I have a confession: I am so sick of “third way” Christianity.

That’s how the evangelicalism I grew up within started, by the way, with Billy Graham filling stadiums and broadcasting the good news of Christ to as many watchers and listeners as the waves would allow. Because more important than any political party was the story of Jesus, and the way the story altered your eternal destination. The paltry ideas of politics couldn’t compare to eternity! (Except that politics is just how people live together… which Jesus is VERY concerned with. But we’ll get to that.)

Graham and others perfected a utilitarian gospel that stuck to “the basics,” just a few spiritual laws to emphasize for maximum kingdom growth, always rising up and to the right.

I grew up within that brand of American evangelicals—seeker sensitive (like a Bill Hybels church plant), intellectually rigorous (Wheaton College, Francis Collins, David French), culturally curious (CCM, Zondervan), occasionally prophetic (Jim Wallis), and most importantly, winsome (Tim Keller, Veggie Tales, the Holy Post podcast).

Living in the “third way” was a way of recentering on the values of eternity. Rather than embracing the binaries of Republican (yuck) or Democrat (yuckier), we, the chosen, could float on an imagined middle ground, far above the mud slinging of politics, our eyes fixed on the pearly mansion of God several hundred miles above the cloud line.

Does my definition of “the third way” still sound a bit wobbly and, well, purely Christian to you? Okay, let’s get more specific.

You’re a “third way” Christian (or used to be?) if you find yourself saying/thinking the following:

“The far-right and far-left are two sides of the same coin. They are just fundamentalist extremes with different, divisive orthodoxies.”

“Both sides have problems. So, I refuse to claim either party.”

“I’m pro-life from the womb to the tomb — so sometimes, the Right is mad at me, and sometimes the Left is mad at me. That’s how I know I’m doing it right.

“I’m not a progressive or a conservative. I don’t identify myself by any party. I’m a Christian and Christ is my King.”

“Political conversations are toxic. I don’t watch the news. The only way to fix our nation is through the long, humble work of discipleship in the Christian church.”

“The problem is the ‘us-them’ narrative. We are more divided and polarized than ever; this is why it is so hard for us to love our neighbor and why our politics is so gridlocked.”

“I am politically homeless.”

Recently, I discovered this fantastic article, published at ABC a few years ago—“If there is a “third way”, this isn’t it: How Christian centrists acquiesce to America’s broken political system” by Adam Joyce.

In it, he points out the flaws with the argument of American Christian “third wayism”: the discussion of how we engage in politics overshadows the actualities of policy-making.

Rather than discussing partisanship, the difficulty of dialogue and compromise, the need for discipleship and unity within the church, or the flaws of binary thinking, why don’t we Christians spend our time discussing actual policies that create a more just society? Why don’t we act to overturn unjust systems? Why don’t we put our feet into action doing the work of politics, regardless what our system of government looks like or what party we vote for?

Joyce argues that centrists, both in and out of the church, miss the geographic specificity of politics. They miss the context of space and time and bodies. Secular centrists “narrow… politics to the individual’s capacity for dialogue amid disagreement. Similarly, Christian centrists, with their concentration on individual discipleship and ecclesial counter-culturalism, don’t articulate how to fight for justice. While there are mentions of desirable policy, they save their specifics for how Christians should relate to each other and the ‘world.’”

And Joyce asks an important question: “Is partisanship really the problem?”

Is partisanship the problem that politics—and the church—is trying to address? No. Inequality of income is the problem. Prejudice and xenophobia is the problem. Racism and sexism is the problem. Injustice is the problem.

The problem is not Democrats and Republicans, not endless disagreements, but a system that undergirds inequality by default at every juncture. Our nation has been undemocratic since its founding because of its inherent institutional inequity that has, across our history, favored the rich, the white, and the male above all.

Joyce again: “…divisions are built. They are forged through material and social histories of systemic violence and those who resist that violence.”

In other words, yes, there are problematic divisions in our nation, but division by political party is not the heart of the divisions from which our country suffers.

Whichever party you favor, a vote cast for your favorites will not fix an unjust economic system built on the backs of the poor. Inequality is fundamentally undemocratic, a habit we are unlikely to give up without significant citizen mobilization against the undemocratic parts of our democracy.

