Occasionally, other writers pop into my social media that make me squint my eyes and tilt my head to the side. It’s like a C+C Music Factory, “Things that Make You Go Hmmm…” type of moment if you catch my early 90s drift.
Such was the case with writer
, author of Orphaned Believers. I had a feeling she and I were going to get along, both in the ways we see the world and in how we pen words in response. Fittingly, her book, which is subtitled, “How a Generation of Christian Exiles can Find the Way Home,” did not disappoint.Although I no longer identify as evangelical and have since found a home in the Episcopal tradition, white evangelicalism is still part of the goo of my identity. A three-legged stool supported by politics, culture, and the market (as Sara writes), its influence is just as much in me and a part of me as much as it’s something I run from and keep tabs on from afar.
But in a book that is just as much cultural commentary as much as it is memoir, I am reminded that “You sign up for the whole story, even the mysterious or uncomfortable parts.” And that’s what we’re here for: the whole story, including the parts we don’t understand or those that no longer seem to fit.
In Sara’s book, we get end times theology and we get the Jesus Movement; we get the Late Great Planet Earth, conservative counterculture, and American exceptionalism by way of #45, just to name a few.
Her words, her story, and her weaving-together-of-it-all are simply a gift. Enjoy this bite-sized q+a with her, then share the love by picking up a copy of her book or following her on Instagram.
Cara Meredith: How are you coloring outside of the lines, all over again, when it comes to your writing and to this book in particular?
Sara Billups: I wanted to weave together cultural commentary, research, and narrative, and getting that balance right was tricky. If this book were a wine, it would be a red blend. Not too fussy. Totally drinkable, but hopefully surprising. If it were an outfit, it would be jeans and a black t-shirt. A little throwback, with a dash of Jordan Catalano? I digress.
Seriously, I'm not brazen enough to slap on the label literary on the nonfiction here but I went after a mash up of … mildly literary … nonfiction and journalism.
Cara Meredith: You wrote a book! Tell us! What upside-down idea were you trying to turn right side up again?
Sara Billlups: We all know the white American church is in deep trouble for a lot of good reasons, and I wanted to figure out some of what happened to get us here by looking back to when I was a kid. I’ve been re-living the 80s and 90s since I woke up for the idea for the book in spring of 2020, and I hope I’ve been able to take a pencil and trace a few cultural throughlines from those decades to today.
Cara Meredith: Okay. We talk so much about audience when it comes to book-writing, but what did you learn about yourself along the way?
Sara Billups: Writing Orphaned Believers was surprisingly physical. I'd research and write for an hour, then lay down on the rug next to my desk and sleep for 15 minutes, face on carpet. I'd get up, get coffee or walk, and do it again. There were themes I almost couldn't connect, or worked around until there was some spark of an idea or association. But the wholeness of writing — the way it took something out of me emotionally, mentally and physically, was a totally new experience.
Cara Meredith: Putting ourselves out there when it comes to storytelling is always a risk. What is the biggest, fleshiest risk you took with this book?
Sara Billups: I write critically of the culture of end times fear my dad introduced in my life from an early age, but hopefully with tenderness and humanity. Several folks have asked how I could have written what I did with dad still alive—or since my father has treatable but not curable cancer, why I didn't spend more time with him instead of writing about how he damaged my young spiritual journey with messages of the end of the world. But the truth is a. we see each other all the time and b. the book has been healing for our relationship. It says a lot about my dad, who has never really cared about what people think of him. The love and grace we've shown each other, a certain clearing of the air between us, was a total risk turned hidden personal gift of publishing this work.
Cara Meredith: Publishing a book is a shiny milestone! What else are you celebrating in your ordinary, everyday life?
Sara Billups: I did Jami Attenberg's 1,000 Words of Summer for the first time two years ago, and it was liberating. I wrote weird and free; the whole two weeks were an exhale. So, to answer the opposite question first, that's what I haven't been doing in my ordinary life. I haven't been writing, I’ve been authoring hard for the past couple of months. I'm in the middle of a D.Min program called The Sacred Art of Writing at the Peterson Center at Western, a low-residency cohort, and am a few chapters into something a new project I’ve had on hold while Orphaned Believers released. So to read and write again before work, that’s my aspirational ordinary life. My real ordinary life involves toast, black coffee, walking my kid to school, zoom meeting-ing, and being obsessed with our Australian Shepherd, a blue merle named Fern.
P.S. To update you on Wednesday’s post, Splendid and Five joined the ranks of monarchs released into the wild earlier this week! One or two chrysalises remain, although their names have yet to be determined.
P.P.S. All of these brilliant questions (and the sub theme as well) stem from interviews that the equally brilliant
originally created. I adapted them for this space, but the origins are all hers!P.P.S.S. Spots are still open. Join
and me as we upcycle words that no longer fit. Date: February 16th, from 5 - 6:30 pm PST/8 - 9:30 pm EST. Sign up here.