My main reason for picking this up is not because I am a Christian or have ever been one, but because I have a fascination with Christian culture and I’ve never read anything focusing on Christian pop culture specifically. It sounded interesting, and it was!

Some things I learnt about that I never knew existed include Christian magazines aimed at teenage girls that were modelled after similar teenage girl magazines I read growing up in the 2000s, Christian radio (although I was already familiar with Christian pop music, I was unaware about the existence of Christian rock music), megachurches (I knew of them, but I did not know that they were so big or that there was one made entirely from glass), and branded Bibles.

Alongside that, I learnt a lot about Christianity in general and expanded on things I already did know, like the connection between Christianity and the alt-right. This is about evangelical Christianity specifically, which is what the author was raised as in Canada (which was even more interesting, as most of what I know about Christianity is US - specific). There were many, many times I came across something and thought to myself “that’s absolutely wild”.

My only complaint that isn’t really a proper complaint is that I wanted to know more about the pop culture, however I am aware that learning about the intentions and impact behind it was important too and I feel like I took a lot away from this. I’m grateful to this author and everyone else who grew up in something that sounds like a nightmare and went on to share what they went through with others.

2 stars
e-ARC
*Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this e-ARC! Thoughts/reviews are my own.*
This book definitely hit home for me as a millennial who grew up in the thick of the 2000s Christian pop culture era described in this book. I attended my grandparents' Baptist church until I was in 8th grade, when I started attending the Methodist church near my school with some of my friends. My family became members there, and my parents actually briefly led the youth group, until we decided to leave the church completely at the start of my senior year. This girl is VERY familiar with Veggie Tales, the Left Behind series, the local Christian book store, and - yes, of course I wore a purity ring.
This book made so many great points about the religious culture in which many of us were raised, such as:
- modesty culture and the tendency to pin the blame on females for not being covered up enough rather than males for looking;
- purity rings and the shame and guilt they perpetuated amongst my generation regarding sex
- the legend of Cassie Bernall in the Columbine shooting and the "obsession with martyrdom" that resulted
- the intersections between Christianity and politics, even up to today's administration
- the general woes of not feeling like you are ever a "good enough" Christian

That being said, I feel that a lot of Kidd's very valid points are drowned out by just how wordy this book is. The essays are at least twice as long as they should be and tend to meander to their points. The formatting of this e-book was also quite strange and had a lot of typos, though this very well may be fixed by the time the final copy is released.

Overall, while this book had some really relevant points and was entertaining at moments, I felt like its message was drowned out by the lengthy, rambling nature of these essays. It hindered my ability to appreciate and enjoy this book, which is unfortunate considering the many insightful points that were made throughout.

An empathetic, funny, and sharply critical collection of essays exploring the Christian pop culture of the 2000s and its influence on today’s politically powerful evangelicalism
This must be read to sharpen our strategy to evangelize in today's political world.

This is one of those books you pick up because you absolutely recognize the shit that the author is talking about on the back cover and want to see how someone else took it when they were exposed to it. Turns out this shit is exactly as mildly nightmare fuel-ly as I remembered, and having someone else validate that experience means a lot. If you've ever wondered what growing up in some of the fundie evangelical circles was like in the 00s, pick this up. And if you remember it, pick it up too, because if nothing else you'll get to see that someone else experienced this shit and came out the other side.

Thank you Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book. The opinions written are completely honest and my own.

Jesus land brought me right to my yough. Although I was a Catholic I have many Mennonite friends that introduced me to the Brio ways.

I always recommended to my best friend and Teacher at a local Christian school which I believe the author attended.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me the digital copy to review before the book’s release!

I was drawn to this book for a few reasons. I am Christian, though I’m currently in the middle of a construction of sorts, parsing through my childhood and the way I was raised and how it differs from my current understanding of the teachings of Jesus. My childhood was similar to the author’s, and we are of the same generation, so I could relate to a lot of what she wrote about. We came of age in the early 2000s when a lot was happening! It brought back a lot of memories as an awkward, sheltered preteen confused by a lot that was going on! 😂

This book discusses pop culture and politics, both on a macro level and a micro level as it relates to what the author was experiencing at the time. Her stated aim of the book is: “to return to and reappraise the pop culture that shaped the way I saw my own faith.”

