Hillbilly Elegy

influences. Even Mamaw fell from favor
because her religious views didn’t
conflict with her affinity for Bill Clinton.
As a young teenager thinking
seriously for the first time about what I
believed and why I believed it, I had an
acute sense that the walls were closing
in on “real” Christians. There was talk
about the “war on Christmas”—which,
as far as I could tell, consisted mainly of
ACLU activists suing small towns for
nativity displays. I read a book called
Persecution by David Limbaugh about
the various ways that Christians were
discriminated against. The Internet was
abuzz with talk of New York art displays
that featured images of Christ or the