Kenneth Cauthen

Born into the Wrong World: the Life and Thought of Kenneth Cauthen

Born into the Wrong World is the story of a country boy from the rural segregated South who grew up among farmers and mill workers. Kenneth Cauthen has spent a lifetime trying to make sense of life and its mysteries. He has always between troubled that there is so much suffering and injustice in the world and puzzled that we do so little about it. He defends the view of a limited, suffering God as the only credible way to explain why. Born in 1930, Cauthen's life covers a span from the Great Depression to the Age of Terror. This memoir views his 80 plus years in the context of these tumultuous decades. His evocative descriptions of childhood in the country are marked with humor and appreciative feeling as he talks about outdoor toilets, life in a small Baptist church, the eccentricities of colorful individuals, the family grocery store, and the sights, sounds, and smells of that rustic time long ago. He speaks candidly of early sexual trauma and the pain of parental conflict. It is all here-his life experiences with all their sorrows and joy, inner struggles, his brief career as a pastor who barely escaped early dismissal over the race issue, his four-decade long career as a professor of theology and author, his first marriage, family life, episodes of depression, a devastating divorce, and a happy second marriage, his theological development and thought, his ambivalence about the church, and his social and political views.