And by the way, fixing the binary party associations within the Church will do nothing to fix the American obsession—displayed equally within both conservative and liberal churches, more or less subtly—with the hierarchies, greed, and militarization of the American Empire.

(Did you hear that our president just launched World War III? 😭🤬 We need to talk about Christians’ comfort with the U.S. military.)

The fact is, the “third way” offered by many Christian centrist thinkers does not lead down any path except isolationism and inaction (status quo). By sticking to abstract goals—justice, sanctification, righteousness—we miss the very real people in front of us and the very real actions we could do to help them.

Jesus unabashedly allied himself with the poor. By which I mean, he did not campaign for the poor, but he fed the poor himself. He gave them his own food, and he received their hospitality. He healed them with his own hands, touching their injured limbs and clouded eyes with his fingertips. He became a conscientious objector to the military empire of Rome and the empire of his own religion, not through abstention, but through indirect action.

I will write more about this in the coming months, but to give you context from the Gospels about how I interpret the indirect political actions of Jesus, I’ll summarize briefly: when Jesus said, pay taxes to Caesar, he meant, give back to Caesar the useless object of his greed and allow that greed to consume Caesar—because Jesus taught that greed impedes a person’s pathway to God.

When Jesus encouraged followers to show soldiers their “other cheek” after they’d been hit, he did so because a Roman soldier who hit a subject twice would face a penalty for his violence, thereby undermining the Roman system of policing.

And when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on donkey back, he subverted and mocked the royal ritual of the emperor himself, who claimed to be God and rode a horse into his capitol city while his followers proclaimed his divinity.

Which is to say, Jesus took a side.

I’m currently writing a book on protest. And, as it turns out, setting out to write a book about protest means you’ll end up writing a book about political action. So, no surprise, this topic is my current obsession!!

Throughout the writing process, I have come to care about the distinctions between justice and the “third way,” i.e. the Christian nonpartisanship that many prefer to binary party politics.

Though I’ve been a faithful church attendee for almost all of my life, I never learned the basics of protest, policy-making, or community organizing. There are many reasons for this, but the lowest hanging fruit is that a legacy of White supremacy in the White American church meant discouraging political action of all Christians for the sake of suppressing Black American activism for equal rights.

This was not explicit in my northeastern upbringing, per se, but it does undergird much of evangelical theology, unfortunately. (Not to mention, reactions against freedom movements in the U.S. reignited the Religious Right!) I believe this undercurrent of White supremacy still exists within the American evangelical church. I have also come to see political inaction as a failure of discipleship. I believe our White American faith tradition is poorer because of our determined complacency, which we call nonpartisanship.

As I’ve reflected on the complex individual and systemic circumstances that cause protestors or protest movements to form, I have come to believe that my church upbringing failed to prepare me for this moment in time when my own government is treating its own citizens and allies like enemies. In fact, my church upbringing hindered me from acting on behalf of those inside and outside of my nation who are being targeted by my government.

Yet I have hope. Though my church tradition got this very wrong, other Christians got it right. I still have so much to learn!

And I’m specifically learning right now from the Catholic worker’s movement, the Black American church, and the Latin American liberation theologians (who claim—with many Scriptures as proof!—that God preferences the poor). Each of these traditions demonstrate political action that seeks faithfulness to their IRL neighbors and to God through the means of advocacy, policy-making, and protest. As MLK says, “Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice.”

Let’s keep learning together, my friends.

Leave a comment

Now, for a brief programming note:

For the next three months, my presence here will be sparse as I finish up my book— my deadline is the end of May, so if you think of me, pray for me, please! I want to write something I’m proud of and I want to write a book that will be helpful and thought-provoking for you. That kind of writing requires intense focus from my wandering ADHD brain, ha! So, I will take a bit of a break over the next few months, and be back to my weekly publishing schedule sometime in June.

I will be telling you more about my book in progress in the coming months. Here’s the gist:my book tells the stories of women protestors in the Bible and in American history. I tend to write complex books full of disparate stories, books that make you think and feel deeply but do not tell you how to think or feel. What’s funny is, I started out trying to write the Christian On Tyranny, and instead, I’ve found myself writing a winding meditation on female political action. Shrug. Writers can only write what they write, I guess.

I do have a couple of Empathy List interviews in the hopper, so hopefully, I can get those out within the next couple months—one with and another with . I’m also planning to interview and Reverend Dr. Malcolm Foley in the near future! Good things are coming up, so stick with me, wouldja?

