What to Do When Hell Is Dickerson Road
Meditations for the liberal Christian—and a goad to action
by Margaret Renkl
Though not a single word in it comes across as smug or self-righteous, Hither & Yon offers ample evidence that Stevens walks the walk—and not just in her work for Magdalene, or her prison visits and mission trips, or her unfathomable openness. (She and her husband, playwright and songwriter Marcus Hummon, don’t even believe in locking the doors to their house.) In 2003, Stevens spoke before the General Convention of the Episcopal Church on behalf of Gene Robinson, a gay priest whose election as bishop threatened to split the denomination. For Stevens, the issue was about more than gay rights—about more, even, than tolerance and understanding. It was also about getting past the question of sexual orientation to focus on the real point of faith: “to clothe the naked and feed the hungry and love our enemies.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, the people of Nashville were not pleased to have a native daughter make this speech at a national assembly: “One woman wrote that I should never again call myself a Christian,” Stevens writes.
The Christianity Stevens practices is gentler than that of her critics, but equally passionate. This is a book about the search for God in unlikely places—in a prison visiting room, in a rattlesnake beside a forest path, in the prostitutes on Dickerson Road.—and finding the heart to follow.
Becca Stevens will read from Hither & Yon at Davis-Kidd Booksellers at 6 p.m. Sept. 10.
Comments (0)