The author has an interesting discussion about purity culture, modesty, and women’s sexuality within the Christian religion AND how it relates to wider pop culture as a whole. She also talks about the boom in Christian films, the “culture wars” following 9/11 (creationism in schools, pledge of allegiance) and the prosperity gospel.

This is a great book and makes it easy to connect what brought us to the current administration!

When I read the synopsis of this book I was intrigued. As someone raised in the Evangelical church this was an interesting book. I like how topics discussed in the book range true to my experiences however, as someone who still practices Christianity it’s so disheartening to hear the damage that it has cause to others, myself included. I will be recommending this book to others.

#Jesusland #NetGalley

I read the synopsis of this book and immediately was interested. Great cover and incredibly interesting. Great read! Thank you for the opportunity

This was a deeply moving and personal reflection on the impact of evangelical Christianity and its' impact not only on the author (and her friends, family, peers) but the larger world. I found the repeatedly revisited concept of Christianity's rejection of mainstream culture whilst trying to replicate it and influence mainstream culture (and politics!) very informative. This book laid out concepts I was (largely) already familiar with, but explored nuances that gave it (and me!) a fresh perspective

I came to this book expecting to learn about an entire subculture that felt very separate and isolated from secular Western culture. But as Jesusland unfolds, the way and the extent that evangelicalism has permeated North American politics, media and economy truly surprised me.

Joelle Kidd recalls their experiences leaving secular Eastern Europe to joining an Evangelical Christian school in Canada. I loved how the book wasn’t purely theoretical, and how Kidd framed their perspective as an outsider as a young child to returning to this culture once again as an outsider as they experience agnosticism in their adult life.

The book did seem to drift further into politics and civil unrest, which at times felt like a gear change from the Christian pop music and magazines. Then again, you can arguably find the political in all aspects of our everyday life.

Overall, this was a really informative and fascinating read and a great change of pace from my recent reads!

Thank you to Netgalley and ECW press for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This definitely took me back! I was a teen in the late 90s/2000s heavily immersed in church culture so this was so relatable! It’s all so cringey now. This was a great book.

I am a big fan of religion/leaving religion related memoirs and this book was a good read! I did not grow up Christian but did grow up with many of the pop cultural influences referenced throughout by virtue of living in the U.S. so it was very interesting to read about them all contextualized within the author's evangelical upbringing.

this book uncovered a lot of memories i didn’t know i had of ‘out there’ christian media while addressing some of the bigger issues christianity plays in popular culture. joelle does an amazing job at blending personal experiences with well-cited research. this book is obviously steeped in personal opinion but i think it is one many ex-evangelicals (and some present evangelicals) can relate to.

how joelle talks about the music in church really resonates with me. as a child, the music was the time i felt most connected to god… i soon realised that this is just how music feels and i could feel that kind of ecstasy at a gig, not just god.

the prologue does state that joelle tries to keep a neutral point of view and not bid for or against christianity and evangelical culture. whilst i do not think this book is entirely neutral, i do not think it has to be. this is ultimately a deconstructed persons point of view and their look back at evangelical culture, and i think it is okay that they took a more critical view, as it shows where their head was at and the things that brought them to their deconstruction. i also found it particularly interesting when it came to the investigating they did as part of this book, where they discover information and context they never had when they were exposed to the media as a child, i think they have a right to be critical of media that was forced upon them as a child. you can also see how joelle’s understanding and relationship with evangelical media changes throughout the course of the book. joelle manages to show respect to the religion without respecting the media.

i feel like it did lose a bit of its voice when discussing the ‘war on terror’; creationism being linked to christian’s being placed in positions of power; and, the climate crisis. i think these veered into bigger topics that would need a whole other book and therefore became less focused on evangelical media. these topics were all incredibly interesting but maybe did not link in as well to the overarching voice of the book. i think this could likely be resolved in editing though, maybe linking back more of deciding what is tangential.

some editing is needed but this was an ARC so therefore that absolutely did not effect my rating.

Wow 🤯
Jesusland was a great and honest look at the cultural structure of the evangelical community in the 1990’s and 2000’s. I wasn’t sure if I would like Joelle’s book due to I am an evangelical pastor. I am glad to say Joelle does an excellent job of sharing her thoughts and perspectives in a way that was funny and honest, yet without being mean-spirited to the larger evangelical community.. In fact, there were several times where I was in agreement with her perspectives. This is a book that I highly recommend for all evangelicals who want to really see how much our culture has been used to support agendas of market franchises and not for true spiritual values..
Thanks Joelle for a really great reflection of our youth.

