Ten Memoirs By Faithful Women

Post Author: Pastor Courtney R. Young

When I was compiling the list of books for my “10 Books to Read in the First Five Years of Ministry” article, I got a lot of recommendations for memoirs. In order to end up with only ten books on that list, it felt like I would have to prioritize one person’s experience over others. Instead, I decided to spin-off a completely different article that would highlight only memoirs. By doing it this way, I can include all the great recommendations that I received while including a couple of the memoirs that have made an impact on me. Enjoy, because sometimes we need to be encouraged by the stories of those who have gone before, or alongside, us in faith.

1. Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott (1999)
   This is the first memoir that I’d read where I recognized a Christian faith and community like the one that I was raised in: mainline Protestant and drawn together by a God who is most apparent not in our moral superiority, but in our states of disgrace. I appreciated her honesty about the messiness of life and faith and that God’s grace is tenacious despite it all. Plus, her writing is funny.
2. Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion by Sara Miles (2008)
   Sometimes as pastors, I think we can get to questioning whether God or worship has any effect on the world. Miles’ story reminds us that God still moves and in impactful ways through liturgical and sacramental worship. God’s actions and our worship are never complete until they have grown to include the people around us who could do with some unexpected goodness too.
3. Making Paper Cranes: Toward an Asian-American Feminist Theology by Mihee Kim-Kort (2012)
   From the Reverend Joy Knoppel’s 2023 review, “Making Paper Cranes is a reminder that when Asian-American women speak up and share our deeply lived and embodied stories we help reshape the narratives that have historically harmed and taken away our personhood. We can choose to be silent or choose to be an active warrior for change.” 
4. Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner and Saint by Nadia Bolz-Weber (2013)
   Bolz-Weber’s faith journey is one where she has been surprised by grace over and over again. She never expected that she would become a pastor. She never expected that she would create a church amongst the people she had spent most of her adult life with: addicts, the LBGTQ community, punks, and other societal outcasts. She never expected that she would be brought into community with Christian trolls or suburbanites. God’s grace is never simple, but it is beautiful.
5. Searching For Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church by Rachel Held Evans (2015)
   Held Evans frames her story of faith, deconstruction, and ongoing reconstruction through the seven sacraments of baptism, communion, confirmation, confession, marriage, vocation, and death. Throughout the book, she seeks to integrate her intellectual curiosity and empathy into her faith life instead of giving into cynicism. The book doesn’t end with any neat and tidy answers, but it shows readers how to keep the door open to God and community amidst disappointment.
6. Bipolar Faith: A Black Woman’s Journey with Depression and Faith by Monica A. Coleman (2016)
   Coleman’s story is a place where many who are suffering at the intersection of trauma, mental health, and faith could find a voice in the wilderness to lead them to living waters. In Coleman telling her story, the reader sees that the presence of suffering and the presence of God are never far from Coleman or from each other. By naming and speaking the truth of her life, Coleman finds that she is wonderfully whole and wholly loved.
7. One Coin Found: How God’s Love Stretches to the Margins by Emmy Kegler (2019)
   From the Reverend Gretchen Rode’s 2019 review, “I recommend this book to all who feel difficult to love, to all who have struggled with parts or all of the Bible, to all who have felt kicked out of God’s church, to all who feel like a grubby lost coin in the corner of a room that will never be found. As One Coin Found reminds us all: God loves you, God is looking for you, God has already found you, you are found.” 
8. Baptized in Tear Gas: From White Moderate from Abolitionist by Elle Dowd (2021)
   Dowd’s whole world changed when she witnessed the Ferguson Uprising after the murder of Michael Brown. In telling her story, she invites her readers to question what they need to confess, what they’re willing to stand up for, and expand their imagination for God’s call to seek justice. Dowd has made a commitment that all the proceeds of this book will be passed along to Black activist organizations.
9. Red Lip Theology: For Church Girls Who’ve Considered Tithing to the Beauty Supply Store When Sunday Morning Isn’t Enough by Candice Marie Benbow (2022)
   From the Reverend Katharine L. Steele’s 2023 article, “Pairing critical personal moments and existential musings to each step of her morning skin care and make-up routine, Benbow creatively claims and grants permission for women of all walks of life to claim their place both in the church and in the world. Readers will laugh and cry alongside Benbow as they hear the sorrow of a daughter who has had to say goodbye to a beloved parent and work through giving herself the grace and forgiveness needed to move on after incredible heartbreak. This book is a manifesto in claiming one’s power and ability to work through the hardest of life’s experiences to come through on the other side as a braver, stronger and more liberated woman than one could ever imagine themself to be. So, grab your favorite shade of lipstick, a box of tissues and get ready to SLAY.” 
10. This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Makes Us by Cole Arthur Riley (2022)
    From the Reverend Shannon E. Sullivan’s recent article, “[Arthur Riley’s] work is deeply contemplative, asking us to really listen to our ancestors, our bodies, and even in the places in which we live. … She shows us that in our breathing, in our connection with wisdom and ancestors, we can be strengthened and emboldened to speak truth even in the persistence of the world’s lies.”

If you have a memoir that spoke to your spirit that isn’t on this list, please share it in the comments below!