Thanks for your support, my friends!

Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

Get 30% off forever

Just for Fun…

Eat the rich, State of the Union edition. (P.S. Do not actually eat the rich.) Read the Rest of the Essay

#1 This week’s Top of the Fold is about the victims— that is, the victims of ICE. (Womp, womp.)

I’m asking myself, why do I only know the names of the White American victims of ICE? Why don’t the names of the others hurt or killed in ICE custody spring to mind with the same clarity as Renee Good and Alex Pretti?

As we move deeper into advocacy for the poor and marginalized in our communities, friends, I believe this self-examination is ESSENTIAL so that we (I) don’t fall into the same paternalistic trap of our (my) ancestors.

So let me tell you a story of three Civil Rights workers killed in Mississippi during Freedom Summer in 1964, right in the center of the movement’s push to pass the Civil Rights Act into law.

Read “The Racial Dynamics of ICE Violence” in the Christian Century, by yours truly, and an excerpt below.

Read the essay in The Century

When I heard of Alex Pretti’s death, I was reminded of another highly publicized execution in our nation’s history. In 1964, civil rights leaders initiated “Freedom Summer,” mobilizing over 1,000 White and Black college students to aid Black Mississippians in registering to vote. Though this demographic made up one-third of the state’s total population, only 6.7 percent were registered to vote due to intentional disenfranchisement and intimidation by White-run local governments and citizens. So, civil rights groups like the Council of Federated Organizations had organized to increase the Black share of the vote in the state, utilizing mostly White, upper-class, northern students as its volunteer canvassers. White America believed that their White children would be safe from race violence, even if they aided the cause of African American freedom.

But one week after the first group had arrived in Mississippi, three young men went missing: James (J.E.) Chaney, a Black Mississippian, and two White northerners, Michael (Mickey) Schwerner and Andrew (Andy) Goodman. The three men had driven to Philadelphia to investigate the arson of Mount Zion Methodist Church, where a few days earlier, Schwerner and Chaney had spoken, encouraging members to register as voters. The three young men never returned from their trip to examine the church remains.

Read the Whole Essay

Thanks for your support, friends.

Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

More Curious Reads

#2 We Love Ilia Malinin, But Surya Bonaly Landed a Backflip at the Olympics When It Was Banned. Read about the trailblazing black woman skater from France who started it. —Jezebel

#3 “ICE OUT” pins trended at New York Fashion Week, thanks to ACLU organizing.—Vanity Fair

Share

#4 American WOMAN doll is headed to a bookshelf near you. Meet Samantha at 25, as suffragette and working class warrior. “That’s right, peer Millennials. Our favorite polyvinyl Victorian is growing (and glowing) up.” —Lit Hub

#5 How Arthur Conan Doyle joined the London police hunt for Jack the Ripper. (And btw, did you hear we have identified the Ripper himself?) —Crime Reads

Get 30% off forever

Just for Fun…

I’m not joking when I say I could read this thread for HOURS. Memes for days!!!!!

(…and then, while you’re there, follow me on threads. ;-))

Last week, I examined how and why Dr. James Dobson’s name appeared in the Epstein Files. Many of you read it with gratitude and tenderness. (Thanks for that.) But as you might imagine, not everyone enjoys hearing that their heroes have failed them.

I learned this firsthand when I published an essay two years ago about Elisabeth Elliot. (Here’s the original essay and how I responded to its virality… which came with a lot of criticism, as you might imagine. Currently, the article ranks third on Google search results, just below Elisabeth Elliot’s own foundation website.)

I had never before published anything read so widely. I still haven’t replicated those reader numbers, and I doubt I ever will again. But that experience gave me an intimate understanding of the parasocial relationships that Evangelicals have with their celebrities.

Elliot was a difficult person who tried to do what was right amid an unbelievably difficult and unbelievably charmed life. She was introverted and strident. The missionaries who worked closest with her didn’t like her.

Yet she sold millions of books and spoke to millions of evangelical Christians across the globe, garnering a reach beyond the wildest hopes of any Christian author today. Her readers accessed her content across mediums—in person, on the page, online, and on the radio.

Early in life, she was ambitious, and her publication record proves it. But as she aged, she lost that spark. It was her third husband who made the Elisabeth Elliot empire. It was also her third husband who abused her.

