Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith, by Martha Beck

Interestingly, Martha Beck's book about why the Mormon church is an evil institution and why she left it only increased my faith in the gospel; while I was disturbed by her accounts of wrongdoing by those in power--and if one chooses to believe them, they are highly disturbing--her account of her experiences with the ordinary rank and file of the Mormon church and with her own spiritual life in the context of that church were so uplifting, so positive, so incredible that I ended the book thinking that even if she's right about her father's abuses and the all-controlling nature of the hierarchy, the bottom-up church is still a place where I want to be.

Also, that "if she's right" is a big thing: review after review after review of the book has pointed out factual inaccuracies, disagreed with her inrepretation of facts, and basically called her a nut job (including a review by her own sister). I won't comment on that issue, since I don't know anything more than anyone else who has written anything. (Phew! What a sentence!)

Although she's a good writer, and a good storyteller, I'd have to say that, overall, I disapproved of the book, even entirely divorced of the issues of truth, because of its tone. Throughout the book, she takes her own spirituality very seriously, and is utterly flippant about everyone else's. While I have a sense of humor, and am capable of taking serious things flippantly myself, I'd respect her a lot more if she were either equal-opportunity flippant or totally serious. As it is, she's just making her bias too obvious. Expecting Adam had some of the same unfairness--she spent the whole book explicitly and obviously borrowing Mormon theology and spirituality, and then slamming the Church, without ever acknowledging the debt she owed it, not only personally, but in terms of her beliefs. I know this is writing, and blah blah blah, but come on: that's just unfair.