Emily Parker spoke with author Andrea Lucado about her new book English Lessons, what it was like growing up as a pastor's kid and how to handle doubt.

Andrea Lucado

Emily: Tell me about yourself and your childhood.

Andrea: I grew up in South Texas in San Antonio, which is about three hours north of the Mexican border. It was very deserty, but we think it's beautiful.

I grew up as a pastor's kid. My dad is a preacher at a church in San Antonio called Oak Hills Church. It's not really affiliated to any denomination; it's just its own thing. I grew up in church and I really felt like the church was as comfortable as my home was. I knew those buildings equally well. I would be at church on Sunday mornings and Sunday nights and Wednesday nights for various classes and services that we did. So a lot of my childhood, when I think about it, takes place at church.

Emily: What was it like for you growing up having your parents so heavily involved with the church?

Andrea: I have happy memories of it. I enjoyed knowing a lot of people at church. I enjoyed that a lot of those people knew me. It's very much a communal feel to things, so it was a lot of fun. I met a lot of my best friends there growing up.

It also was a difficult place at times, because from about age five I started asking questions about Christianity. I remember my dad telling us the story from Genesis about Adam and Eve and the creation story. There is a part of that story where God tells Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They could eat from every other tree in the garden except for that one. I paused him while he was telling us the story and I said, "If God didn't want Adam and Eve to eat from that tree, why did He put it there in the first place?" My dad says that's when he knew I was going to be a curious child. I loved church, but I had these questions about what I was learning at church, so it made it a difficult place to be at times.

Emily: As you were growing up, you went to Oxford Brookes, moving over from Texas. What was it that led you to do such a big move, away from family and from all your friends?

Andrea: Not many people had even heard of Oxford Brookes where I came from. I did a study abroad programme my third year at university, for, I think it was from September to December in Oxford. I was studying with my American University, but we were staying on one of the Oxford campuses and using their laundry and cafeteria.

I fell in love with Oxford just from being there for those few months. I knew that I wanted to go back. I had known of a girl who went to Oxford Brookes and did their English Literature masters and so I talked to her about it and I applied and got in. I really wanted to live overseas and doing a master's degree was a good excuse to do that.

I had some family friends who lived there, who were missionaries with my parents and they were living in Oxford at the time. So I had some contacts once I went back over there. It was a crazy leap, but to me at the time, I was 22, and I thought it would be a fun adventure.

Emily: You talk in your book about how you faced some of the really big questions about your faith when you were in Oxford. Please could you tell me about that?

Andrea: I grew up in the church and then I went to a university that was affiliated to a certain denomination in the church. My professors were Christians, I think all of them were. There were a lot of Christians at that university. So I had yet to experience the real world, where not everyone around me believes the same thing that I do.

I stepped foot on the Brookes campus and realised I was the only Christian in this class of 20 or 25 students. I don't think any of my professors were, maybe they had other religions. I was kind of the religious representative of the group.

That will definitely get you to look at the world in a different way. I started seeing the world through the lens of my agnostic and atheist friends, rather than just my Christian world view. I started to see how you can live your life without this whole faith and religion thing that I'd had my entire life. That really got me asking questions and having conversations with those friends, who were very open and accepting of who I was and what I believed, but didn't believe it for themselves.