Review: "Unvarnished Faith" by Bill Yoh

 

Unvarnished Faith by Bill Yoh
Published January 2023 via River Grove Books
★★★

Unvarnished Faith chronicles Yoh's experience as a first-time missionary, chaperoning high-school students as they delivered food and supplies to impoverished areas of Nicaragua.

I have a somewhat complicated relationship with missionary memoirs. That is: they tend to be written by people whose experience of faith and religion is very different from mine, and I go into reading them with caution, because I'm not looking to be preached at and I am wary of stories about, you know, sweeping in and telling people about Jesus and sweeping out again and patting self on back. But I find religion, and people's experiences with religion (however far from my beliefs theirs might be), fascinating, and missionary memoirs intrigue me because...because it's an experience so different from my own, and because such books often take place in far-flung places, and because I am generally too curious for my own good. All of this is to say that I try to know when I'm not really the intended audience for things that I read, but curiosity killed the cat and all that and I do try to go in with eyes wide open.

Here's the odd thing: what I didn't know, going in, was that the book takes place in Nicaragua, or that Yoh was traveling with a group of teenagers—the description didn't say. But I actually went on a very similar trip when I was in high school: not a mission trip, some service involved, but mostly teenagers learning about contexts and lives very different than own own. (I even lived in North Carolina at the time, same as Yoh.) The trip I went on was about two weeks, split mostly between city (Managua) and countryside, and it was truly weird to read about such a similar trip, religion or not. Yoh's trip was six days long, and I do wish it had been longer (futile wish for a memoir!), just because with longer experiences it's possible to dive deeper into individuals' lives and stories. But he paces it well, mixing stories from the trip with his own religious journey and more general questions and discussion about what it means to do missionary work. (There's also quite a thorough discussion guide at the end, and a Q&A with Yoh.)

Yoh does take an eyes-wide-open approach to his missionary experience, too. In his case, he talks early and repeatedly about the similarities as well as differences in various religions and various sects of Christianity; he himself grew up in Episcopalian churches but later converted to Catholocism. He's also (thank sweet mercy) aware that the mission work he and his cohort were doing in Nicaragua was in the context of a country that is already heavily religious, and that "conversion" wasn't the point. And...again, as someone who isn't generally the "ideal audience" for missionary memoirs, it's lovely to read the sort of book where I feel as though I could feel comfortable having a conversation with the author about religion. Recommended for those interested in less didactic views of religion and mission work, and in a narrative that focuses less on plot and more on idea.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.