Gadwa

Are you fed up with the way that Christianity is portrayed in the media? Would you like the world to know that we are more than Kim Davis and the late Fred Phelps?

I spent four years of my life traveling through the South seeking the heart and soul of Christianity in the Bible Belt. Much more than people’s politics, I looked for stories of faith and how it had changed lives for the better.

Southern Cross tells real stories of real Christians in our own words. It affirms that even though we do not always believe the same things, we serve the same God -- and that our God is undeniably real.

Writing this book changed my life forever. It is my witness and my testimony. It was also my greatest test.

The book includes interviews with Jay Bakker, founder of Revolution Church and son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, celebrated West Virginia snake handler Charles Dewey Jr., and famed Freedom Rider Jerome Smith.

This book took me through ten states and over 10,000 miles of highway, to rural Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta, prosperous New South suburbs and New Orleans six months after Katrina. I talked to liberals and conservatives, black folks and white folks, Baptists, Pentecostals, and Catholics.

I witnessed protest rallies and Pentecostal tent revivals. I visited megachurches and a pacifist Christian commune. I met a few scary people and many more kind, hospitable ones.

I heard stories of miracles, prophetic dreams, and faith healing. I watched history unfold.

Wherever you are in your faith journey, read this book and your understanding of Christianity in the American South will be forever changed.

＂With a mesmerizing and colorful writing style... her book has a radical message: that we can learn more from each other than from clergy and church dogma.＂ - Deborah Beeksma, The God Discussion

Learn more about me and this project at www.southerncrossbook.com.