Review: "Jesusland" by Joelle Kidd

Jesusland by Joelle Kidd
Published August 2025
★★★★

It's strange the responses you garner when you tell strangers, friends, and new acquaintances that you're writing a book about "evangelical Christian pop culture of the 2000s." (loc. 25*)

As a child, Kidd knew enough to fall in line with the people around her—but inside, questions burned. As an adult, having stepped away and looked back, she returns to ask just what it was that she went through—and why evangelical pop culture is so powerful.

I'm reminded of Rapture Ready!, which I read more than a decade ago. Where Rapture Ready! investigates the phenomenon of Christian pop culture (think: books and bookstores, movies, theme parks, and on it goes) from an outsider's perspective, Kidd was in it—she knows just how insidious the messaging can be.

Ideas about gender were being marketed alongside, and becoming entangled with, religion. Every pink Bible and God's Precious Daughter T-shirt was also selling a script, and every glossy issue dropped in a millennial teen's mailbox had lots to say—about purity, modesty, and gender compliancy. (loc. 365)

I escaped this particular phenomenon when I was growing up (merry heathens and all that), but as an adult I find it fascinating, even moreso in light of the current political situation. Kidd did not grow up in the US, so her experience of evangalical religion was in some ways more muted than what we see in the US, but in other ways...well, her school was stocking the Left Behind books, and mine was not. A lot of this book ends up being about power (who has it, and how they're using it to amass more power and more money) and the ways in which certain savvy individuals and organizations have capitalized on...on a willingness to buy anything branded with a particular set of beliefs, I suppose. And the ways in which pop culture has been used to twist those beliefs and dig them in deeper and deeper.

It's a disturbing book but an interesting one. Probably the best fit for those who have a little more American evangelical Christian background than I do (and who can look back with at least one eyebrow raised), but also one for those who just, you know. Read the news and are a little too curious sometimes.

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

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.