As a writer, Elliot colored in the lines and reached the widest swath of Christians. Her writing was bland, but still retained a tone of intimacy. She told personal stories, her love stories, in fact. She did not claim to be a theologian, but engaged the Bible from the heart.

All of this made readers feel like they knew her. She became aunt, mom, grandma, and sister to her readers, and they treated her advice like scripture.

(By the way, I’m not exaggerating when I say they treated her words like scripture—I heard this directly from Gen-X and Millennial women after the essay published. Many learned Elliot’s words as the one and only dating rules from their Boomer evangelical parents. Elliot’s advice was treated with the same reverence as the Bible itself, a book which happens to contain nearly zero advice pertaining to twentieth and twenty-first century dating norms.)

Share

Anyway, when my writing arrived in the feeds of those who had adopted Elliot as matriarch, these readers were, um, unhappy. Not with her, but with me. They wanted to silence the messenger. Folks called me names, people assumed I had a “vendetta” or that I only wrote this to make money (I’m sorry, did you think writers write for the money?! LMAO), and several people made sure to tell me that I was fat. (Which I am, …so, what else you got, Chad?)

Fortunately, there was no way in hell my editor would have considered pulling the article. (The web traffic alone!) But I’d also done my homework, including an interview with one of the authors I quoted extensively, and my essay was in fact a review of two recent biographies (not my research). So, though they hated what I’d written, my detractors had no evidence to make a case for libel. I never heard from the Elliot foundation (or if my editor did, he never told me about it). I’d guess the foundation is still determinedly avoiding the entire thing, hoping the story will disappear.

So sorry, Meg Basham, no dice, you just gotta deal with the facts:

Elisabeth Elliot was abused by her third husband, and for that reason alone, what she taught about marriage, family, and complementarianism must be reexamined.

Subscribe now

I feel a similar way about the news relating to Dr. Dobson’s appearance in the Epstein files. Of course, some evangelicals want to respond in a similar way as they responded to Elliot’s news.

They’ll discredit the messengers. They’ll say that just because one evil person read or shared his work, doesn’t mean the work is garbage, and certainly doesn’t invalidate a patriarch’s legacy. They’ll say that it’s a smear campaign without basis in reality, and then if they’re imaginative enough, they’ll rewrite reality in a few sentences.

(Case in point: read these comments below ’s reporting at the Julie Roys’ Report.)

But this is another fact: when you search for James Dobson within the Epstein files, you will find that James Dobson.

And that’s disturbing. If it doesn’t disturb you, if you have no curiosity about why Epstein would have read and shared Dobson’s work, then I’m not sure we have enough common ground to have a conversation.

I can tell you that if my own work were being used as a tool of perpetrators, I would care. I would want to know, and I would want to reexamine my theology. I would want to pull books and disown the perpetrators in the strongest terms.

The Bible tells us that leaders will be judged more harshly, that what we teach and how we lead holds more weight in the eyes of God. “If one person stumbles,” in fact, leaders should chuck themselves into the ocean, should dig their eye out of its socket just to make things right again. Jesus says that those who lead others astray intentionally, for the sake of their own power or wealth, they should fear for their own salvation.

I admit that this judgment language is tricky for me. I cannot claim to understand it. But I can tell you that whenever the Bible slings a “woe unto you,” I want to attend, and I want to respond.

It really does matter. It matters who claims us and our teachings. And I will do everything in my power to make sure my words do good and not evil. I would hope that if Dobson was actually the man so many evangelicals believe that he was, he would do the same.

Share the Empathy List

Adulthood contains so much disillusionment. Every evangelical, former or current, understands the pain of a leader who has failed us. We want to believe the best, but have often experienced the worst. We have been abused, let down, trampled, silenced, thrown beneath the wheels of the charging bus. Belonging has been revoked. And perhaps faith, too, has evaporated along with the communities we once committed ourselves to.

But disillusionment is not unique to American Evangelicalism. Just look at Americans’ responses to their government right now.

Once, we Americans may have been naive enough to tell ourselves that we believed in democracy. We were the definition of democracy. We may have believed that our nation had reached the pinnacle of human innovation, that we were the best, the most just incorporation of humans on the globe, the most exceptional of exceptions.

