Bill Hulseman’s Debut Offers Honest Grace to Anyone Who’s Walked Away from Faith, But Still Feels Its Echo
In a time when many are walking away from organized religion, some books quietly beckon us to reconsider—not by preaching, but by listening. Bill Hulseman’s six to carry the casket and one to say the mass is one of those rare books. Released on July 8, 2025, this luminous essay collection is a balm for anyone who has drifted from their spiritual roots, not because they stopped believing, but because they stopped feeling seen.
Hulseman, a queer writer and former Catholic educator, grew up in a devout family where silence often spoke louder than affirmation. His experience of being “the ornament” in a home of ten children—present but peripheral—is a powerful lens through which he explores identity, family, queerness, and the ache of belonging. But make no mistake: this book is not a lament. It is a reclamation.
Across its heartfelt, often wryly humorous pages, six to carry the casket and one to say the mass offers a blueprint for reconciling with our past without betraying our present. It’s for those who once sat in pews but now find sacredness in sunrise walks or quiet dinners with friends. It’s for those who still carry the rhythm of liturgy in their bones, even if they haven’t said a Hail Mary in years.
Hulseman writes from the liminal spaces—between religion and resistance, grief and growth, memory and possibility. His essays are part memoir, part reflection, and wholly grounded in lived experience. Whether recalling moments in Catholic classrooms or dancing to Madonna’s “Ray of Light” alone in his room, he reveals how healing often begins not in answers, but in the courage to ask different questions.
The book’s structure mirrors a spiritual journey. The early essays reflect on familial roles, church expectations, and internalized shame. But as the book unfolds, so too does Hulseman’s voice—stronger, clearer, more grounded in self-knowledge. By the final pages, we are no longer reading the story of someone trying to fit in. We are witnessing the emergence of someone creating space for themselves and others to truly belong.
One of the most compelling threads running through the book is the power of ritual. For those who’ve felt alienated by formal religion, Hulseman offers a new way of seeing. He honors the rituals that gave shape to his early years, but he also carves out new rituals for healing—lighting candles for the unseen, speaking names that were never said aloud, claiming Pride not as an event but as a sacred rhythm of the soul.
“Sometimes the safest-looking spaces are the ones asking you to be small,” he writes. “That’s not safety—it’s erasure.”
Hulseman’s reflections are not only for LGBTQ+ readers, though queer experience is central to his lens. His gift lies in articulating what it means to live with contradiction—to love a tradition that has both shaped and wounded you. He doesn’t ask readers to return to the Church. He doesn’t try to fix theology. Instead, he creates space for nuance, and in that space, many will find themselves exhaling for the first time in years.
For those who grew up religious but now feel “spiritually homeless,” this book is a rare kind of homecoming. Not to dogma or doctrine, but to the quiet truths that endure beneath them: love, presence, storytelling, truth. Hulseman shows us that it’s possible to let go without discarding everything—to hold onto what’s life-giving and release what no longer serves.
His writing invites us to see holiness in the overlooked: in grief, in longing, in identity, in a song played too loud through headphones on a lonely day. His greatest offering might be this: permission to be both reverent and rebellious, both sacred and scrappy.
six to carry the casket and one to say the mass is for anyone who’s ever mourned a version of themselves that no longer fits. It’s for those learning to love the new shape of their spirit. And it’s for anyone who still believes that even in brokenness, there is beauty—and in memory, there is meaning.
Order your copy now through Amazon, Pathway, Allstora, or Barnes & Noble. For meditations, updates, and more writing from Bill Hulseman, visit www.billhulseman.com.