unmasking a (self) hateful faith
a bite-sized q&a with author lizzie mcmanus-dail
I’m obsessed with unmasking these days.
The concept captured me around the time I was identified as Autistic last year. (My psychologist, bless her, prefers to say “identified” rather than “diagnosed” to minimize the use of pathologizing language.) Unmasking, at least in the neurodivergent world, is used to describe the process of shedding the skins you’ve put on to fit in and revealing the soft and wild animal you actually are.
Now that I know this word, I’m conducting experiments in unmasking everything. Unmasking how I work. Can you put that in writing, please? Unmasking how I parent. I’ve hit my sensory limit for the day! Goodnight, loves. Unmasking how I believe. Hi God. Okay if I’m not particularly verbal, emotive, or social this season? Thank you for not making me fix my face with you.
So a new book from friend Lizzie McManus-Dail couldn’t be more well-timed. God Didn’t Make Us to Hate Us: 40 Devotions to Liberate Your Faith from Fear and Reconnect with Joy is “a first-of-its-kind devotional for the disenchanted, disillusioned, and deconstructed.” In other words, it is a devotional for people who are quite through with devotionals, and “Father Lizzie” is our big-haired, bold-lipped, wise AF priest.
Feminist, anti-racist, and LGBTQ-affirming, Lizzie invites us to shed our (self) hateful faith and become re-enchanted with a soft and wild God. Before my Autism identification, I wouldn’t have claimed any self-hate in my own faith. But all this unmasking has me wondering: How much of my spirituality has been tinged through the years with a quiet fear that I am too woo, too weird, too divergent to be faithful?
What utter nonsense, says Lizzie.
What utter brilliance is she.
Erin Lane: What is your favorite thing about being an adult?
Father Lizzie McManus-Dail: Slice-and-bake cookies whenever I want! Also: getting to set the dress code at work and at home to actually be affirming of comfort and self-expression.
Erin: You wrote a book, God Didn’t Make Us to Hate Us. What shitty script were you trying to tear up?
Lizzie: The shitty script is the one on billboards and devotional sections across America: that a wrathful, angry, white male god hates you. And somehow, this is meant to motivate you to love this god, and in so doing, hate yourself and others in the name of love.
What utter nonsense. What a completely fabricated, non-Biblical, anti-actual-Christlike-love grab for power and dominion.
Erin: Okay. Now flip it. What truer, weirder story did you set out to write instead?
Lizzie: Devotionals are bite-sized spirituality for the rest of us. I've always cherished theology that is written for the non-academics, and I longed to see more liberating theologies in the mass market shelves. And so? I wrote a book that invites us into the joyous, sensual, body-affirming, world-spanning, neighbor-loving, offensively merciful mystery of God’s love.
It's a devotional for the deconstructing or deconstructed, sure, but it's also something I hope you can hand to grandma if she's looking for a better way to honor your faith or pronouns or relate to her grandkids’ experience of church. Each section tackles a "myth" in billboard Christianity and invites us into a deeper mystery with God. The secret? None of this is new. It's all very, very old theology and Bible reading. I'm just trying to help us read the Bible like she's living again.
Erin: Writing—and Christianity—is about the threat of resurrection. What is the scariest thing about bringing this book to life?
Lizzie: Uhh...what isn't scary right now?!
Honestly, I don't know if I am more afraid of the book being popular and garnering me more ire from our siblings in Christ steeped in right-wing extremism, or if I'm afraid the book will be a flop. But either way, I know what resurrection is because I lived it while giving birth, twice. To bring life into the world, you have to face death. To speak of God's life in the face of the forces of sin and death in this world, we have to face death head on.
So I'm trying. And I'm eating a lot of slice-and-bake cookies right now.
Erin: Publishing a book is a shiny milestone! What is something less shiny about a life well-lived you’re celebrating this week?
Lizzie: My littlest baby will take a bottle which, if you read the book, is a huge effing deal. I'm still thick in figuring out formula and boobs and pumping and how she wants to eat—and how we can feed her as a family, as shared burden and joy (instead of it just being me…and only me). It is the definition of invisibilized and undervalued labor. I have to eat 1,000 extra calories a day to make this milk and also, I’m supposed to be “bouncing back” and not hormonal and not missing her but also she’s meant to be my whole world. And for me? All the motherhood muck comes out in breastfeeding versus formula feeding.
But also? She takes a bottle. I went to the gym today while someone else fed her. I couldn't do that for almost a whole year with my oldest. What a gift to have two children who are so different, so immediately. And what a gift that their love challenges me to love each of them on their own terms. And what a challenge—and gift—to know there is enough, and I don't have to supply it all. There is enough of a feast for all of us.
P.S. Want to celebrate Lizzie for doing her work and sharing her story? If so, consider joining me in donating to Jubilee, the small LGBTQIA+ affirming church where Lizzie serves in central Texas. (None of this goes directly to Lizzie, as she is paid by the Episcopal Diocese.) A donation to Jubilee funds its operating costs, security, and children’s ministry. Go to JubileeATX.org and click on “donate”.
P.P.S. Other books that are helping me unmask my own faith? Unmasking Autism by Devon Price, Divergent Mind by Janera Nerenberg, and No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz. I also loved, loved, loved the portrayal of a self-accepting faith in the just-ended Max series, Somebody Somewhere.
P.P.P.S. How are you practicing unmasking any tinge of hate, shame, or anxiety in your faith? Tell me your tiny kazoos (a.k.a. tiny victories) in the comments below.
This was excellent, Erin. Thank you. Lizzie's devotional sounds like a breath of fresh air.