Susan Campbell's writing career began early. At age nine, in exchange for candy money from her grandmother, she would rewrite the books of the Bible, always careful to expand the women's roles.
She had to stop editing the sacred texts when her mother found out, but she hasn't stopped writing since. Campbell is now a reporter and columnist for the Hartford Courant and the author of Connecticut Curiosities, a study of the state's more offbeat and eccentric attractions. But Monday night at the UConn Co-op, Campbell gave a reading that went back to her roots.
"I vow to do a good deed every day, and several nights a month I sit up fast in bed realizing I'd forgotten, and that I'd disappointed Jesus. So I double up the next day. I set the bar unbearably high, because Jesus died for my sins," said Campbell, in an excerpt from her latest book, "Dating Jesus: a Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl".
So began Campbell's story of growing up a fundamentalist Christian in the Missouri Ozarks, as told to a packed audience of UConn students, staff, and fans. She divulged old fears and childhood obsessions with a breezy, easygoing manner that kept her listeners engaged and laughing.
"She was really witty and entertaining. She brought a lot of humor to a serious topic," said Samantha Buzzelli, a 6th-semester English major. "She connected to the audience with some very personal stories.
Though Campbell has since been officially disfellowshipped from the Fourth and Forest Church of Christ, her religious life began smoothly. As a young girl, she was a self-declared "champion Bible reader," a passionate Sunday-school teacher, a puppeteer in a fake, hand-puppet gospel choir, and a church youth group volunteer. She was such a devoted follower that she often felt like she really was "dating Jesus," and that Jesus, asking for nothing more than her faith, was the perfect boyfriend.
So what could possibly interfere with such a loving relationship?
"No matter how perfect I tried to be, I was not a man, I could never be clergy. My brother was, and that pissed me off. He could go up and give 45 second sermons and get carried around on a pillow like he was some kind of King David," Campbell said.
Her doubts began in earnest when she learned she couldn't teach Sunday school lessons to boys older than 12. A woman trying to teach a boy after he reached baptism and "the age of reason" was attempting to usurp his authority as a man, and had to be stopped.
Campbell then reeled off a lifetime's worth of hilarious moments that tested her faith. She underwent her own baptism in a state of terror, both because her white robe was see-through and because it trapped air bubbles that Satan could hide in. She watched a schism in her church over whether or not they were allowed to pave their parking lot, since Jesus never walked on pavement. She once sneaked into a Catholic Midnight Mass with her best friend, and lamented the fact that fundamentalists wholly rejected Christmas.
"Because it stands for 'Christ Mass,'" Campbell said. "That's the Catholics trying to get one in on you."
And, of course, she had to navigate a secular high school and the world outside the church walls. And this experience, more than any other, forced her to question her faith.
"I was told all my friends were going to Hell, and I just couldn't believe it," Campbell said.
In college and beyond, Campbell refocused her studies to issues of feminism and social justice. She saw little value in being able to recite all the books of the Bible while people in the world were starving. She returned to theological studies while doing graduate work at Hartford Seminary, and her work there, learning about the editing and revision the Bible underwent, helped her discover exactly what happened to the women she couldn't find as a child.
And what does she think about Jesus, her old boyfriend, who she loved with such devotion?
"I found out I was dating the wrong Jesus. Jesus was radical, a feminist. The true face of Jesus is far more radical than the stained-glass version."
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