Review: "Misfit Faith" by Jason J. Stellman

Misfit Faith by Jason J. Stellman
Published 2017 via Convergent Books
★★

Stellman grew up Protestant, became a missionary and a pastor, and then...left the ministry, split from his Protestant church, and converted to Catholicism.

I'm not sure how Misfit Faith lands for someone who knew what to expect, but my expectations were built largely on the cover and the subtitle...to say nothing of the book description. I expected personal story, some wrestling with faith, and a dive into how Stellman went from Protestant to Catholic.

This is not that story.

Instead this is what I can only describe as Stellman riffing on Christianity and the Bible, interspersed with lots of recaps of (secular) TV shows and movies. (I'm reminded of that brilliant sequence in the movie... (loc. 1168); In a twisted kind of way, this [...] reminds me of one of my all-time favorite TV comedies... (loc. 1203); While we're on the topic of iconic 1980s high-school-themed films... (loc. 1239)) As it turns out, the subtitle (Confessions of a Drunk Ex-Pastor) comes from a podcast that Stellman started with a friend, but other than mentioning that the podcast exists, that's about all of the title that makes it into the book.

As Stellman tells it, the book shifted directions at some point between first draft and final draft, but by the end I'm not sure he'd figured out what his point was. Maybe in his former church, his shifting beliefs made him a misfit, but he's not discussing any beliefs in here that aren't some form of generic Christianity (I guess in some circles any kind of questioning makes you a misfit? But I wouldn't want to fit into those circles), and at the end of the day I don't have the faintest idea what about the Catholic church won him over.

This might be a better fit for someone who enjoys (or has listened to at all!) Stellman's podcast—I can't speak to that—but overall I found it to be a disappointment that spent far more time delivering pop culture references than discussing what it promised.