Believer, Beware: First-Person Dispatches from the Margins of Faith

Which is disappointing because that's what I thought I was buying. Believer, Bewarer was still an excellent read. It is a collection of short stories, articles, blogs what not by many different writers with different viewpoints. Jews, Muslims, Christians, Agnostics and Athiests all get a say in the book. Some of the stories are amusing, some sad, some thoughtful. Overall a good read.

I grew up as a missionary kid, pastor's sidekick, God merchant, Religious Right leader, you name it. I long since escaped if not to sanity then to a little more happiness. I read other people's books about religion and most are from the outside in. "Believer Beware" is from the inside out. It is also laugh out loud funny, touching, irreverent and yet, in a deeper way, pays religion the ultimate compliment: it's worthy of scrutiny, debate and measuring up on a very personal scale of intimate first hand experience. This is a book for anyone who knows two things: first, that for better or worse religion is important; second, that experiencing religion can be a harrowing passage into the darker side of human frailty. And yet... here is a book that does not reject faith but rather asks the question: what can faith mean to me after I discard the prejudice that too often comes with the territory of believing you have "the" answers? Readers will find brilliant writing here, world-class story telling by some veterans of the trade, such as the luminous Jeff Sharlet, and newcomers like Quince Mountain, who tells the funniest and best written story - "Cowboy For Christ" -- of transgendered disaster, fundamentalist religion and self discovery I've ever read (a story that made me want to read the novel of which this could be a first scintillating chapter.) This is the most amusing and touching book I've sucked up in years. Recovering religion survivors (of all faiths) will embrace "Believer Beware" in the same way that one revisits childhood memories that both haunt and comfort.