And we may have believed that our politicians were basically benevolent. Even if their personal lives were… embarrassing, still, we believed that they worked toward “the common good.” They generally tried to do what was right.

In other words, we may have believed our own propaganda about our national identity and our leaders.

Get 30% off forever

Of course, Black and Brown Americans, immigrants, and the lowest working classes understood the lie of democracy and the underside of our government better than White Middle-class Americans like myself. But to speak to those folks for a sec—I suspect that even if “ACAB” had become your anthem, perhaps you still had hope that your vote mattered? Or you hoped that a legislator or judge could hold a bad actor accountable? Or you hoped that if the right politician were elected, then the aims of MLK, Jr. might finally be accomplished nationally?

I suppose I can only speak for myself. I believed in these things. I understood some individual leaders as evil or misguided, but I still hoped for a long-haul lean in the direction of justice and mercy within my nation’s system of governance.

I don’t believe that to be true anymore. Today, I see the most powerful actors in our state as “empire,” a force for evil and exploitation rather than a force for protection and common good. And I do not know if we’ll come back from the harm of this administration. If we do come back, which I very much hope we do, I do not believe we’ll be the same.

(I know this is bleak, but I pledge to always be honest with you here. If you’d like to hear more of my sunny optimism about the government, tell me in the comments.)

Leave a comment

So then, I want to ask you, if our leaders do fail, if disillusionment arrives in force, how should we respond to it?

When those we believed to be valiant, righteous, or messengers of God prove their inhumanity or immorality, do we defend them? Do we believe it’s our job to discredit their accusers to prove our loyalty to a leader who doesn’t know our name? Do we trust our own discernment and the discernment of those involved? When our institutions prove corrupt, do we hold on tighter or do we seek to build something new?

I don’t believe there is one right answer to these questions, though I’d encourage you to consider your motivations for defending a leader before you do it.

One of the reasons I wrote a book about Genesis was to encourage spiritual autonomy, starting with how we read the Bible. Trusting our own spiritual gut and the Spirit of God means retaining a sense of autonomy over how you engage with your faith. This is one of my soap boxes. (And I believe it applies equally within any institutional space, by the way.)

In unhealthy or abusive church communities, one of the first demands from leaders to their congregants is that congregants should abdicate their reason, feeling, and responsibility for themselves. Christian leaders will ask their followers to give up their discernment. They’ll say, don’t trust your own mind and gut, trust theirs instead.

But faith communities—and governments—do not have to look like this.

Share

What if Christians developed cultures of growing, thinking, deep feeling humans, where leaders sought to privilege each view and voice and where followers learned to trust the voice of God within them? What if your instincts were treasured, if you were treasured as a messenger of the Divine, image bearer of God? What if your spiritual autonomy was nurtured, encouraged, and trusted?

What if your voice, your diverse identity, your vote truly mattered to democracy? What if your presence in your community really could change the lives of those who interacted with you? (It already does. Authoritarianism can’t take that local communal relational power from us.)

When we learn disillusioning information about our heroes—like Elisabeth Elliot and Dr. James Dobson—I hope we will respond with openness because it is an opportunity to grow.

It may also require us to practice the most essential of Christian disciplines: we can change. Some people call it repentance, but in this moment, when changing our minds, theologies, and political parties is demonized and suspect, I think “change” captures the sentiment better. And we can always about-face, walk in the opposite direction, and make amends with those we have harmed.

Or we can choose to dig in.

But let the reader understand: however you respond reveals more about your own character than about the person you choose to defend.

Listen, learn, and change ad nauseum, for this is the path of Jesus.

Thanks for reading.

Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

Just for Fun…

My 10-y-o son laughed so hard at this video that his tummy hurt. You’ve been warned.

Every other week I write you a long essay related to American Christianity, culture, and politics. On the off weeks, I typically share something I’m reading, and I reflect on how that interacts with faith/politics/culture.

However, lately, politics have felt so urgent that it’s been all essays, all the time over here!

But I’m in the midst of writing book#2 about women protestors in American culture and in the Bible, and so I’m needing to go back to a (slightly) less demanding schedule—which means you’re going to be getting more “Curious Reads” editions of the Empathy List in your inbox. This week I have doozy for you… and it could’ve easily been its own Empathy List essay. 😅

#1 This week’s Top of the Fold is the Epstein Files—

in particular, my surprise at finding one of white American Evangelicalism’s favorite parenting experts mentioned in a text exchange between Jeffrey Epstein and an unnamed woman within the MILLIONS of pages that make up the DOJ’s case against the perpetrators of the biggest American sex trafficking ring… ever.

