Quote

By the time I had got to college, I had begun to read and had decided that most of what Christians believed could not be credible. So I became a philosophy major at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas.

Then I studied theology in college, and when I was getting a Ph.D. in literature, I took courses in New Testament studies and studied Greek versions of the Gospels.

I had a place at university to study theology and philosophy. I got the divinity prize at my school two years in a row. Probably because there were only 10 of us, but still.

I came from a very loving home, had a happy life with no great aspirations, but going to the seminary changed me. There was a chunk of my childhood missing. Once I'd realised it wasn't for me, I still felt a tremendous pressure to continue for fear of letting everybody down.

I obtained a job at the Library of Congress. I loved books, so I felt at home. I was going to end up, I thought, majoring in English and teach at the college level.

I went to college and graduate school, studying philosophy. I really did think I was going to wind up being a lecturer or professor of some sort.

After I saved some money, I quit work and went to a local college.

I had been a journalist in Europe and then went to divinity school in the early 1990s, and came out as somebody who had the perspective of a journalist and was now also theologically educated.

I grew up in a very small, close-knit, Southern Baptist family, where everything was off-limits. So I couldn't wait to get to college and have some fun. And I did for the first two years. And I regret a lot of it, because my grades were in terrible shape. I never got in serious trouble, except for my grades.

When I was growing up, I went to an Irish-Christian missionary school.