Joelle Kidd's collection of essays appeals to the teenage me who attended church with her family and would ask for money to buy "Christian" magazines.
The early 2000s was a wild time for pop culture and this is a clever way to approach an anthropological study of the time.
Reading a more academic analysis of the things that I thought were only happening in my town gives me a new perspective on the role church played in my upbringing.
I enjoyed the humour and the way that it came at just the right time: after a heavy or sobering segment, Kidd comes in with a sharp and funny observation and everything is okay again.

absolutely riveting and nostalgic and heart warming while also being heart breaking. thankful this book exists!

This book is part memoir, part non-fiction essays. After spending the early years of her life living in Eastern Europe with her expat parents. Joelle Kidd returns to Canada and is thrown into the world of Evangelical Christianity. Although I wasn't necessarily brought up evangelical, I found a lot of elements that the author writes about in this book relatable, and I loved reading it from a Canadian perspective (which was a treat, considering that I didn't know Joelle Kidd was Canadian when I applied for this ARC!). If you consider yourself a progressive Canadian, reading this book is probably going to make you think (if you don't already) that Christian culture in the US is nuts. Although it was marketed to me as a memoir, this definitely reads more like non-fiction, which was dense at times.

Jesusland touched on many of the experiences that I had in church in the early 90's with updates both cultural and political as she is coming at this 15 years later. This made the book for easy reading as I didn't have to strain to understand what she was talking about.

I don't think enough was done to understand "why" certain things were being taught or conducted the way they are. Everything was shown from the perspective of the recipient and context for how we got there was never offered. Perhaps the closest we got was the chapter on the end times in which the Book of Revelation was unfortunately and consistently called "Revelations".

There are numerous books coming out to critique and deconstruct the church of our youth. This isn't the worst nor the best.

A rare DNF for me the author seemed to not add much beyond a rehashing of the pop culture at the time. Got about 50% through and realized that trading on negative nostalgia just does not do much for me.

Joelle Kidd's first book, Jesusland, is a personal memoir of her growing-up years. Her engaging account easily pulled me into her world (the pop-evangelical Christian subculture of the 1990 to early 2000's). The book is reminiscent of Kristin Kobes Du Mez's "Jesus and John Wayne," to which Kidd often touches base. The difference is that Du Mez writes as a historian. Kidd writes her experience as a memoir with a journalistic flair. She is returning to the scene of her school-aged experience with evangelical Christianity - trying to make sense of it all. She picks up some of the literature of that time to help her process and reminisce. From Narnia to the Left Behind series to Focus on the Family's Brio Magazines and beyond, she digs through the layers of evangelical culture that left their mark on her adolescence - for better or worse. Having experienced the same culture, albeit as an adult and a Youth Pastor at the time, I nodded my head often while reading. Sometimes I rolled my eyes. Looking back on the popular, commercial Christian culture of the 1990's leaves one wincing. Some of what Kidd's generation experienced in the church culture was done for the right reasons, hoping to inspire faith and discipleship in the next generation. It must be admitted, however, that money and politics played too large a role.

It is fascinating to read Kidd's experience with it all. She is not your typical evangelical kid from that time period, emigrating from Eastern Europe to Canada - and attending Christian school. While the book is a memoir of sorts, it is also a not-so-veiled allegation against evangelicalism. Kidd comes across as one who purports to have outgrown the cringeworthy, damaging errors of her upbringing to discover the Promised Land of left-wing freedom. As if there will not be memoirs written in days to come besmirching what is happening to adolescents in our current moment. Kidd avoids preaching, and leaves the reader to strike the final gavel.

Overall, I enjoyed reading Kidd's perspective. As one who was brought up in the evangelical culture of the 70's and 80's, I have also had to sort through some of the commercial debris of that time. At the bottom of the bathwater, however, there is a baby. I pray for Christian Kidds of the 90's, that they will be able to deconstruct and reconstruct their faith in the genuine Jesus Christ.

Thank you to ECW Press via NetGalley for the advance copy in exchange for this review.