Lessons in Chemistry & Religion

 

I'm on the home stretch reading the clever, often funny novel, Lessons in Chemistry.  We started watching the series on Apple TV and found the first couple of episodes entertaining. Then we read reviews which suggested that the adaptation just didn't capture the story set in the 1950s/60s, including the breed, or lack thereof of the dog, who is an important character. So we stopped our viewing and put the novel on hold at the library. 

Elizabeth Zort is a brilliant and beautiful chemist who is lousy at interpersonal relationships and doesn't really care. Unfortunately she lives in a period of overt and stealth misogyny, resulting in spinning her academic and career wheels. She finds love with an equally quirky and exceptional colleague only to...well, I won't spoil the novel for you. 

Much to everyone's surprise Zort becomes the wildly popular host of a cooking show in which she uses chemistry to create delicious and manageable recipes. Defying her male bosses, she always assumes that her largely female audience should be treated as intelligent, resourceful human beings who deserve tremendous credit for running the households of the era. 

For all I've enjoyed the book I'm struck by the relentlessly negative portrayal of Christians and Christianity throughout. There are Evangelical parents who end up on the lam because of their devious ways. There are the Roman Catholic priests who are almost Dickensian in the way they run a school for wayward and abandoned boys. There is a kind-hearted Protestant minister who is decent enough but figures he's a pastor because it's the family business through several generations. There is no room for rapprochement between religion and science and it seems that author Bonnie Garmus goes out of her way to denigrate religion as morally and intellectually weak. 

Does this detract from Lessons in Chemistry? As a fairly religous guy I may be a tad sensitive about the constant pokes in the eye. And there have been multiple generations of clergy in my family. It just seems like low hanging fruit in a world where religion does a lot of harm yet also offers so much which is joyful and compassionate. 

Should you read Lessons In Chemistry?  Hey, this white, male, retired clergyperson has appreciated it, often chuckling aloud.