The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

“Do you think God wants you, or anybody, to go untouched for decades and decades? For their whole lives? […] All those women at church who think they have to choose between pleasing God and something so basic, so human as being held and known in the most intimate way.”

Caroletta asks Eula this in desperation to help her understand that she should be allowed to be happy and pursue pleasure. She challenges her to try to expand her understanding of God and God’s plan for her rather than thinking so rigidly.

“In the cramped space of the back seat and of our grief and our need, there was no room for guilt or fear. Only relief.”

The woman in “Not-Daniel” feels like she should be experiencing guilt because she is sleeping with a married man, yet she only feels relief from the grief she’s experiencing because her mother is slowly dying. She finds comfort in another stranger who is experiencing the same thing as her. Philyaw indirectly compares the coping strategies of the woman and Not-Daniel’s Christian mothers to their own strategy, which involves no guilt, shame, or inhibitions.

“Without having to be told, I learned not to ask questions about that cobbler, or about God.”

This quote comes from Olivia in “Peach Cobbler” and demonstrates the common attitude that children adopt when growing up in the Christian church; doubts and questions are looked down upon rather than encouraged, and this young girl learned the same thing in her own household and her own congregation. Philyaw points to the hypocrisy of the church and the church’s leadership.

“I’m not going to raise [my child] to go through life expecting it to be sweet, when for her, it ain’t going to be. The sooner she learns to accept what is and what ain’t the better. She get a taste of that sweetness, she’s going to want it so bad, she’ll grow up and settle for crumbs of it.”

Olivia’s mother has seen what unmet expectations can do to a person, especially someone who already has odds against them. She doesn’t want to set her daughter up for failure, so she holds her back from experiencing certain things. There’s a literary parallel between this philosophy and the peach cobbler that the mother makes every week, which she doesn’t allow her daughter to eat.

“I ate cobbler with every meal throughout the weekend until it was all gone. I would soak the empty pan in the sink, my hands lingering in the warm dishwater. I had made something wonderful.”

This quote shows that the daughter learned something from her mother and made it her own. Her mother never shared it with her, so she learned how to create joy and enjoyment for herself. This is similar to other moments in the collection, such as when the protagonist accepts and enjoys her body in “How to Make Love to a Physicist.”

“We all lost things when we chose each other. Only the memories remain.”

The protagonist has chosen her relationship with her partner, a woman, over her home and her mother, which she misses dearly. While many characters in the collection sacrifice themselves, such as Eula for her Christian upbringing, Arletha sacrifices her former sense of home to live with her partner.

“Friendship is not the same as history, just as a bone is not the same as its marrow.”

Living in a new place that is very different from her home, Arletha makes this comparison; friendship in new places is important, but it does not replace the history from where you grew up. This quote indicates that Arletha will always be a part of the South even though she can no longer live there and be her authentic self as a lesbian.

“I wonder if I will ever stop noticing and cataloging all the things we do here that we didn’t—couldn’t—do back home. I wonder if that catalog will ever grow long enough to become enough. For me.”

Arletha in “Snowfall” knows that she wouldn’t be able to be her full self—a queer woman—back home, but she still struggles to feel at home in the new place where she lives. She has to grapple with what that means for her and if she’ll ever feel satisfied living away from what she’s used to. Philyaw uses this example to show that even those who embrace their sexual orientation will meet with struggles.

“Even Einstein wasn’t an atheist. He talked about God all the time. Now, he didn’t believe in a god that was concerned with human behavior, which is the church’s obsession and the reason it uses guilt and shame to enforce Christianity.”

This is one of the key themes that comes up throughout the entire book: Christianity is the source of guilt and shame that comes up frequently in the characters’ relationships and interactions. The woman in this story, “How to Make Love to a Physicist,” learns to discard the shame she feels about her body.

“[A]ll you’ve ever known of religion is that it demands more than you can ever give.” 

The protagonist is in search of a new religion, one that is not led by guilt and shame, and one that does not take everything you can give it without return. This quote exemplifies an underlying theme in the text, which is redefining religion. Caroletta first brings up this concept when she describes her sexual encounter with Eula as praying at an altar.

“How do you make love to a physicist? Forget your home training. Ditch the girdles your mother taught you to wear to harness your belly, your butt, your thighs, your freedom. God forbid something jiggle. God forbid you are soft and unbridled.”

The protagonist is coming to terms with her body, working through the guilt and shame that she learned to have toward it as a young girl. This is the beginning of her journey toward self-love, which then leads her to pursue a healthy relationship with a man. Relieving herself of the girdle represents relieving herself of the confines and restrictions of religion.

