“Actually, I would have felt kind of weird asking Bracken,” I admit. If Chet had started telling me about how Jesus Christ had changed his life, I would have tried to crawl under my desk. I can handle that kind of talk better from a woman.

“It’s not like you think, Gideon,” Rainey lectures me.

“It’s not hellfire and damnation.” Rainey turns to Sarah, who is listening respectfully.

“Your father has this image of a Jimmy Swaggart praying for money and promising to heal people. That’s absurd! What Christian Life is about is helping people to accept the belief that God broke into human history two thousand years ago.

Christian Life starts with a person just as you are right now, faith or no faith, and invites you, invites me, to witness the changes in the lives of the members of its congregation. People who are just starting are assigned church families. They are not blood families just groups of about fifteen to twenty people who become your Christian Life family. It’s incredible how persons in your family have changed their lives. Most of them weren’t what anyone would call bad before. They lived ordinary, typical lives filled with the normal boredom, despair, and the sense of meaninglessness that accompany twentieth-century existence. Now their lives are truly God-centered, and they have a joy in their lives that is just thrilling to be around.”

While Rainey is speaking, I am tempted to slurp my soup. When she gets started on Christian Life, she positively glows. It is hard not to be jealous. I never have been able to generate this kind of excitement in her.

Trying to conceal my irritation, I ask, “I don’t get the connection between their lives and a literal belief in the Bible.” I look at my daughter, who is listening intently.

Mass, unless it has changed, is pretty much a cut-and dried affair in the Catholic church.