslidden, and divisive.
I needed to put these out there to feel safe enough to speak freely in the book. Because I know who the haters are and how they show up in the world. I appreciate your invitation to reframe it.
I am/we, as we wrote in a recent song of ours, a warrior – soft of heart yet fierce in fight. We are soft/strong, fierce/nice, whole/ torn, young/wise; truly all these things, so many things. Above all, we are a child of the Divine who is free to live as I am/as we are in this lifetime. It took a long time through everything we’ve been through to be able to say that. As you teach, Dr. Starlette, I am somebody.
ST: Why was it important for you all/you to write this book?
JM: On a personal level, it was important to write this book because it is truly my testimony, and it felt like the next needed step in my healing process to share more widely what I’ve learned. As a professional clinician, I’ve long led with authenticity and I’ve certainly never hid my past struggles with addiction and ongoing mental health challenges; in my previous books, I name that. In this book, I help people understand how these struggles came about.
On a professional and societal level, it feels important to share my story now because it is a cautionary tale of what happens when two dogmas, even under the same larger umbrella of Christianity, can’t see the similarities and nearly kill each other with the differences.
Having one Catholic parent and one Evangelical parent who remained married and raised us in both faiths in a context of so much conflict about who was right was tortuous. I think I could have lived through either one of the two religions as a sensitive, queer child and come out with a collection of mental health diagnoses. But being the oldest child that my parents battled over wrecked me. And scars of those battles have reopened in the last 8 years or so as Donald Trump’s rise to power seems to have brought out the worst in people.
ST: Who do you all/you hope will read this memoir?
JM: Above all, I hope that parents who identify as people of faith, any faith, will read this memoir. Because in my story we see what can happen when parents treat their own children as a personal mission field and/or the pawn in some kind of unholy war. I would like parents to consider what it could be like to raise your children in faith yet embrace them as who they are meant to be and to refrain from using faith as a weapon.
I think anyone who is on a deconstruction pilgrimage could also benefit from my stories and some of the invitations that I make in the book, and of course, professionals of many vocations (e.g., therapists, pastors, teachers, media professionals) who would like to learn more about the impact of spiritual abuse.
Director of The Raceless Gospel Initiative, an associate editor, host of the Good Faith Media podcast, “The Raceless Gospel” and author of Take Me to the Water: The Raceless Gospel as Baptismal Pedagogy for a Desegregated Church.
