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Cyndi Jo Holiday is one woman with one voice, hoping to spark a movement where people come forward and tell their stories. Throughout her life, Cyndi Jo has spoken to dozens of people who have been hurt by people within church who have inflicted deep emotional scars when they failed to love as Jesus loved. According to Cyndi Jo, Christians have the power to heal or hurt people more than one else because they claim to represent God. As a result, Many hurting people have turned away from faith in God because of those hurts. Cyndi Jo hopes they will see that while people's love fails, God's love never fails.
Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers' Favorite
In Slut Shamed By the Church, Cyndi Jo Holiday shares her true life experiences of growing up in a Christian family, facing challenges such as physical disability, parental divorce, abduction, and all manner of abuse. Despite her struggles, she found nuggets of solace in faith and developed a relationship with Christ. She recounts a journey of self-discovery, overcoming the symptoms of autism, and finding love and stability in a Christian foster family. However, Holiday also faced rejection and judgment from their church community after being raped and struggled with doubts about her salvation. A string of violent relationships and a near-death experience brings her back to faith, finding strength and hope in scripture and her relationship with God despite being told by the church she is unworthy of it.
“She was right. You have sinned too much for God to forgive you. If I were God, I would never forgive you.” Slut Shamed By the Church is a memoir, but it really is a Christian testimonial of the power of one woman, with only God at her back, who realizes that He is all she needs, and nothing and nobody else matters. Cyndi Jo Holiday's honesty is as profound as it is cutting, and a reader is shown the hypocrisy of certain congregations in how they view women who have been repeatedly neglected, abandoned, and abused from early childhood. The fact that horrific assaults such as molestation by a neighbor, rape, and brutally savage violence could be levied against a victim as their own fault is incomprehensible. Yet Holiday rises above it and comes out with a greater grasp of what being a Christian is, and what living like Christ means, more than anyone who besmirched her before. The writing is simplistic and while the prose does not have the polish that some readers require, there is no question that Holiday has a story to tell and I am so grateful that she had the courage to do so.
