Beautiful and Terrible Things

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From the first female senior minister at New York's historic Riverside Church, a deeply personal memoir about the nature of faith, the inevitability of doubt, and the importance of radical love in facing all the beautiful and terrible things that happen in our lives.How does a young, single, and divorced Baptist mother of three come to find herself leading from one of the most prominent pulpits in America? In Beautiful and Terrible Things, Amy Butler works her way toward an answer, probing the depths of her pastoral and personal life and exploring her views on scripture, society, and family.Pastor Amy grew up in a conservative Evangelical family in the diverse culture of the Hawaiian Islands. As she realized she was more inclined to be a pastor than to marry one, she began an unlikely journey, breaking one stained-glass ceiling after another--first in seminary, then in increasingly high-profile ministry positions in New Orleans, Washington, DC, and New York. Along the way, she weathered rigidly unwelcoming congregations and enormous church conflict, the death of a child, an unexpected divorce.Despite it all, her experiences of radical love and healing empowered Amy to lead others through the brightest and darkest moments of their lives. Inspiring, candid, funny, and achingly true, Amy's literary reflections sketch her path through the thickets of doubt and despair to a durable, profound, and beautiful faith of her own.