Review: Girl Meets God

In this week's memoir read, I glimpsed the recollections of author Lauren Winner's journey from a childhood and early college experiences as a devout Jewish follower to a later conversion to Episcopalian.  She opens with the understanding that her Jewish lineage comes from her father (who is nonpracticing) and her mother is a lapsed
Baptist.  Once her parents divorce, her mother promises her father that she will raise Lauren in the Jewish faith.  She discusses her early experiences of building a Jewish library at her childhood home in Virginia and even conveys her astonishment of discovering that because her Jewish lineage comes from her father and not her mother, she must actually "convert" to Judaism because only the mother's religious lineage is recognized.  She does intense study of the Jewish faith and is followed closely by three rabbis who eventually question her and then observe her "conversion" via water to Judaism.    Once she enters the later years of college, she decides that she wishes for a more personal relationship with God which she appears to discover via the Christian faith in the form of an Episcopal church in New York.  Following two years studying in England, she is baptized and confirmed as a Christian.


The interesting parts of this memoir for me were the descriptions and explanations behind many of both the Jewish and Christian religions.  I did not grow up knowing any Jewish children in rural North Carolina.  Nor did I know any Episcopalians until I began working as a teacher.  It is astonishing how much the author is ostracized from her Jewish peers due to her conversion to Christianity.  She feels as if she has lost an entire family as many of her peers seem to excommunicate her.  She still struggles with the complexities of each faith.  For example, she has a problem with the manner in which Easter plays depict the Jewish people persecuting Jesus; she relates well that it is not the Jewish people that take out Jesus, but the weight of our sins.  She also clearly relates that both faiths have a commonality in Messiah; one faith believes he has come and the other faith is waiting for his return.  Further, there is the need for atonement in the Jewish faith via Yom Kippur while in her Christian faith she atones via her own prayer life and through confession.

From my perspective as a Methodist, I keep wanting to advise her to join the Unitarian faith which is comprised of many people from a host of religious backgrounds.  She has such a struggle to determine where her true religious intentions lie, with Judaism or Christianity.  And I have seen many dual religious affiliated households where one partner is of one faith and the other partner is of a radically different faith where they appear to find solace with the Unitarians.  And as most Unitarian ministers will tell you, whenever there is a convergence of ministers, rabbis, priests, etc. the host generally will turn to the Unitarian minister to pray over the meeting, exchange, or program.  To me, Unitarian Universalism would be the excellent compromise for a person like the author who has a deep love of both religions, but as I understand from many other religious folks, sometimes Unitarian Universalism is not formal or traditional enough to meet their religious expectations.