Too much pot. Too many beers. Tired of lying to his parents, Patton, 18, is ready to come clean. He goes looking for God at a charismatic megachurch where people are "unabashedly excited about Jesus," and his life turns around. He speaks in tongues, dances spontaneously during worship services, enrolls at Oral Roberts University. And he prays incessantly: "My prayers cover the nation, the world. They pour out of my mouth and gush through the air, rumbling up the foothills of Pikes Peak and leaping into the sky, splashing down into the plains and rushing across into the towns and boroughs and metropolises, seeping under people’s windowsills and covering their entire homes like a film that won’t come off." Now a grad student and contributing editor to the webzine killingthebuddha.com, Dodd engagingly recreates two years of passionate faith and excruciating doubt, weaving historical notes and sociological observations into his personal narrative. Though his experience as a fanatically "evangelical, Bible-believing, chest-pounding Christian" was short-lived, Dodd’s tone is sympathetic as well as wryly humorous, and his analysis is usually kind: "ORU is not a place of insincere devotion; it is a place of extreme devotion sincerely and frequently expressed." This lively coming-of-age story succeeds both as literary memoir and as an intimate look at a popular variety of American religious experience. (Nov.) (Publishers Weekly, October 11, 2004)

"Honesty is a rare commodity. Sometimes it’s rarest in the world of religion. Like the blues in music, there’s something oddly uplifting about it. Patton Dodd offers an honest and engaging reflection of his experience in the world of charismatic Christianity—poignant, even painful, yet somehow uplifting. Whatever your religious background, you'll learn here, and perhaps be nudged toward greater honesty in your own spiritual search."
—Brian McLaren, pastor, author (anewkindofchristian.com)

"Patton Dodd's memoir is the most honest account of the constant conversions, backslides, and rebirths of a life of faith that I have read in years. In its acknowledgment that the intellect, too, can be a path to salvation, My Faith So Far brings to mind the classics of spiritual memoir genre, perhaps especially The Seven Storey Mountain. In fact, if the evangelical world is in need of its own Merton, a young writer willing to keep his wit sharp while searching for both sustenance and relevance in his faith, Dodd might be the man for the job."
—Peter Manseau, coauthor of Killing the Buddha; A Heretic's Bible

"My Faith So Far is at once feisty and irreverent, rebellious and tender… Patton Dodd is an evangelical trying to break free from the superficiality and smugness of his subculture, but he is never more evangelical than in his pursuit of this struggle. This book is an urgent dispatch from the cutting edge of religious and cultural change. This is news."
—Gregory Wolfe, Editor, Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion