?With engaging and conversational prose, Amodeo offers us a
compelling look at the world of youth missions that is taking aim, not just at
the hearts and minds of young people in America and abroad, but at liberalism,
equality, and democracy itself.??Katherine Stewart
?How does a charming, insecure girl from a troubled family
become an evangelist for a Christian fundamentalist movement that seeks to
govern her every thought and action? God's Ex-Girlfriend is
a wry, poignant, and unflinchingly honest memoir that unveils the cult-like
operations of Campus Crusade for Christ. Now known as 'Cru,' the 'parachurch'
has been a formidable component of the Religious Right's political
infrastructure. Amodeo's account shows how she was drawn into the movement, and
how she finally broke free of its control into a fulfilling new life.??Anne Nelson, author, Shadow Network:
Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right
?In her frank, relatable, and sometimes laugh-out-loud
funny prose, Gloria Beth Amodeo exposes the subtle manipulation techniques,
love bombing, and exploitation of trauma evangelicals use on those they target
for conversion. While she doesn't shy away from the predatory nature of
conversion efforts, Amodeo also shows us the seductive side of gaining
"spiritual family" and certainty about ultimate questions in a world
that is often chaotic and frightening. More importantly, she takes us on a
journey of identities gained and lost that ends with the triumph of her human
spirit in her deconversion, convincingly demonstrating that the cost of the
comforts and certainty that high-control religion offers your soul, your
agency, your individuality?is far too high.? ?Chrissy Stroop, editor, Leaving the
Pews: Stories of People Leaving the Church
Gloria
Beth Amodeo was a freshman in college when she met someone who would change the
trajectory of her life. Cate was smart, beautiful, and an evangelical
Christian. Soon, Gloria had left behind her troubled family?which included her
mother's mental illness and addiction to pills?and joined Cate as a member of
Campus Crusade for Christ (now known as Cru).
Embracing her newfound belief system, Gloria became a cultural warrior for Jesus, militantly focused on converting everyone she met
to her conservative brand of Christianity. Over the next seven years, she spent
spring breaks preaching to MTV partygoers in bikinis; hung out in bars as she
tried to convert her fellow creative writing students in New York City; and
kept a strenuous hold on her virginity, as she considered herself to be in a
relationship with God.
Slowly, she came to realize that a God who
believed that people were going to hell, sex before marriage was a sin, and
that men had the final say in all marital and relationship matters, among other
things, was not a God she wanted to ?date? any longer.
