Philip Yancey's featured book Where The Light Fell: A Memoir is available here: See purchase options!
When I discuss my recent memoir, Where the Light Fell, often I use the phrase toxic church to describe the extreme form of Southern fundamentalism I grew up under. I joke that I’ve been “in recovery,” a process of detoxing, ever since. “Tell me,” asked one podcast interviewer, “What makes a church toxic?” Three characteristics … Read more
My new memoir, Where the Light Fell, includes a few scenes from the childhood church I attended, near Atlanta. How does this compare to scenes from your childhood experience? My most memorable Sunday evening service takes place when Dr. M. R. DeHaan, a radio star from Michigan, speaks at a weekend conference. It’s like the … Read more
I’ve been dredging my life for recollections to include in a memoir, which will come out in October with the title Where the Light Fell. Here’s a memory from one of the annual trips my family in Atlanta made to visit relatives in Philadelphia. I was ten years old at the time. One summer, to … Read more
For as long as I’ve been writing, I have wanted to produce a memoir. I’ve read great memoirs on other religious groups: Frank McCourt’s account of Irish Catholics in Angela’s Ashes, Chaim Potok’s memoir-like novels on Orthodox Judaism, Tara Westover’s bestseller Educated about fundamentalist Mormons. Yet my own tribe of evangelical/fundamentalists, hardly a fringe group, … Read more
As a child I would hear my mother and other adults use a secret code in my presence: for example, “I think we’ll stop for some i-c-e-c-r-e-a-m for the boys.” Again and again I heard that code: strange word gaps in a sentence replaced by short nonsense sounds that somehow made sense when linked together—made sense … Read more
Philip Yancey is an American author exploring the most basic questions and deepest mysteries of faith, guiding millions of readers with him.
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