Yes, that’s right, Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, appears in the Epstein files.

Originally alerted her followers to the fact that she found Dr. Dobson’s name in the files, and so I decided to head over to the DOJ website to see it for myself… and now I want to talk about it.

TLDR: Dr. Dobson does not appear as a perpetrator, but his writings become a tool of the perpetrators.

And before we begin, a TRIGGER WARNING: the texts I’m going to be examining mention sex, male anatomy, and imply sexual favors and/or abuse.

K, let’s get into it…

Read the texts for yourself here

Share

The Texts

So far, we know very little about the context of the texts that refer to Dr. Dobson except that they occurred in 2019 between Epstein and a woman. But here’s what we have (re: the DOJ website). And I’ll be summarizing the less relevant portions.

Pages 1-3: The woman makes plans to meet with Jeffrey in Mexico. Jeffrey makes a lude joke that makes the woman feel she has mistranslated her question (she seems not to be a native English speaker), though she hasn’t. It’s just a dirty old man thinking dirty about ordinary words (She says, “What time do u prefer me to come?” 🙄) They discuss their plans and Jeffrey asks about her itinerary “re doctors” (He’s bringing her to a doctor in Mexico?? Why???). Then they evidently have been together and parted, and the texts start up again. The woman sends a text to thank Jeffrey for “your time and your advices !”

Here’s where Jeffrey’s “advice” to this woman turns explicit. [TRIGGER WARNING]

He mentions a conversation they’d begun about her father, with whom she evidently has a poor relationship. She has expressed that she “would not hold back” when discussing her “father’s shortcomings”. Jeffrey is challenging her about inconsistency he sees in her—for example, she had told Jeffrey that she wouldn’t ever “make the guy with the little dick feel bad” because she’d not want to “hurt his feelings.” [Liz’s note: is this a real life example Jeffrey’s referencing? Or just a way of grooming her? We don’t know.] Jeffrey wonders, why would she care more about “the guy with the little dick” than her own father? Jeffrey wants her to consider her father’s feelings. (Jeffrey then shares an Amazon link to the pop psychology book, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, lol).

Page 4: The woman texts back: “All this time I keep thinking about your example with the ‘ little dick’ situations…” The woman says she cannot understand herself. Why does she treat her father differently than she does other men she’s encountered? She writes, “:why am I care about hurt someone , but not care to hurt my father ? Is it because I didn’t realize that I am hurting him ?” Jeffrey texts back confidently, no, you meant to hurt your dad, of course, and he says, “I’ll explain tomorrow.” They have plans to meet again. He continues: “But ask yourself why are you so angry at him”.

THEN JEFFREY EPSTEIN SENDS THIS WOMAN TO A BLOG POST ON DOBSON’s PERSONAL WEBSITE.

I’m not joking. And the post is still live on Dr. Dobson’s own website. The blog title: “Resentment and Anger Toward a Father.”

Share the Empathy List

I’ll get to the content of Dobson’s blog post in a minute.

But the text exchange continues. [And takes another disturbing turn, so if you want to skip down, I won’t blame you. Epstein basically propositions her.]

Page 5: Jeffrey tells this woman, “Also I suggest you learn to give.” He says that she should seek to be more accommodating and grateful to those who have shown her kindness. “Buy them a cookie to show appreciation,” he suggests. Or, then again, you can ask a solicitous question to discover what your friend wants: “With me you say thx for advice,” says Jeffrey, “but could have said - thank you I appreciate the time you have spent is there something I do to express my appreciation. ? It’s just good manners and costs nothing”.

That’s it, that’s the end of the exchange. Although knowing more of the character of this man, I find myself deeply unsettled with the advice Jeffrey offers.

Because Jeffrey Epstein seems to be implying, if you’re truly grateful to your benefactors, you will comply with their requests, no matter how outlandish, how degrading, how demanding. And, he suggests, he’s happy to accept alternate forms of payment, such as, you know, a cookie. What could be more innocent? Gratitude does not need to cost this woman a thing, and after all, it’s only good manners.

