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Memoir Recalls 'My Fundamentalist Education'

Detail from the cover of <i>My Fundamentalist Education: A Memoir of a Divine Childhood</i> by Christine Rosen.
Detail from the cover of My Fundamentalist Education: A Memoir of a Divine Childhood by Christine Rosen.

Christine Rosen's memoir of her elementary education is a clear-eyed, happy reminiscence of a world we're more accustomed to hearing about in polemics, pro and con. It's called My Fundamentalist Education.

Rosen spent the early 1980s in a Christian elementary school, reading the Bible, trying to convert the neighborhood kids, and observing mainstream American culture from behind an elaborate, protective curtain of religion.

Rosen is a historian who has written in the past about eugenics. In her memoir, she writes without anger or apology about ideas she has left behind -- the ideas behind Keswick, her old school in St. Petersburg, Fla. Rosen discusses her fundamentalist education with All Things Considered host Robert Siegel.

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Corrected: December 29, 2005 at 12:00 AM EST
In this story, we incorrectly identified a passage of the Bible. The prophecy of Mary discussed in this interview with Christine Rosen appears in the Old Testament, not the New Testament.