Sara Billups writes on Substack and cohosts a podcast, but this is her first book. We were glad to see Nervous Systems for the ways she advocates for justice and peace, both, in the churches of her familiarity.
She writes about reading fellow evangelicals’ comments in the media and feeling “in my gut that evangelicalism may be beyond repair.” Politics, and evangelical support for Trump, is a big part of the equation that Billups is sizing up. How does one respond, she asks herself, and then surveys three ways some of her co-religionists are doing so. 1) “Check out of politics and ignore its impact on the church.” 2) “Distance yourself.” 3) “Vocally and aggressively push back.” None of these are ideal, she concludes. Instead, she offers a fourth: “to hold fast and live faithfully.” She offers this as a spiritual practice of peace (within), and unity (with others). There is great wisdom here.
And this is all from one of the late chapters in Billups’ book, in a section on “The Body Politic,” which follows a section on “The Church Body.” Before getting there, she addresses personal and interpersonal issues facing all of us in this age of anxiety. Always, she offers her own experiences, and admits her own failings and frailties, in order to begin big topics.
She writes about “leaning anxious,” generally speaking, and how this has been the case for her for many years. But she promises the reader, “I’ve plumbed the forces shaping my anxiety,” then summarizing what, for her, has been paramount: “I recognize that many [anxiety sources] are familiar and common, like caregiving for elders in a culture that doesn’t value them and navigating changes in the body in midlife.” These portions of the book are also helpful.
In the end, Billups’ solution to the virulence surrounding political differences is one that won’t satisfy readers who want to take activist and prophetic stands against injustice — because Billups advocates instead, like Christian mystics from centuries past, a form of “holy indifference” and “detachment.” She muses in one of the last paragraphs, “I wonder if in the act of God the Father letting Jesus the Son be martyred, he was modeling indifference too.”
This book addresses essential problems in the age of Trump. It is courageous, and we hope it finds a wide audience among evangelical Christians, in particular.
