Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint

If you’re interested in weird Christians, I would highly recommend reading Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint. I read it in less than a day. Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint is about the life of Nadia Bolz-Weber, who went from growing up a Colorado fundamentalist Christian to boozy drug addict to a Lutheran pastor and mother of two with tattoos. While I took a less dramatic road to faith with a life filled with respectability politics, I could relate to the incongruity of her image of Christianity as contrasted with how the daily practice of redemption and love actually looks like in my world. It also helps that Bolz-Weber stress naps and curses, a practice that I can attest to as integral to my life. Even though Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint shows a comfort around people that Jesus would happily dine with-drug addicts, alcoholics, and many fundamentalist Christians would not-LGBTQ community, Bolz-Weber admittedly suffers from what many American Christians suffer from-fear of Black people. To be fair, one of the Black people in her story is a pimp and pedophile scam artist, but before she discovers that, she is frank about her inability to connect to his victims. I am glad that she admits that despite being a lawbreaker herself (albeit one that does not become a criminal because she never describes being arrested for drug use), her first instinct is to clutch her pearls as opposed to her usual initial response of embracing and welcoming once she discovers the truth. I have no idea if she intended to be so frank about her issues with race or even recognized the racial aspect of her story, but it was refreshing and uncomfortable to read about the honest inner monologue of a Christian sister who happens to be white and lives in a liberal white community. If she can admit her issues, subconsciously or consciously, and she is someone who would eschew any hateful prejudice and professes to be welcoming of everyone, then no wonder many Christians of color find themselves looking at their white Christian brothers and sisters and wondering what kind of Jesus they worship when they can happily embrace a person like Trump, but not a Christian of color with fewer foibles.