Faith In The Poisonwood Bible

Price Daughters Evolving Faith in “The Poisonwood Bible”

Who you are as a person is based on genetics but also on experiences. Biology of the brain has an influence on personality, however, culture and environment heavily influence personality traits from the beginning of one’s life and experiences continue to do so throughout adulthood. In “The Poisonwood Bible” sisters, Leah, Adah and Ruth May were all raised by Orleanna and Nathan Price—a Christian Baptist preacher from Georgia and were given the same experiences, yet all three girls remain completely different from one another. From living in the United States to becoming full time missionaries in the Congo, the three girls grow and develop into different directions in terms of their faith. In “The Poisonwood Bible”, Barbara Kingsolver displays the differences and affects that Christianity has on Christians in Western society verse living in the Congo through the lives of the

characters Ruth May, Adah and Leah Price.
Nathan Price’s strict and inflexible views on Christianity are an example of how his mission work in the Congo fail due to his unapproachable and ineffective tactics. Although Ruth May is raised by Nathan Price, her innocent nature and pure at heart attitude helps her with the Congolese people and is the reason she is so successful, unlike her father, when playing with the African children and gaining their trust. Although raised in a Christian home, while spending time with Nelson, Ruth May learns a lot about the Congolese culture and belief and quickly learns to adopt some of their beliefs as her own. Shortly after Adah was almost attacked by a lion, Ruth May is talking with Nelson about “gree-grees,” – little gods contained in necklaces the Congolese people wear to protect them. Nelson explains to her that because they are depending on Jesus to save them and not gree-grees, the gree-grees may be seeking to harm one of the Prices. When talking about the Congolese people she says, “Some of them are scared of Jesus, and some aren’t, but I don’t think they love Him… I’m scared of Jesus too” (Kingsolver 157-158). Similar to the Congolese, Ruth May decides she is afraid of Jesus. She believes that Jesus is present as a punishment system and that everything she does wrong will end in punishment. While Ruth May is ill, Nelson brings her a “nkisi” – a container of spirits which he believes will save Ruth May’s spirit if she should die. After accepting a fetish from Nelson, she begins to believe this allows her spirit to reappear as a mamba snake after she dies. In the last chapter, Ruth May explains the spiritual world and the power she has to forgive. She discusses how she is present in the natural world, being the “forest’s conscience” and through forgiveness guides her mother into “muntu” – the afterlife. She gives the comfort of forgiveness to her mother Orleanna when she says, "Mother, you can still hold on but forgive, forgive and give for long as we both shall live I forgive you, Mother" (Kingsolver 543). This gives her mother the ability to move towards the afterlife. Because Ruth May is so young when she first moved to the Congo with her family, she had not yet been completely influenced by her father’s aggressive faith, but was more receptacle and open to the beliefs of the Congolese. She is the quickest of the Prices to adopt the native culture of the Congolese people and takes pantheism as her religion at the end of the novel.
Similar to Leah and Ruth May, Adah embraces the Congo but rather the nature in the Congo rather than the Congolese culture and beliefs. Whether in the United States or in the Congo, ever since Adah Price was a young child, she has had a bitter relationship with God. She doesn’t understand how such a compassionate saviour could save only some based solely on chance of their birth place and says, “admission to heaven is gained by the luck of the draw” (Kingsolver 171). The thought that one does not earn their way into the Kingdom of Heaven leads Adah to the conclusion that she does not believe in God. She shows her bitterness towards God in her sarcastic comments made in mockery regarding God’s ways. Adah describes her faith in science in relation to Christianity when she says, “In organic chemistry, invertebrate zoology, and the inspired symmetry of Mendelian genetics, I have found a religion that serves. I recite the Periodic Table of Elements like a prayer; I take my examinations as Holy Communion, and the pass of the first semester was a sacrament” (Kingsolver 409). After Adah returns to America she enrolls in medical school where she adopts education and science solely as her religion. She relates God to science when she says, “God is everything, then. God is a virus” (Kingsolver 528). Adah leaves her work at the hospital to take up epidemiology focused on the viruses that live in the Congo. Like her mother, Adah adopts her own unique pantheistic view of religion.
Ruth May and Adah are fairly consistent in their beliefs throughout the novel, however, Leah drastically changes from living in the United States to living in the Congo. She goes from being daddy’s girl to being the first daughter to ever disobey him. As a child, Leah idolized Nathan and always strived to get his attention by following in his footsteps and spending all of her time with him. Leah spends a lot of time trying to follow in her father's footsteps, all she wants to do is impress him; she shows this when she says, “I’d walked in his footsteps my whole life” (Kingsolver 393) and "I want to live the right way and be redeemed” (Kingsolver 310). She looked up to Nathan the same way someone would look up to God, so when her relationship with her father diminishes, so does her relationship with God. Leah initially believed Christianity to be a system in which people are either rewarded or punished for their actions. In the beginning Leah believed the ant attack to be God’s doing, however, in a conversation with Anatole he explains that the suffering they have witnessed is random and without regard to whether the victims were deserving of punishment. Leah refers to the ant attack as “the night God turned his back on [her]” (Kingsolver 311). As Leah’s relationship with her father diminishes, her independence grows and even defies her father’s orders. When the people of the Congo were starving and planning a big hunt for food, Leah tells her father she was going to join the men in the hunt and when he forbids it she replies, “I’m going out with the men and that’s final” (Kingsolver 339). For Leah to disobey her once beloved father is a huge turning point in her faith and in her character. According to Rachel it was the first time anyone in the family had “flat-out disobeyed [Nathan]” (Kingsolver 340). After this happened, Leah continued to disagree strongly with her father. When their housemate Nelson was terrified of a snake he thought he saw in his room, the preacher did not care and told Nelson to be quiet and go to sleep. Leah, however, said “this is wrong.” And eventually, she convinced her sisters to come with her by saying, “I’m going out there to help Nelson, and father can go straight to hell” (Kingsolver 358). The older Leah gets, the smaller her devotion is to her father. After this, she continues to disagree strongly with her father and develops a belief in pantheism and in justice for all. Leah’s faith changes from Christianity to believing in “a doctrine that identifies God with the universe, or regards the universe as a manifestation of God.”
Barbara Kingsolver displays the transformations of the Price girls’ faith through living in the Congo.

Characters Ruth May, Adah and Leah Price all raised by southern Baptist preacher have the same experiences, develop varied ideas of faith and beliefs and all abandon Christianity all together. Adah describes the result of faith in the Price family best when she says,

It crosses my mind that I may need a religion. Although Mother has one now, and she still suffers. I believe she talks to Ruth May more or less constantly, begging for forgiveness when no one is around. Leah has one: her religion is the suffering. Rachel doesn’t and she is plainly the happiest of us all. Though it could be argued that she is, herself, her own brand of goddess. (Kingsolver 442)

Nathan Price’s unapproachable and counterproductive attitude towards the people in the Congo have pushed not only the Congolese people away from believing in Jesus Christ but have also pushed his own daughters and wife away from Christianity to believing in

pantheism.