Beyond Belief

ISBN 10: 1580054420 / ISBN 13: 9781580054423

Published by Perseus Books Group, 2013

About this Item

Print on Demand pp. 328.

Seller Inventory # 2642977005

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Beyond Belief
• Publisher: Perseus Books Group
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1580054420
• ISBN 13: 9781580054423
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Beyond Belief addresses what happens when women of extreme religions decide to walk away. 

Editors Susan Tive (a former Orthodox Jew) and Cami Ostman (a de-converted fundamentalist born-again Christian) have compiled a collection of powerful personal stories written by women of varying ages, races, and religious backgrounds who share one commonality: they’ve all experienced and rejected extreme religions. Covering a wide range of religious communities—including Evangelical, Catholic, Jewish, Mormon, Muslim, Calvinist, Moonie, and Jehovah’s Witness—and containing contributions from authors like Julia Scheeres (Jesus Land), the stories in Beyond Belief reveal how these women became involved, what their lives were like, and why they came to the decision to eventually abandon their faiths. 

The authors shed a bright light on the rigid expectations and misogyny so often built into religious orthodoxy, yet they also explain the lure—why so many women are attracted to these lifestyles, what they find that’s beautiful about living a religious life, and why leaving can be not only very difficult but also bittersweet.

About the Author

Cami Ostman is a life coach, marriage and family therapist, and author of Second Wind: One Woman’s Midlife Quest to Run Seven Marathons on Seven Continents (Seal Press). Cami holds a Bachelor’s of Education in English and theater from Western Washington University and a Master’s of Science in marriage and family therapy from Seattle Pacific University (both in Washington State). She has a special interest in helping women live more authentically and freely. She is also a dog lover, a wine connoisseur, a runner, and a blogger. Her blogs can be found at 7marathons7continents.com and psychologytoday.com/blog/second-wind. Cami has appeared in O, Adventures Northwest, Fitness Magazine, The Mudgee Guardian (Australia), and La Prensa (Chile). She lives in Bellingham, Washington with her husband and their four-legged creatures.

Susan Tive is a writer and editor for a variety of academic, film, and women’s studies projects as well as non-fiction book titles including Faith and Feminism and Rachel’s Bag. She is currently the grant-writer and Development Director for Salt Lake Film Society. A former stay at home mom, she raised three, now grown, children in a small orthodox Jewish community in northern New Mexico. Along the way she completed her Bachelor of Science degree and earned her Masters of Liberal Arts from St. John’s College. Susan is currently writing her memoir, Woman of Valor, the occasionally humorous tale of a twenty-something wife and mother who bid farewell to her fashionable freedoms and blue jeans to become a religious Jew. She now lives with her agnostic husband Michael in the Pacific Northwest where she is learning to brave the rainy weather and play in her garden, delighting in the fruits no longer forbidden in her life.