When Christian Leaders Fail

I was a young teen when the pastor of the church we attended had an affair and diverted missions funds to the local building project.  I was shocked to learn that Christians aren’t perfect, that they sin in big ways, and that even Christian leaders fall. In Lorita Boyle’s novel, Bathsheba’s Lament, a woman of ancient Israel struggles with disillusionment when her spiritual leader—a man she admired, whose position she respected, a family friend whose music moved her to worship the Lord God—rapes her and has her husband killed.

Real Life Amish

My husband was strongly influenced by the Anabaptists in his teen years.  My father was raised Quaker. Nevertheless, I have avoided the popular Amish trend in Christian fiction as a nostalgic desire to return to a simpler time and avoid dealing with modern reality.  Dale Cramer’s Paradise Valley is not that.  

A 1921 Ohio law required Amish families to send their children to public schools where they must cut their hair and dress in “Englisher” clothing—a plan which would effectively wipe out the Amish community in a generation. The arguments in this part of the book sounded disturbingly like modern discussions of home schooling vs. ‘godless humanistic classrooms’.