Jennifer Bauer has heartbreaking reasons for distancing herself from the church. Her mother had been acutely unhappy in her second marriage. When she lamented to the women at her nondenominational church, Bauer remembers they told her, “She just needs to read the Bible more. She just needs to pray harder.” The formerly vibrant, outgoing woman became smaller as she tried to defer to her husband. She made multiple suicide attempts. Her funeral was “the straw that broke my back as far as saying, I