Breaking Up With God: A Love Story

by Sarah Sentilles

I broke up with God. The breakup was devastating. It was like a divorce when all the friends you had as a couple are forced to choose sides and end up not choosing yours.

Sarah Sentilles's relationship with God was not casual. When it began to unravel she was in the ordination process to become an Episcopal priest, a youth minister at a church, and a doctoral student in theology at Harvard. You might say they were engaged and that the wedding was all planned. Calling it off would be more than a little awkward. But in the studying of the religion she'd been raised on and believed wholeheartedly, one day she woke up and realized . . . it was over.

In this powerful memoir of faith, Sentilles reveals how deep our ties to God can be, and how devastating they can be to break. Without God to mold herself to and without religion as her script, who was she and what was her purpose? Her relationship with God had been connected to everything—her family, her friends, her vocation, the places she frequented, the language she used, and her way of being in the world. Not unlike after a divorce, she had to reorient her life and face a future that felt darkly unfamiliar. But this beautiful, brave book is surprisingly filled with hope, a coming-out story that lets others know it's safe to come out too, and that there's light on the other side.

Genres: Memoir, Religion, Nonfiction, Theology, Spirituality, Philosophy, Biography

256 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2011

About the author

Sarah Sentilles is the author of A Church of Her Own and Taught by America. She is a scholar of religion and earned a bachelor's degree in literature from Yale and a master's of divinity and a doctorate in theology from Harvard. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Reviews

[Liralen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun fact: I am a divinity school dropout. The differences between my div. school experiences and this author's, though, are that I a) realised much earlier than she did that I was not where I wanted to be, and b) I didn't have a crisis of faith, just a crisis of calling. (Or possibly a crisis of career. Or city. Crisis of words beginning with 'C'?) (Oh, and the religion is different, but I'm less interested in reading about the religion itself than about the experience of it.)

Anyway, I was really excited to pick this up. I'd read Taught by America: A Story of Struggle and Hope in Compton in college (when I had run out of books on single-sex education and moved on to books about education in general) and liked it well enough, so I was very much looking forward to this.

It is, or tries to be, a book about the author's relationship with God, but it ends up being more about her relationship with church and religion (yes, I am drawing a distinction here). It also...wanders. In Taught by America, there was a fairly clear beginning point and end point; in Breaking Up With God, by trying to distill everything religious from her life and pull it into one book, she ends up with more fraying and loose ends, more pieces that don't feel as integral to the book as I would wish.

The (rather overplayed) 'God as boyfriend' metaphor is interesting, but honestly, I question the analysis here. This goes back to the question of the difference between God and religion, I think -- it felt to me as though her real issues were with the church (although I'm not sure she saw a difference between the two), and I would have loved to see that side of it explored further. Religion is -- for lack of a better word -- interesting. And complex. And I'd love to read more about people going into or out of the ministry...maybe with a little less metaphor.

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I felt a great deal of empathy with Sarah Sentilles in this memoir about becoming disillusioned with institutional Christianity. Although Sentilles, in her title, claims to be breaking up with God and asserts that she is now an agnostic, I think her real struggle is with the Church and the its institutional interpretation of Christianity. I have a lot of problems with that, as well. As she studied the scriptures (she was in Divinity School studying to become a pastor), she was struck at the huge disconnect between what she was learning in seminary and what is currently preached in most churches. That disconnect was maddening and eventually led to her leaving the seminary and (as she tells it, God). Still, I have the feeling that she isn't done with God, just yet. But I certainly could relate to the frustration at the religious institutions that lumber around like dinosaurs that haven't figured out yet that the comet has hit and their environment is about to make them extinct.

[Annie · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those humble books you happen upon that manages to change your life. Maybe it didn't change anyone else's, and your friends have never even heard of the author. Maybe it'll never be a New York Times bestseller. Maybe it won't even have its own Wikipedia page. But it connects with you, moves you, reminds you that you are part of a bigger story, and you keep coming back to it. This book is one of those personal pets for me.

I was in (a Catholic, all-girls) high school five or six years ago when I discovered this gem- amusingly enough, when I was looking for Saint Therese of Lisieux's "Story of a Soul." At the time, I was secretly nursing thoughts of joining the Poor Clares after I went to university (probably university would have cured me of such thoughts even without this book; that never occurred to my pious little soul). Reading this book made my very sheltered young self recognize my religion had very little to do with God and a great deal to do with myself. Wanting unconditional, personal, immortal love, a kind of love that had a ready-made road-map that if followed could only lead to success. I didn't need Twilight to fantasize about that sort of love; I had Solomon's Song of Songs. And I began to distrust my religion and God and above all, myself. This book helped me to see the needy desperation that motivated my faith.

Subsequent re-reads would serve to guide me gently through the sense of loss that came after I abandoned my romantic ideas of religion, and to reassure me that life after religion is not as bleak as I believed.

I love this book because Sarah Sentilles thinks so similarly to me and has a similar personal history- it read like a book I had written myself, as if my 30-year-old self had written it and sent it back in history to comfort and reassure fifteen-year-old me that meaning can be found where you choose to find it.

[Dani · Rating 3 out of 5]

As an atheist I was excited to read a book that detailed a serious religious person's fall from grace, so to speak. However, I didn't get the feeling that the author was really ever that seriously religious. I mean, sure, she was training to be a priest, but it was because she wanted to do something grand with her life not because she felt God was calling her. Overall, an interesting read, a well-written book to be sure, just not what I was hoping for.

[Amanda Mcdonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Someone more clever than me once said that theology is how we talk about God when He's not in the room. I thought of that quote as I read this brief and thoughtful book about one woman's journey from Christian faith to faithlessness in Christianity. Ms. Sentilles was planning on becoming an Episcopal priest when she slowly came to realize that the God she believed in wasn't really hanging out in the spaces where He was thought to be (namely, churches, and with the people who attend them).

No one dumps religion like the Episcopalians. Barbara Brown Taylor, John Shelby Spong, and now Sarah Sentilles. These people kick the whole church thing to the curb, hard, and convincingly. It's little wonder that the Episcopal Church is collapsing.

In recent years, I have discovered women's voices as writers, much to my benefit. I am now actively seeking out books written by women, and books that reflect a woman's experiences of the world. A lot of it leaves me scratching my head, while the rest of it makes me feel rather dim-witted for not thinking about how easy my life as a white, heterosexual male has been. This is one of the books that makes me say, Hmmmm...how does all this God the Father talk sound to my two little girls? What message do they take away from a religious tradition where women are not allowed to become priests? What I am I allowing to take root in their heads? The author's perspective is valuable to me as the father of daughters. She's helping me to think about a few things that are not...let's say obvious to the male point of view.

Some of what she wrote I found a little frustrating (and thus four stars instead of five). Being all fired up about obscure theologians, then feeling like no one at her suburban Episcopal church was getting it the way she was seems a bit smug. I wonder, while she was steaming in the back room because she just couldn't get the people fired about about Paul Tillich, if she thought about what people were in church for on a Sunday morning. Could it be sadness and grief? Could it be adoration and gratitude? Could it be shame and sorrow? It seems to me that people seek out God for a lot of different reasons. Hers isn't the best or only reason to do so.

So I liked this. I get what she's saying. The more you apply reason to religion, the less substantial the foundations of religion seem to be. Roger Williams said that God is too big to be contained in the walls of any one church, and he was correct. There is a funny gif that I've seen a few times. It shows planet Earth, then it widens out to our solar system, then the milky way, then our galaxy cluster, then a super cluster of galaxies, then the known universe...and suddenly Jesus is standing above it all saying "don't masturbate." It makes me laugh every single time, but it makes a sharp point: religion is putting the creator of the universe is a pretty small box.

