(RNS) — Jen Hatmaker married at 19 and for 26 years lived what seemed an enviable evangelical life. She had a pastor husband, five kids, a home renovation TV show and a thriving career as an author and women’s ministry leader.
Then it all fell apart.
In her new memoir, “Awake,” Hatmaker begins with the end of her marriage — a devastating middle-of-the-night discovery of betrayal — and then returns to the beginning, to the Bible college meet-cute. She chronicles the ways purity culture, complementarianism and ministry zeal both choked and fueled her fledgling marriage. And she finds there, in the evangelical origins of that love story, the seeds of what she now calls “bad fruit.”
“Awake,” which published Sept. 23, is a divorce memoir, but it is also an exvangelical testimony — whether or not she would claim that label for herself. Hatmaker’s divorce is one part of a deconstruction journey that has her reckoning with purity culture, homophobia, racism, sexism and Christian nationalism. Though these beats may sound familiar to anyone who has read of or personally experienced evangelical deconstruction, Hatmaker’s offering is fresh and funny and, given her history as an evangelical women’s leader, may serve as something of an archetype.
RNS talked wi …