Has religion ever kept you from doing something that was actually good for you?

It did for Charles Marsh. As a boy growing up in the evangelical South, Charles was taught to distrust his own body, to fear his desires, and to treat suffering as a gift from God. So when debilitating panic attacks shattered his world as a young man, he thought that he should count these panic attacks as something he was supposed to feel “joy” about.

Charles is now the Commonwealth Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. In conversation with Lee C. Camp, find out how he navigated shedding the taboos of his evangelical upbringing as he sits down to discuss his memoir, Evangelical Anxiety.

Charles Marsh: Evangelical Anxiety

The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative, whose mission is to study the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.