I would read more of her books. I bet she'd be a great person to have a cup of coffee with and talk about stuff.

[Ebony · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took a minute for me to get into Breaking Up with God. It’s a disjoined memoir that moved more quickly to destinations I initially wasn’t particularly interested in. I kept thinking, “get to the breaking up with God part” but in retrospect the break up wouldn’t have been as powerful without her girlhood narratives.
I loved that Sarah found love and that she married a man who understood her. Part of me feels guilty for writing that. As if I thought she needed a human man to save her after she left her divine God man, but a bigger part of me understands learning to love another is proof that one has learned to love oneself. As long as Sarah was head over heels in love with God she wouldn’t ever have been able to love herself. Her husband is proof that she really moved on—past her fears of being unloveable.
This book is important because rarely do women publicly address a) heterosexual romantic attachments to God b) loosening those attachments to the point of divesting oneself from Christianity. Her men critics who accused her of being a silly woman who imagined herself in relationship with God don’t get it because they see themselves in God. They don’t know the mindfuck of being a woman encouraged to do it for daddy (as I write about in Rap and Religion ), encouraged to submit to (religious) patriarchy, encouraged to always be Other in the face of the masculine God. Sarah Sentilles is brave because she tells the truth. The love and freedom she thought she had with God only manifested when she walked away from God. Her honesty is necessary. Her healing and transformation are necessary. Her narrative is necessary.

[Eddie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book because I loved the title. I am an atheist and did not always grow up that way. So, to find this book and to read about a woman who grew up Catholic and also went to school to become a priest and then ended up having a falling out with God was a joy to read for me. It helped me even understand my own struggles on the real reasons of me giving up on God, or what I like to say, my invisible sky-buddy. Well, actually, YOUR (if you believe) invisible sky-buddy. I will admit, I almost gave up on this book in the very beginning because it was way too simply written. I mean, even more simple than the reviews I give here on goodreads. But like a flower exposed to a little bit of sunshine, it started to flourish, open it and Sarah Sentilles eventually told a very expressive, honest account of her life and relationship with God. I also loved the book because with all this blah, blah, blah, conservative talk and views making my ears bleed all over the place, it was nice to read a nature-loving, humanity-caring, who talks about reading Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma and becoming a vegetarian and who also can't stand the bigotry of people who use Christianity to impose bigotry and hatred against many things, but specifically in this book, homosexuals.

[Marya · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you like memoirs and you want a brief primer on the flavors of Christian theology, this is your book. Sentilles chronicles her understanding of God (for which she uses the metaphor of a romantic relationship) from her Catholic christening, through her masters of divinity program at Harvard, to her ordination process for the Episcopalian church, to ending at the present day when she has "broken up" with God. As she explores her changing views on God, she includes a synopsis of various theologians' ideas of God that matches whatever stage she is in. It's almost like reading an evolution of her thought, but it is too much of a memoir to abandon the tried and true "me me me" format and delve wholly into philosophy. That can be a good or bad thing depending on how well you like the memoir format.
Ultimately, Sentilles is concerned with coming to understand God, not the church, or even organized religion. She wants her emotional understanding of God to match with an increasingly sophisticated intellectual one. Readers who are not interested in intellectual theology may not find much to appreciate in this book.

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was this the best book ever? Hardly. But this is something I have learned in my years of reading: good writing, that's probably first, but a close second in swaying opinion is definitely relatability. The fact is, I found myself on pretty much EVERY page (miserable dating experiences, check. Complicated in and out feelings with religion, check. Good God, we even both bake for everyone but ourselves!). So, does this make me a narcissist, that I give a rather well written but somewhat choppy, meandering and often self righteous (ironically) four stars when it probably deserved three (to be fair it was going to get five but for the quibbles)? I'm sure it does but, well, it's my goodreads account, so there.

