My Fundamentalist Education

A book review from The Movie Snob

My Fundamentalist Education: A Memoir of a Divine Girlhood, by Christine Rosen (2005). Another memoir from somebody who is right around my own age. Rosen's parents divorced when she was very young, and her father and his new wife (a very sweet person, not a wicked stepmother type) raised her and her older sister in St. Petersburg, Florida. Fatefully, and apparently without full knowledge, they sent Rosen and her sister (and their new little sister) to Keswick Christian School, a private school run by a fundamentalist Christian denomination. Keswick was a distinctly odd place by secular standards, although its routines are not entirely unfamiliar to a graduate of Catholic schools like me. The students wore uniforms, went to chapel, sang songs about Jesus, were entertained by visiting Christian musicians and missionaries, and learned their King James Bibles backwards and forwards. Although Rosen is no longer a fundamentalist and pokes plenty of gentle fun at Keswick, her memories of the place (and the youthful anxieties it instilled in her, like worrying about the Rapture) are nonetheless genuinely fond ones. If you want to learn more about what fundamentalists really believe, or just want an enjoyable read about growing up in the 70's and 80's, this is the book for you.