ROOTED: A Spiritual Memoir of Homecoming. By Christy Berhoef. Foreword by Brian McLaren. Canton, MI: Reformed Journal Books, 2025. Xxv + 143 pages.
I have lived most of my life in metropolitan areas, although for a short time during early childhood, I lived in a small rural community in Northern California. While I married a farmer’s daughter, she didn’t live on a farm (her father raised raisin grapes in the San Joaquin Valley). When it comes to my roots, I have moved quite a few times in my life. I was born in a hospital in Los Angeles, though we lived in La Crescenta. I didn’t live there long enough to have any memories. Besides, the land where my family lived sits under the 210 Freeway. At nine months, we moved to an apartment complex in San Francisco. We only lived there three years before we moved to Mount Shasta City, a rural community. Six years later, we moved to Klamath Falls in southern Oregon. I lived there until going off to college. In the intervening years, I’ve lived in a number of cities, finally settling down in a Detroit suburb. Since I’ve lived here longer than any other place, perhaps this is where I have finally put down roots. So, returning to my starting place is not in the cards. As it is sometimes said, home is where your heart is. Although in some ways I still feel connected to the West Coast (I remain an Oregon Ducks fan), my roots are here. This is where I expect to stay for the remainder of my life.
Robert D. Cornwall
It is with this peripatetic life story as a backdrop that I agreed to read and review Christy Berghoef’s spiritual memoir, which is titled Rooted. While Berghoef moved around for a time, as she tells her own story, she eventually returned to the farm where she grew up. This is where her roots are firmly planted. Her story is, in some ways, very different from mine. Yet, as I read how she moved from a conservative evangelical/political starting place to a more progressive one, I resonated with her story.
So, who is Christy Berghoef, the author of Rooted? According to her biography, she is an author, musician, and speaker who lives on the family farm, which is located near Holland, Michigan (on the other side of Michigan from where I reside). It is worth noting that the town’s name serves as a reminder that Western Michigan has a strong Dutch Reformed identity. This is part of her origin story. Berghoef is married to Bryan, a United Church of Christ pastor serving a congregation in Holland. Her husband, as readers will discover, ran for Congress as a Democrat in a deeply red district. Both Bryan and Christy have spiritual roots in the Christian Reformed Church. They met while they were students at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan. They would both eventually attend the CRC-related Calvin Theological Seminary.
With this starting place in a conservative part of the state of Michigan, in a deeply conservative denomination, what we read in Berghoef’s memoir is the story of a transition from being part of this deeply rooted conservative, Reformed Christianity, to a more progressive Christianity (as revealed by their move to the United Church of Christ). What is interesting is that this transition takes place at a time when the Berghoefs were moving from Washington, D.C., where they had planted a church, so they could make a home in rural Western Michigan.
Memoirs are difficult to review because, as a reviewer, I don’t want to give too much away. The reader needs to imbibe the stories for themselves because each reader will experience the book differently based on their own experiences and background. What resonates with me might be different from what resonates with someone else. Nevertheless, what a reader will experience in reading Berghoef’s beautifully written memoir is the story of how Berghoef found spiritual sustenance as she and her family returned to a portion of the land where she grew up. We read of her joys and the challenges she faced as she wrestled with her faith, especially as she and her family embraced a progressive form of Christianity while seeking to live out that faith in a conservative corner of the state.
As I noted in the beginning, I have spent most of my life living in the city (even though metropolitan Klamath Falls had a population of less than fifty thousand. Nevertheless, as I read her memoir, I resonated with what she shared. In part, that is because I, too, transitioned from conservative evangelicalism (I lived in a conservative part of the state of Oregon and in my teenage years joined a conservative Pentecostal church) to a more progressive form of Christianity during my adult years. So, I resonated with how she described the points of transition in her life. I also resonated with her description of being connected with the earth, even though I never lived on a farm (Klamath Falls is an agricultural hub, so I experienced it in a sense, just not directly).
I may not have experienced the kind of homecoming she describes here in Rooted, since I don’t have a family homestead to return to. However, I think we all feel the need to put down roots, even if those roots are planted in the suburb of a major U.S. city. She raises a question in the first chapter of the book that I believe sets the tone of her memoir. It is a question that many of us ask as we traverse life’s changes, and it involves our concern whether “the place and people of my hometown [would] ever allow me to really feel at home” (p. 5). She asks that question because she is no longer part of her original tribe. She acknowledges that her values hadn’t changed, but the way she expressed them had. This transition put her at odds with the conservative community she inhabits. That truth became very evident when her husband ran for Congress and the family experienced a strong pushback from their community, including friends of the family.
As we move through the book, Berghoef shares the tragedies and triumphs her family experienced as they made a life on a portion of the family farm while living in an 800-square-foot cottage. She shares how she found spiritual sustenance in the land while creating gardens that allowed her to express her creativity and imagination. She also takes us back to points in her childhood while growing up on that very farm that connects her youth with her adult life. As she tells her story, we do encounter the kinds of tragedies that many families experience. In her case, this included the death of her beloved father, along with the realities of menopause, something that came earlier than expected. I will leave the descriptions of these realities for the reader to encounter for themselves. However, I do believe that people will resonate with her story, especially those people who, like me, share Berghoef’s transition from conservative evangelicalism to a more liberal form of post evangelicalism.
One of the important messages that emerges from Berghoef’s Rooted: A Spiritual Memoir of Homecoming is a recognition that we all need to feel rooted. Those roots might be planted in the old family homestead or someplace discovered later in life. After living in the same house in a relatively affluent suburb for seventeen years, I do feel more rooted both physically and spiritually than ever before. Perhaps, you, the reader of this review, sense the need to put down roots, especially spiritual roots. If so, I invite you to pick up this beautifully written book and allow Christy Berghoef’s memoir to serve as a guide to finding your place of rootedness.
This review originally appeared on BobCornwall.com.
Robert D. Cornwall is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Now retired from his ministry at Central Woodward Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) of Troy, Michigan, he serves as Minister-at-Large in Troy. He holds a Ph.D. in Historical Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary and is the author of numerous books, including his latest “Eating with Jesus: Reflections on Divine Encounters at the Open Eucharistic Table.” His blog Ponderings on a Faith Journey can be found here.
