Learning to Speak God from Scratch is a hopeful guide for anyone who finds themselves undergoing an evolution of faith, or asking questions about the evolution of American Christianity as a whole. If you are deconstructing your faith but don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, this is for you.



Fans of Jonathan Merritt’s religion reporting will find his same honest, straightforward, and compelling writing here. At the same time, the book is full of personal stories and relatable anecdotes that Christians from a variety of backgrounds will resonate with. 

The first half of the book explains Jonathan’s research about sacred speech in America, and can be a bit dry at times, but is still interesting and provides needed context for understanding the significance of the conversation.



The second half of the book, though, is where I found this book most interesting, compelling, and heartfelt. Here, Merritt offers a series of essays in which he examines words often associated with Christianity—sin, grace, pain, neighbor—and unpacks how his understanding of them has changed over time.



This book gave me needed permission to continue asking questions about my own faith, and also gave me a framework by which I might do so. 

This book is a needed and helpful guidebook for anyone who is deconstructing their faith but wants to do so with hope.



I received an advanced copy of the book, but the thoughts here are my own and are not given in exchange for the book.