Faitheist: How an Atheist Found Common Ground with the Religious, Chris Stedman (Beacon Press, 2012) $22.95

Chris Stedman is gay. If that proves an uncomfortable introduction, the rest of Faitheist: How an Atheist Found Common Ground with the Religious will continue to unsettle you.

The first four chapters are spent introducing and grounding Stedman in plum evangelical youth culture, with memorable and detailed accounts of altar calls, Bible studies, hushed prayers with friends at school, complete with religious paraphernalia, clothing, and reductionist bumper sticker-theology. But rather than stay there and perhaps explain why he rejected the faith of his childhood for an educated and “liberated” atheism, he begins to tell a different story. Slowly, he begins to introduce what it means to realize you have same-sex attraction in evangelical culture. He tells about his first tentative “dates” with boys, his crushes on television swimsuit models and Justin Timberlake, and…