[Heidi · Rating 1 out of 5]

The farther along I got into reading the book, the more apparent it became to me that the author was/has suffered some psychological paradoxes throughout her life. Initially I was okay with this concept but the further I read, the more I thought the author was/is suffering from either one or a combination of mental illnesses related to her unfounded spiritual/christian beliefs. It just got weirder and weirder to me as I read on until I couldn't stand reading about her beliefs anymore. Not my cup of tea.

[Carol Evans · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s not a book I would choose to read again, but Sarah is open and honest about her journey, which I can appreciate. She has insights that did make me think about issues. As a personal memoir, It’s not the most well-written, but it was interesting, at points enlightening and at others just annoying

[Anne Deane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found Sarah Sentilles’ story had lots of resonance points for me. Much of what she writes about her early faith years is a description of her inner mental life - the inner conversations, the internal critic, society’s conversations… She provides a clear-to-me picture of her changing beliefs of God over time leading her to choose ordination and then at the final turn deciding to turn her back on that.

As one who needed to reconfigure their faith in mid life I resonate with the deep sense of loss she experienced… loss of ways of thinking that had given such comfort and familiarity, loss of community, loss of connection as people silently withdraw, significant disorientation… Such a journey takes much courage - and also opens the door to all the rich colour, mystery, love, connection and more of this awesome thing called life. 7/10

[Joe Sampson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this very interesting. The author was training to be an Episcopalian priest but part way through her training decides that she no longer believes in God.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was drawn to this book because I have a deep respect for people who leave their faith. The emotional and social costs of making a definitive break with a religious community are high, and the path of least resistance for many who find they can no longer believe what their religion teaches can be to just go through the motions, or to drop out of active participation in church life but retain the identification as a member of their tradition. It is a brave and honest act to take the step of actually declaring oneself no longer a part of the faith you once claimed. I was particularly intrigued by Sentilles' casting of her deconversion as a "love story," because a romantic breakup strikes me as an apt metaphor for the emotional experience of leaving one's religion.

Unfortunately, the specifics of Sentilles' life do not seem to fit very well into the organizing conceit of her memoir. The dust jacket copy and prologue describe Sentilles' relationship with God as a lifelong defining feature of her life, broken off on the verge of their "wedding" (her ordination to the priesthood, it would seem). But as she tells her story, the decision to seek ordination (which, frankly, she never seems to seek very hard, e.g. enrolling in seminary without entering the care of her denomination's discernment process) comes off more as a whim of an idealistic young adult than the natural extension of the lifetime of faith. The telling of her story in a way that fits into the organizing metaphor seems forced at points, and consequently inauthentic in its description of the phases of her earlier life of faith.

I am trying not to let my disagreement with Sentilles' conclusions interfere with my evaluation of her book, and I don't know whether I have succeeded. It is an eminently readable account of one person's journey into and then back out of a life of intense Christian devotion.

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sentilles describes the evolution on her faith in God as if they had been lifelong friends and lovers.
The strong, comforting faith of her childhood led her to study religion at Harvard, work as a youth minister, and decide to become an Episcopalian priest. As she learned more about both religion and human experience, she came to realize that her relationship with God wasn't working. In her struggle to decide whether to stay on the path to priesthood, her mother told her, "Part of life is discerning when you need to stay and when it's time to go. Sometimes it's difficult to tell the difference." Her journey was long and painful, but ultimately Sentilles did "break up with God." Here's how she describes it:

"I didn't lose my faith. I left it....God is gone....Too many terrible things done in his name. Too much suffering in the world. Too much violence. Too many disasters. I let go of a personal God. I let go of all of it."

The metaphor of God as boyfriend may seem sacreligious to people of faith, or trite and facile to skeptics. For me the metaphor worked perfectly, maybe because my own experience has been similar. If you struggle with belief or have outgrown your faith, you'll like this book.

[Micah McCarty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I truly loved this book. I was a tad disappointed with how she chose to end it. I think even she realized that it sounded trite. But overall I haven't read anything before that is even remotely similar to my own struggles with faith. This book captured many of the same feelings and reasons I have experienced and it is written with a candor and honesty that I normally have not seen in religious memoirs.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is exactly what it purports. It is a succinct journey of the rise and fall of faith in Christianity. As I read about the author's journey, I couldn't help but see so much of myself in her, all the way to the end. Wrapping up with what life is like after the break up and finding something to truly believe in without requiring extrapolated explanations. She found a passion and a much needed cause to place focus on, shaping a new way of believing in the universe.

[Beth Transue · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provides an honest look at the crisis of faith experienced by a seminarian. I think it shows how important it is for those considering a call to ministry to fully explore their faith and their motivation for entering the ministry. It also leads me to greater compassion for those experiencing crises of faith and its impact.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! Sentilles' book is a memoir about how she left her faith in a traditional, patriarchal Christian God. She interweaves theological ideas with stories from her own life. I was so moved by this book, and I highly recommend it to seekers, believers, and anyone interested in the importance of thinking about how our ideas about God impact our world.

[Kizz Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a lot to think about in this memoir. I expected there to be a more definite conclusion but, after reading the rest of it, was almost glad it stayed ambiguous. Makes me take issue with the title, though.

[Levi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sarah Sentilles tells a beautiful narrative of her journey in faith, feminism, and belonging. The style is playful and thoughtful, helping to reframe the occasional introspection. A good read for one looking for perspective. If you're totally lost, don't start here.

[Valarie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started out not really liking it. I began to think that God broke up with her because she was such a head case and she finally convinced herself it was all for the best. But ... I wound up thoroughly enjoying this book. I'm happy to have toughed it out.

[Stephanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel like this is a book I should have connected with, since some of it was very relevant to my own experiences with religion. But on the whole the writing style left me cold.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

the only thing i didnt like about this was the weird pro-vegetarianism ending but go off i guess

[Marjorie Elwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5
What I loved about this book was the growth of the author's self-awareness, and her honesty about her flaws. In the beginning, she is filling up the hollowness of her life with religion as a way to feel whole. She applies to Teach for America as a way to "appear brave and generous when people asked what I was going to do when I graduated". She does the same when deciding to be a priest. She stays in relationships in which she is being used because she lacks the self-esteem to be alone and because she needs the approval granted to traditional relationships.

Through her time teaching in Compton, attending a church that allowed for diversity in thought, she realized: "pretending to be the person I thought other people needed me to be - the person I thought God needed me to be - was a kind of lie. It was deceitful and manipulative. Dishonest. The good things I did in the world had an ugly underside: I didn't do them for others. I did them for myself. I did them to make people love me." She attends divinity school, which is liberating in its theories of why the construct of God was created and how each of us constructs our own God in the form that we need, in her case, in the form of a father figure who would love her unconditionally. Her professor, Gordon Kaufman, puts it this way: "'The central question for theology ... is a practical question,'...'How are we to live? To what should we devote ourselves? To what causes give ourselves?' Theology that does not contribute significantly to struggles against inhumanity and injustice, he argues, has lost sight of its point of being." She realizes that "the classes I took in divinity school threw Christianity wide open. Christianity was not about single truths but about multiplicity, translations, silences, arguments, new voices. Asking questions, disagreeing and doubting were essential parts of faith, not anathemas to it."

She starts preaching, wanting to show others that God can take the doubting and the alternative views but soon finds out that the institutions of religion can't. She asks "What's faithful about hate?" "Theology, it seemed, was not the point of running a church. Being an institution was the point. Raising money, obeying the hierarchy, following rules, being right, counting the number of people in the pews, deciding whether or not to expand the building or get a new roof, caring for the community - that was church work. And I'm not sure many people in the congregation came to church to talk about God, either. They came to church because they wanted to be in a community with one another. They came to figure out how to live a life with meaning, how to do good work in the world, how to give back, how to be better people. They came to church to be fed, with bread and wine during Communion. They craved connection, and church seemed like a place where this might happen. God was almost incidental to the whole enterprise - background noise."