BARF.

Before we even read the words of Dr. Dobson, I already see how his advice is being used to manipulate a woman into doing whatever her older, wealthy, connected male benefactor wants.

And who knows what horrific requests Epstein makes of this woman from this point onward.

The Article

But let’s turn to Dobson’s article. Why did this article by Dr. Dobson appeal to the serial rapist and sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein? What made Epstein share the advice of American Evangelicalism’s favorite child psychologist with a woman he was grooming?

Entitled “Resentment and Anger Toward a Father,” Dobson fields a letter from a reader who says she is wrestling with resentment and anger toward her father “for what he did to me and my mother when I was a child.” She calls her feelings deep, she says she is in pain, and she clarifies ramifications for her father’s actions that have harmed both herself and “the rest of our family.” She says, “I don’t want to hurt him, but I can’t forget…” And she asks for Dobson’s advice in resolving this problem.

In his answer, Dr. Dobson makes a variety of assumptions that go unaddressed. For one, he assumes the father’s offense is not criminal or felonious. He assumes the father presents no active danger to the family members. He assumes that the problem should be resolved “in the family” without seeking outside help. He assumes that the problem lies primarily within the letter-writer’s control.

Dobson also never suggests that the woman may have a reason to be angry, and he does not console the woman for the pain she has experienced.

Probably, he assumes, the woman just cannot understand men, and she needs to learn the differences between men and women. She needs a male point-of-view.

…Of course, as he must know, people who write anonymous letters to famous psychologists to fix their problems are coping well and only have minor problems that can be solved in a single advice column, amiright?

Subscribe now

Dobson’s advice begins by referencing one of his books immediately (What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women, and no, I’m not linking to it) and he mentions another at the end of the post (turns out, this entire post is an excerpt from Dobson’s book, Emotions: Can You Trust Them? BTW if you have to ask that question, I already know your answer, and I don’t trust YOU.)

And then he addresses the question the letter-writer has asked. He begins by saying, “After laying the matter before God and asking for His healing touch… I would suggest that you examine the perspective in which you see your Dad.”

[Liz’s note: ew, “His healing touch?” Why did I ever think this was a normal thing to say as an evangelical?]

Dobson says, the way you’re thinking about this is all wrong. Try to think of your pain from your dad’s perspective.

Dobson then relates the story of a female friend of his, Martha, and her difficult relationship with her father. Her father was emotionally neglectful, Dobson explains. For example, her infant son dies within a week of birth, and “her insensitive father” doesn’t attend the funeral. Also, her father doesn’t bother to correspond with her or her kids, and now, he’s skipping her other son’s wedding.

But good news! Dobson solved her problem when he wrote her a direct note confronting her bad attitude, and Martha liked what he said so much that she shared it with several friends (who had their own experiences of people “failing” them, Dobson explains, and yes, the quotation marks are his). Martha even gave Dobson permission to share her story in one of his books, that’s how much she loved his advice.

[Side note: Dobson reprints this letter VERBATIM, including both Martha’s last name AND her son’s name in the reprint, and just from a publishing perspective, I’m shocked that the legal departments involved did not nix this terrible idea.]

So, with Martha’s blessing, we now get to read Dobson’s take on Martha’s situation: Dobson says, Martha’s father is not affectionate and he never will be.

“Your dad never met the needs that a father should satisfy in his little girl, and I think you are still hoping he will miraculously become what he has never been.” He should provide “love and empathy and interest,” Dobson writes, but he won’t. And probably his own childhood makes him incapable of being that kind of dad to Martha. Her father is “emotionally ‘blind’.” He can’t help it. If he could meet your needs, of course, he would. But he cannot. He cannot change, and he will not, because he’s emotionally disabled, “a man with a handicap.”

[I hardly need mention that as a low-sighted person, I take offense at how Dobson talks about blindness here.]

Dobson now takes a moment to be self-congratulatory. Because though Martha’s circumstances haven’t changed, she feels better because, by taking Dobson’s advice, “[Martha] now sees [her father] as a victim of cruel forces in his own childhood…” What cruel forces, you might wonder? Well, Martha’s father learned about his father’s sudden death “unsympathetically,” including being “reprimanded severely” for crying about his own father’s passing. (This is the only example that Dobson gives.)

