MSI Press Blog

  Blest Atheist is the perfect book story to tell on Easter. After all, it opens and ends with an Easter scene. The story behind the book is actually told within the pages of the book. Dr. Mahlou sspent her life as an atheist; Blest Atheist is the story of that life and of her conversion to Catholicism.  Here is the book description: As a young child, outraged by the hypocrisy she finds in a church that does nothing to alleviate the physical and sexual abuse she experiences on a regular basis, Beth delivers an accusatory youth sermon and gets her family expelled from the church. Having locked the door on God, Beth goes on to raise a family of seven children, learn 17 languages, and enjoy a career that takes her to NASA, Washington, and 24 countries. All the time, however, God keeps knocking at the door, protecting and blessing her, which she realizes only decades later. Ultimately, Beth finds God in a very simple yet most unusual way. A very human story, Blest Atheist encompa...

  Excerpt from  A Believer-in-Waiting  by Elizabeth Mahlou.  To the Reader My first intent was to call this book Hierophany and Contemplation because that is how my life with God has unfolded. However, the more time I have spent writing this book, the clearer it has become that a simpler title would serve better. That is when I remembered the appellation given to me by friends in Jordan a few years ago: believer in waiting. They refused to accept my professions of atheism and chose instead to view me as a lost lamb whom God would scoop up sooner or later, which, indeed, God did. Along with scooping me up, God gave me the task of writing. Although I did not gunderstand what that task was to encompass, I did know that this writing was not to be more of the professional books I publish but rather writing for the glory of God and especially for those who might also be lost lambs, believers in waiting, souls chased by the Hound of Heaven, or whatever other label one ...

  The MSI Press study guide series is a set of documents/posts prepared by authors to help readers take a deeper dive into and personal look at various MSI books.  Today's study guide is meant to accompany Blest Atheist by Elizabeth Mahlou.. Book Description: Blest Atheist is the powerful true story of a woman who turned her back on God—only to find Him walking beside her all along. As a young child, Beth is horrified by the silence of a church that does nothing to stop the physical and sexual abuse she endures. In a moment of righteous fury, she delivers a searing youth sermon that gets her family expelled from the congregation—and she slams the door on God for good. Or so she thinks. Over the years, Beth carves out a remarkable life: raising seven children, mastering 17 languages, and building a career that spans NASA, Washington, and 24 countries. Yet even as she denies Him, God continues to protect, guide, and bless her in ways she only comes to recognize decades later. ...

  Elizabeth Mahlou’s Blest Atheist unsettles some readers because it refuses to obey the moral binaries that secular storytelling depends on. She recounts childhood experiences that today would trigger immediate CPS removal: physical abuse, emotional cruelty, and sexual violation ignored by the adults who should have protected her. She describes her own resistance — embarrassing her parents publicly, striking back physically, refusing to be cowed. That fierce ego likely saved her life. And then, later in the memoir, after her conversion, she writes a chapter in which she sees her parents not as monsters but as overwhelmed, under-resourced, emotionally limited people raising eight children in poverty. She does not excuse them. She does not soften the truth. But she sees them through a different lens. She names their fear, their incapacity, their brokenness. In essence, she forgives them — though she never uses the word. For many religious readers — Christian, Jewish, Muslim — thi...