“Use your hands to study the contours and curves of your body, your topography. To study them as fact, without judgment.”

In her quest for self-acceptance, the protagonist takes a journey to get to know her body, and she makes sure to leave judgment—which she was taught to always invoke toward her body—behind. This is a moment of great character growth for the protagonist.

“As your body begins to feel like a home, your courage grows. It grows bigger than your mother’s chastisement in the parking lot after service the first time you go to church unbound.”

In Christianity, many are taught that their body is their enemy; this protagonist is on a quest to make her body feel like her home. Even as an adult, her mother is chastising her for having a big, free body. We see similar treatment when Olivia’s mother is disappointed when she begins to develop a woman’s body during puberty.

“You want him to be the one you’ve been waiting for, and you want him to feel the inevitability of you as well. You want to be his default, not an option. You want the promises of a new religion.”

In the beginning of a new relationship, the protagonist sees potential in the man she’s dating. She wants to believe in fate, but she is coming to terms with the fact that they’re choosing each other. She’s leaving the religion of her childhood behind and sees the opportunity for a new framework in her life.

“How do you make love to a physicist? With your whole self, quivering, lush, unafraid.”

Finally, after many bouts of self-doubt and self-sabotage, the protagonist feels at home in her body, has worked past some of the guilt and shame from her childhood, and is able to experience confidence and pleasure with the person she loves.

“Today at church, Old Rev was talking about how you have to be saved and give up the sinful pleasures of the flesh if you want to get to heaven. Seem like saved folks don’t like to do anything but talk about being saved, complain about sin, and go to church.”

Jael doesn’t see the utility in going to church and being saved. She’s learning life lessons outside of church and sees that those who are saved are not really making a difference outside of themselves. Jael’s realism comes from a traumatic past.

“Why do you turn me on? It’s that you want me when there are so many reasons you shouldn’t.”

The woman who has affairs with married Christian men takes charge of her sexuality and is open about it, unashamed to explain why she makes these choices. Unlike many of the characters in these stories, she doesn’t see sexuality as something that should be monitored by the church, and her interest in Christian men is purely for her own excitement.

“By all means, continue teaching Sunday School, leading the Boy Scout troop, and serving on the deacon board at church. If guilt gets the best of you, do not attempt to witness to me or invite me to church. Don’t ask me to repent, because I regret nothing. You can’t save me, because I’m not in peril.”

The protagonist does not want the baggage that comes with sleeping with married Christian men. She makes it clear that she does not want anything to do with their religion, but she does not judge them if they decide to continue the façade of their outward devotion. There is clear hypocrisy, but she understands the situation, as long as she is left out of it. She is confident that she doesn’t have anything to be saved for–she’s happy with who she is.

“I build monuments to my impulses and desires on the backs of men like you.”

The protagonist owns her sexuality in a way that we don’t see in the other characters. This protagonist is in direct opposition to Eula, who considers her sexuality a sin, and is more like the woman from Story 2, whose mother is in hospice. The sex for both these characters is just a means to an end and nothing more.

“Easily irked and forever trying to make order out of chaos, she was indeed her mother’s daughter—the mother before this current mother.”

The protagonist lays out the similarities between herself and her mother–for better or for worse. This shows the inherited tendencies that she is carrying from one generation into the next.

“Everyone except her teachers followed Mama’s lead and never called her by her name, always ‘Daughter,’ as if she existed only in relation to her mother, to her function in the family.”

The protagonist does not have her own identity as an individual—her value comes from being available to other people. This tendency to sacrifice oneself and desires appears in Story 1 through Eula as well.

“Despite her devotion to the church and chaste living, Mama had never had that peace that passes all understanding that was supposed to be yours when you invited Jesus to your heart. Nor did she have that joy, unspeakable joy, promised in the scriptures. What Mama had was the love of Jesus—whose touch, Daughter imagined, was too ephemeral to quench anything—a quieter, more passive lover than the men she brought into her bed, but who nevertheless demanded everything.”

The protagonist’s mother is always in search of love, but never really finds selfless love. She imagines Jesus’s love was not as real as it should be–it would never really fulfill that search for love, and it would still require everything from her mother without much in return.

“Mama, a long time ago, you were real hard on me. Real hard. And I don’t know if you remember any of that. Part of me hopes you remember, because I can’t forget. But then, if you remember, I wish you would apologize, or at least recognize...”

This quote expresses the pain of a daughter who desperately wants peace and closure and validation from her mother who was abusive but who now has dementia. There is a sadness that even though she can freely express herself to her mother now, she’ll never get the apology she so desires.