Emily M’s Reviews > Where Goodness Still Grows: Reclaiming Virtue in an Age of Hypocrisy > Status Update

The final chapter on hope, as seen through raising chickens and planting a home garden, spoke to me beautifully, perhaps because I have also done both, for largely the same reasons. Also, no repulsive political figures made an appearance.

Debates not with strangers online but with intimate friends who can challenge your thoughts in the context of a relationship Yes! This is how iron sharpens iron.

Her college pastor abandoned his family for an adulterous relationship. This explains a lot.

The author apparently never encountered antagonistic professors or friends at a big state university. I want to say bless her heart, but perhaps my experience growing up in a liberal college town and spending 13 years of my adult life in liberal college towns is truly different than college town life in the South. Also, she mentions her Episcopal church --I had been wondering about her current denomination.

The chapter on authenticity reminded me Justin Whitmel Earley's writings in spiritual habits. I rolled my eyes when she brought up Trump again (her obsession with that man seems stronger than most of his voters!), but the way she examines liturgies old and new would be a great starting point for discussion of forms of worship with my low church friends who fear ritual making things dead.

The chapter on modesty was the reason I actually picked up this book--I appreciated how she reframes modesty in thinking about not showing off our wealth, which is the Biblical example. But the question isn't whether the Kardashians are immodest for showing off their wealth or their (fake) bodies--it's both. She teases this idea out some but is still a bit too inclined to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The usual blame of purity culture for all of the sexual woes of today's exvangelical women. She clearly hasn't reread Passion and Purity, as I recently did, but she's right that it's possible to frame the issue incorrectly (which Elliott didn't) when 90s parents were trying to save their children from their own free love regrets. The mention of Trump putting immigrant children in cages felt like a reach.

The hospitality chapter is about her justifying their decision not to have more than two children by practicing Biblical hospitality because evangelicals are xenophobic. As someone who grew up with dozens of international students in our home for all major holidays, I have a hard time reconciling my experience with the polls she references. Is it possible to oppose illegal immigration and still welcome immigrants?

Well, the author just took her class on a nature walk to discuss how as Christians we must care about climate change, and she sees a mom and teen son picking blueberries and immediately assumes they're homeschoolers, thus evangelicals, thus believe it's okay to rape the earth. Apparently the call for kindness and kinship only goes towards the BIPOC people we whites have wronged through systematic racism?