The Lonely Polygamist: An Interview with Brady Udall

June 24, 2010 By K. Mulhern 5 Comments

{Brady Udall. The Lonely Polygamist. W.W. Norton & Company 2010. 602 pages. $26.95}

Reviewed by David Crumm


This is a novel about a very big Mormon family. You’re from a famously big Mormon family yourself. So, let’s start with your place in your own family tree. Your great-great-grandfather was David King Udall, a polygamist. More than a century later, the family tree now includes a former U.S. Secretary of the Interior and U.S. Senators. The “Udall family” page in Wikipedia is the only Wiki biography I’ve seen with an actual family chart on the page! So, where are you in that sprawling Udall family tree? The boxes in the Wiki chart only show the politicians.

My father is Barry and my grandfather is Keith. Keith is the first cousin to Mo and Stewart who are the ones most people might know.

Do you know them or the senators? You’re a journalist and a novelist and you’ve had years of experience in national media. Have you crossed paths with these politically famous Udalls?

No, they’re just my relatives. We’re just blood. That’s it. The family is so huge that we rarely even run across each other. The ones I run across are my hundreds of first cousins, aunts, and uncles. I’ve never been involved in politics at all.

But now, every day when I’m traveling to talk about the book, I get asked this question: “Do you know this Udall? That Udall?” I always say: “I’m related to all of them, but I don’t know half of them.” [Read more...]

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Beyond Me: On Melinda Doolittle

June 24, 2010 By K. Mulhern 6 Comments

{Melinda Doolittle with Ken Abraham. Beyond Me: Finding Your Way to Life’s Next Level. Zondervan 2010. 192 pages. $18.99}

Reviewed by Ralph Marston

In any competition, the person who finishes in first place receives pretty much all the glory and attention. Whoever comes in second gets a little bit of acknowledgement as a key participant in the final drama, and then is all too quickly forgotten. But what about third place? Does third place even matter at all? Is there anything positive to carry away from a third place finish?

For Melinda Doolittle, third place is just great, thank you very much. To her mind, there is plenty of value to be gained from finishing third. In fact, for Melinda Doolittle there is plenty of value to be gained from every single moment of life, whatever the outcome. And she’s just as thrilled as can be to tell the world about it in her autobiographical Beyond Me: Finding Your Way to Life’s Next Level.

Doolittle’s most noteworthy competitive drama to date played out on live television before millions of viewers during the sixth season of “American Idol” in the spring of 2007. Coaxed by a friend to try out, she advanced through several initial auditions and then on to the show itself, where she finished in third place for the season, the last person to be eliminated before the finale. That’s not bad for a young lady who as a child had been so tone deaf that her choir director asked her to lip synch in lieu of singing.

Though she includes a satisfying number of mostly humorous behind-the-scenes anecdotes from her “Idol” experience, this book is not a gossipy tell-all. Rather it is a celebration of good old-fashioned positive values. It’s the story of how a girl, raised by a single mother, discovers and follows her passion without ever compromising her integrity. It is sweet, open, honest, filled with gratitude and enthusiasm. “American Idol” judge Simon Cowell, notorious for refusing to tolerate any nonsense, picked up on Melinda’s infectious enthusiasm and authentic talent early on, telling her “it is very, very nice that you are actually enjoying every second you are having on this show.” [Read more...]

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Almost Christian: An Interview with Kenda Creasy Dean

June 22, 2010 By K. Mulhern 24 Comments

{Kenda Creasy Dean. Almost Christian: What the Faith of our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church. Oxford University Press 2010. 264 pages. $24.95}

By Deborah Arca Mooney

From 2003-2005, researchers conducted the most ambitious study of adolescent spirituality to date in the U.S. Among the results of the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR), it was found that while three out of four American teenagers claim to be Christian, only half consider it very important, and fewer than half actually practice their faith as a regular part of their lives. Additionally, the study found the vast majority of teenagers to be “incredibly inarticulate about their faith and its meaning for their lives,” with mainline Protestant teenagers ranking among the least religiously articulate of all.

Kenda Creasy Dean, Professor of Youth, Church, and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary and a longtime youth minister in the United Methodist Church, was one of the study’s interviewers and spent a summer talking to teenagers about their faith lives and views on religion. Her experience was the impetus for her compelling new book, Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church, an investigation into — and an impassioned response to — the results of the NSYR study, results that she and many others in the church found quite disturbing.

Dean uses the study’s findings to deliver a challenging wake-up call to the mainline church, which she believes is passing off a mutant form of Christianity to its young people. Patheos’ Deborah Arca Mooney spoke with Dean recently about the study’s findings on teen faith, the “watered-down version of Christianity” prevalent in mainline churches, why and how the church must rediscover its sense of mission and faith language, and ultimately where hope lies for the future of the mainline church and young people longing for a faith worth living — and dying — for. [Read more...]

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