Blessed Are the Nones - by Stina Kielsmeier-Cook (Paperback)

About the Book

When her husband left Christianity several years into their marriage, Stina Kielsmeier-Cook was left struggling to live the Christian life on her own. In this memoir, she tells the story of her mixed-faith marriage and how she found unexpected community with an order of Catholic nuns, discovering that she was not "spiritually single" after all--and that no one really is.

Book Synopsis

Can the Christian life be lived alone?

When her husband left Christianity several years into their marriage, Stina Kielsmeier-Cook was left "spiritually single"--struggling to live the Christian life on her own, taking her kids to church by herself, and wrestling with her own questions and doubts.

In this memoir, Kielsmeier-Cook tells the story of her mixed-faith marriage and how she found community in an unexpected place: an order of Catholic nuns in her neighborhood. As she spent time with them and learned about female Catholic saints, she began to see that she was not "spiritually single" after all--and that no one really is.

Review Quotes

"Blessed Are the Nones turns 'unequally yoked' on its head. There is no sense of winners and losers, lost and found, broken and born-again. Rather, Blessed is an invitation: How do we dive deeply when confronted with inevitable changes in relationships and faith? Kielsmeier-Cook is an eager cartographer; she maps the path of two faith-full people facing crises--and how they travel together, not apart. With visceral vulnerability, her powerful narratives stir and inform. She is our steady companion in the uncharted territory of those of us who loved--and lived--the evangelical movement of the late twentieth century. Utilizing nuns and nones, mystics and saints as her fulcrum, Kielsmeier-Cook provides equally eager guides for our own journeys of questions, change, wrestling, and doubt, equipping us with resources for our ultimate calling: love."

--J. Dana Trent, professor of religion and author of Saffron Cross: The Unlikely Story of How a Christian Minister Married a Hindu Monk

"For the many who find themselves evolving in their spirituality in a different way than those they love, it can be a scary, disorienting, isolating experience. Stina's book is a lyrical, honest, moving portrayal of marriage in the time of divergent deconversion and deconstruction. Hopeful without being simplistic, loving without being sentimental, theologically rich without being an answer book, Blessed Are the Nones will be a gift to those reorienting their lives and marriages."

--Sarah Bessey, author of Miracles and Other Reasonable Things and Jesus Feminist

"In our world in which change happens at breakneck speeds, Stina Kielsmeier-Cook's memoir, Blessed Are the Nones, tells a timely story of learning to grieve and to make our peace with the people and institutions around us as they inevitably change. Her story reminds us that the blessed community that God is crafting on earth is a diverse one, and she paints for us a compelling picture of belonging to one another without uniformity of thought or belief."

--C. Christopher Smith, founding editor of The Englewood Review of Books and author of How the Body of Christ Talks

"Some people have the impression that both faith and marriage are supposed to be static and changeless. In reality, marriage is a constant negotiation of what it looks like to be married. And to have faith is to daily waiver between some amount of doubt and some amount of belief and to decide which aspects of your faith you have to let go of and which aspects you need to keep. In Blessed Are the Nones, Stina Kielsmeier-Cook beautifully shares her own experience of negotiation and wavering in the most vulnerable and honest terms."

--Shane Blackshear, host of Seminary Dropout podcast

About the Author

Stina Kielsmeier-Cook is a writer from Minneapolis. She is managing editor of Bearings Online, a publication of the Collegeville Institute, and her writing has appeared in Image Journal, CT Women, Sojourners, The Other Journal, and The Christian Century.