Faking Faith

Faking Faithby Josie Bloss is like the website Homeschoolers Anonymous in novel form. It tells the story of a teenage girl from Chicago named Dylan who faces high school hell after a sexting incident. In her despair, Dylan becomes obsessed with fundamentalist homeschooled bloggers, and most especially a blogger named Abigail. After starting her own blog using the pseudonym “Faith”, Dylan is eventually invited to Abigail’s farm for a two-week vacation where she gets a whole new type of education.

Faking Faith never mentions the Advanced Training Institute by name, but ATI is written all over Abigail’s life. At seventeen and a half, her formal education is complete and she prepares for life as a professional “stay-at-home-daughter”, or else must submit to whatever husband her father chooses for her, whether that be the boy next door, or a creepy twenty-eight year old molester.

In addition to showing all the negatives, Bloss does an awesome job depicting the seductive nature of the ATI lifestyle. To Dylan as the outsider, she’s a bit jealous of Abigail’s family dinners, well-behaved siblings, and the fact that Abigail’s parents are concerned about guarding Abigail’s heart and making sure she doesn’t fall in love with the wrong person.

I loved Faking Faith so much that I read it start to finish in one day. Half way through my mind started churning with all the people who should know about this book: R.L. Stollar at Overturning Tables, Jerry at Hersey in the Heartland–the entire Recovering Grace community. If I was Josie Bloss’s publicist I would mail out a case of copies to Homeschoolers Anonymous and let them distribute at will.

Every time I turn on my computer it seems I see another news article about how “cute” and wonderful the Duggars are. Nobody mentions the dark side. A while back I wrote an article on my blog called: “What ordinary moms should know about the Bill Gothard Scandal.” Josie Bloss has shared that same information in novel form. Faking Faith is brilliant.

To say that Faking Faith is a serious novel would probably do it a disservice. That is to say, Bloss deals with serious issues of identity and contentment in this book, but she does it with a light-hand, often adding grim humor to a situation that would otherwise cause readers to have some sort of indignant and furious reaction.

After Dylan is caught sexting and has become the most disliked person at her school, she does what any teen girl would do: she attempts to forget about her problems. Except, instead of drugs or sex, Dylan’s rebellion is more subtle (and potentially hilarious). After stumbling on a corner of the blogosphere that’s inhabited by ultra-conservative Christians, Dylan decided to become one of them. Her fake personality is put to the test when she gets a chance to meet one of the bloggers, Abigail, in person. While staying with Abigail, Dylan learns a lot about herself and acceptance and all that gooshy sentimental stuff one would expect.

When I say Faking Faith is funny, I mean it in a ridiculous satirical way. This book is like a comic cautionary tale on “being careful what you wish for” and “the grass isn’t always greener”, etc. Josie Bloss doesn’t portray Christianity negatively, though I think most readers (myself included) won’t be able to help but draw a negative conclusion on the particular brand of Christianity portrayed in Faking Faith. Specifically, the brand that says women are weak creatures and God doesn’t want Christians associating with non-Christians, and all that jazz. Dylan’s new friend, Abigail, has a hope chest, for goodness’ sake! I didn’t even know people outside of Amish communities still did that. Yep, anyway.

While reading Faking Faith, it was hard not to feel bad for Abigail and her family. Her father is an abusive and controlling man who uses the Bible to keep a tight grip on his wife and children by shaming them and keeping them afraid of hell and the outside world. Dylan (alias Faith), is at first enchanted by their lifestyle, but as she realizes that the atmosphere of the household is more of a stifling hermitage than a wholesome and nurturing environment.

Of course, by the end of the novel, Dylan figures out that the fundamentalist Christian lifestyle isn’t for her, and she goes home with a new appreciation for her own messed up family, complete with cheesy lines and sappy hugs.

I think that, overall, Faking Faith does an excellent job with the subject it takes on. Josie Bloss managed to keep her own opinions in regards to religion out of the mix and never sermonized in either direction, though her characters did preach a bit. Obviously, like Dylan, I don’t think that a woman’s main job in life is to pop out babies and submit to her husband/father, so that aspect made me just as uncomfortable as it did her. In a good way. So overall, Faking Faith offers intelligent and thought-provoking commentary on how no family is perfect, and that running away from your problems doesn’t solve anything. I wouldn’t really say this is a religious book at all, since the Christian aspects were only used to reaffirm Bloss’s “the grass isn’t always greener” message. But either way, it was interesting.