In the end, she leaves preaching and she leaves God. She is by no means perfect, nor has she figured everything out, but she no longer needs a father figure and religion to sustain her. "What if there is no grand narrative? What if there is only the meaning found in everyday ethics, in trying to live with integrity, in the messy, nebulous, complicated work of caring for what's around you - and for what's not - in trying not to harm another living being?"

[Eugene · Rating 5 out of 5]

If there's anything specific I love about reading memoirs, its admiring the courage of the authors to put their lives on display and seeing reflections of my own personal struggles in the pages, almost as if I were sitting across from the writer in a coffee shop listening to their story. Breaking up with God by Sarah Sentilles is no exception.

Starting with humble beginnings, she describes her religious upbringing and how it helped shape her life. Like the rest of us, she started out with a limited understanding of life's big questions, taking in what she was told by her family and religious community. From there she describes the adventure of her life in detail, how she pursued ordination through the Episcopal church and was a Doctoral student of theology at Harvard. In a very descriptive and artistic way, Sentilles tells the story of her search for meaning and the pursuit of God, ultimately being disillusioned by both the popular notions of God and the institutions that claimed to speak for him.

What's fascinating about her story is that unlike many stories of loss of faith, deconstruction and reconstruction, it takes place not in a rigid, fundamentalist setting, but in one that would appear much more enlightened. In this way, her story reminds us that doubt, faith crises and paradigm shifts are not limited to those with a politically/theologically conservative background, but are real possibilities for everyone as we all have unique stories.

The book ends on a very positive note, with her description of the God of German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach - that christianity has taken everything that is good about humanity and projected it onto God, and that the solution is found in recognizing those qualities in humanity once again. She also references many other theologians and philosophers throughout the book and relating to their descriptions on a personal level. Excellent book, and it left me wanting to dig deeper into many of the questions and answers she describes.

[Echo C · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not sure where to start...

I guess I’ll start with this: I almost could’ve written this. The things written in these pages were things that I’ve thought for so long but could never articulate so clearly.

The author, Sarah Sentilles, writes about her experience growing up as a Christian and the process in which she separates from the Episcopalian church. Reading her questions and doubt recalled my own crisis of faith. I wasn’t as entrenched in Christianity as she but I could totally relate growing up Baptist: learning about God and being told to follow Christian doctrine blindly. She describes her relationship with God as both paternal and romantic. He loves and cares for us his children and is all that we need in life. As time passed, questions formed and led to bigger questions.

Sentilles’s life (and book) takes an interesting twist but not completely unexpected. It seems as though one never truly loses faith, it just finds a new home. In this refreshing memoir, Sentilles puts it all on the table and let’s the chips fall where they may. It was a fantastic read and I highly recommend it.

[Cathy Casey-Richards · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a bit different than I expected. I found it enjoyable to follow Sentilles’s story, but often it felt disjointed and random. She jumped around a lot, including random brief anecdotes before moving on without much exploration or explanation. I appreciated her candor in regard to looking to others (men, God, etc) to fix/validate her, before realizing she needed to find that within. I found the stories related to that and the explorations around “breaking up with God” the most compelling. Near the end, Sentilles shared a string of tragedies (death in the Congo, torture in Abu Ghraib, etc) anecdotally as a way of wrapping up her book (and I guess harkening back to her reasons for not believing in a “kind” God anymore?) but it felt almost forced into the narrative.

Overall, this was an “easy” read, and I highlighted a few passages that I found particularly relatable or well-said, but I don’t think it’s a book I would recommend to others.

[Bea Elwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely well written. There were so many things that I wanted to underline and take notes on (it was a library book so I didn't) that I eventually realized I just needed to buy this book. The author is young, and sometimes that was annoying, but then her passion to bring about change could only come from youth. A beautiful guide to start a conversation about organized religion and the meaning of god.