Hell is a World That Jason Kirk Understands Perfectly

A review of Jason Kirk's exvangelical coming-of-age novel

Hell Is a World Without You (2024, Shutdown Fullbooks) was written with readers like me in mind, I'm sure, so it's no surprise that its themes and tongue-in-cheek references resonated with me on a deeply personal (and slightly repressed) level. Though it is set in the landscape of evangelical youth group culture ten years earlier than my own  experience in that world, most of the worldbuilding translates. (Replace the AIM chats with early Facebook wall posts and 9/11 warmongering with fanatical arguments about Obama's citizenship and you have something closer to my story. The Point of Grace and Carman references can stay, though.)

There are two elements of Kirk's writing here that especially stuck with me; both of them require some moderate spoiling, so continue on at your own risk.

First, that inner monologue. I read a few reviews where readers found it too intrusive or distracting, but I found that it so beautifully and succinctly captured the power of shame and self-policing that haunts an evangelical adolescence. The voice is incessant at first, driving Isaac deeper into depression and towards self-harm. Over the years, as he begins to question the authority of the "men of God" around him, the voice becomes less frequent, until a pivotal moment when he realizes/declares that the voice is decidedly not God, but an amalgamation of all the shame and self-flagellation that he's absorbed, having heard others preach those things for years. 

Hell Is a World Without You is, among other things, about learning to see yourself as worthy while fighting off a constant barrage of messaging that insists on your depravity. In the wake of exploring heresies about the Song of Songs couple not being married - exploring them, erm, rather literally - Isaac and Sophie push each other towards a kinder self-image: 

When we sat up, she said, "I think I'm dirty, but I know I'm adored." Feeling daybreak, I said, "You can only pick one. Say it." She admitted, "adored," and made me answer, too. It physically hurt to call myself beloved.

What makes Isaac's inner-shame voice so impactful for me, however, is not that it lessens over time until it finally shatters in a breakthrough moment of self-love, but that even after Isaac is sure that the voice is not God, it still remains, popping up here and there long past when he has stopped heeding its warnings. The shame that's instilled into us when we're young can stay with us, long after we've intellectually decried its legitimacy.

Secondly, Jason Kirk clearly knows the world he's writing about. He pulls no punches in exposing the self-hatred-inducing rhetoric of evangelicalism, but at the same time, treats every character on the page with gentle recognition, allowing them to be multi-dimensional. Even the two characters closest to being villains, Pastor Jack and Isaac's brother Eli, represent two very different versions of evangelical male figureheads. To those  outside the fold, so to speak, the Pastor Jacks and Eli Sienas are often cast as if they're interchangeable, but Kirk knows better. Jack's preaching, especially after 9/11, is a "take America back for God" nationalism that is invested in political action and amassing Christian influence in the here-and-now, while Eli is obsessed (to a dangerous degree, as we discover) with saving souls from eternal conscious torment. 

Pastor Jack isn't very interested in apocalyptic theology, or deep critical theology in general, except when it supports his political-religious mission. Eli, on the other hand, readily critiques Christian Nationalism, sharing his learnings from Bible college about various ways to read Scripture and arguing that the Founding Fathers were Deists rather than committed Protestants. This contrast struck me, as someone who studies and writes about evangelical history, because it carefully and tactfully shows how two completely different brands of evangelical concern come to coexist and work together under one roof or tradition.

Jack wasn't a fire-and-brimstone guy at heart, but he wanted Christian soldiers to retake America. And maybe that's easier with an attack dog threatening eternal consequences for failure. Because the only thing more important than getting butts into seats is scaring butts into never leaving.

I've read a lot of non-fiction that unpacks the culture of evangelicalism in which this book is set, but here Kirk uses fiction to do something that non-fiction histories or commentaries can never do: it condemns evangelical hate at the same time that it's empathizing with the characters' inner worlds. In so doing, it speaks to and affirms our inner worlds as readers. That something as innocuous as a kiss on the cheek or holding hands could induce a shame spiral may seem trite or fanatical, but after reading Hell Is a World Without You, you can't help but empathize that for these kids, such struggles are very serious.

Bobbi stalled at the door and mumbled, "I never really thought about it, but...nobody chooses to be indoctrinated, huh? Nobody chooses to be repressed."

It's not all stream-of-consciousness self-hatred and shame spirals, either. The book ends with an earnest declaration of hope and possibility. Even though my own deconstruction didn't begin until late college, rather than in high school as with Isaac and his friends, I can affirm with the epilogue that there is life after fire-and-brimstone. Some of us end up finding forms of religious life that affirm diversity, mystery, and liberation. Others find liberation by leaving all structured religion behind. Still others may deconstruct some of their beliefs but end up staying within the evangelical world for its safe familiarity until much later in life. Hell Is a World Without You makes every path feel believable, and possibly even sacred. 

I'll leave you with the same benediction that Jason/Isaac does: 

What if it was never about individual conversions, but about reparations unto restoration, in this universe or the next?

What if it ain't just about the ending? What if everything that happens beforehand matters too?

What if, amid Psalm 139's unbreakable communion between the buried and me, I join melodies from heaven, full of awe and trembling, in a prayer learned from my mother...

"Holy fucking shit."