Anyway, now Martha’s dad is handicapped emotionally forever, and Martha’s pain has disappeared because a holy man wrote her a letter telling her to knock it off.

End of blog post.

Did that solve your problem letter writer? I hope so, ‘cause that’s all you’re getting from Dobson.

Sigh.

Okay, part of what Dobson says here is good and true—setting boundaries when someone has hurt you is essential. When someone proves themselves untrustworthy or uninterested in relationship with you, believe them. And let them go.

But… there are so many problems with this advice. Dobson does not discuss more severe problems like mental illness, physical illness, abuse, and/or REAL DIAGNOSABLE handicaps, all of which COULD apply to his letter-writer’s circumstance. He does not encourage addressing any ONGOING harmful behaviors the letter writer’s father may be perpetuating. He does not mention setting any physical boundaries between father and daughter. He does not even encourage this woman to discuss her pain with another person, not even a fellow church member or elder, for example, in an act of confession or a plea for support. [And no, he would never suggest she see a therapist, God forbid.]

Rather, the letter-writer should hold her pain as a private, individual enterprise, and she should hope that extra time spent kneeling in her prayer closet will fix it.

Worse, Dobson suggests that the real problem is not her father, but her, the letter-writer, the daughter. The daughter will not let the pain go, she is perpetuating the harm by holding on to it, she is still angry, and so her anger is the problem, rather than whatever her dad did to make her angry in the first place.

Again, anger can be destructive, Dobson is right about that. But also, anger is a cue, a signal. Anger tells us that some essential boundary of our personhood has been violated. I’d even suggest that anger reveals more about our external circumstances and relationships than it does about our interior selves or character.

Share

Yet the best indication that Dobson failed in this moment is the fruit born of this blog post/book excerpt— namely, that Jeffrey Epstein saw something here that he could use to manipulate a woman he was grooming.

What Epstein Saw in Dobson’s Advice

Evangelicals are famously terrible at understanding power dynamics. (Or are they dastardly in their depth of understanding?) Dobson telling a woman who, as a child, was harmed by her father that she should focus on her father’s pain rather than her own is more than just misguided.

Let me be clear: this advice enables abuse. It is the psychological underpinning of rape culture.

In fact, advice like this is exactly how so many young women found themselves dehumanized and trapped within Jeffrey Epstein’s sex ring.

They learned to disbelieve their own intuitive knowledge that what they were experiencing was wrong. They learned to value the experiences and pain of men above their own pain and experience. They learned from narcissists that they simply mattered less.

From their abusers, they learned that their bodies, their physical and psychological distress, their autonomy should be sacrificed for the sake of mens’ desires. And because the men are handicapped (emotionally, morally, psychologically), women should offer every accommodation, including our own health and well being, so that men can be coddled.

“What is a girl worth?” asked Rachel Denhollander. In the eyes of these men, the very least.

The patriarchy that undergirds Dobson’s advice encouraged women to submit to horrifying tasks for psychopathic men… because, in the logic of Dobson and evangelical patriarchy, the men couldn’t help themselves.

Men are powerless to stop the evil they commit, just as the women are powerless to stop the abuse against themselves.

What I mean is, if we draw out the logic of Dobson and his cronies, and God only created women to be male helpers without wills or desires or purposes of their own, if God meant women to be lesser, then is Epstein’s application so far from their theology? If women really matter less to God, does it matter what you do to them behind locked doors, if they’re meeting even the most depraved of male needs?

🤬😭💔

Lord, have mercy.

I’m reminded of the horrifying abuse of Ravi Zacharias, who used spiritual language to justify the abuse of women he had hired for massages (re: Christianity Today):

One woman told the investigators that “after he arranged for the ministry to provide her with financial support, he required sex from her.” She called it rape.

She said Zacharias “made her pray with him to thank God for the ‘opportunity’ they both received” and, as with other victims, “called her his ‘reward’ for living a life of service to God,” the report says. Zacharias warned the woman—a fellow believer—if she ever spoke out against him, she would be responsible for millions of souls lost when his reputation was damaged.

Unfortunately, that story is not unique. And it’s repeated in the Epstein Files.

I’m so angry, friends. The only words I have left are imprecatory prayers: may the abusers eat rocks and grass, like Nebuchadnezzar once did. (See Daniel 4:29-33) May those who treat human beings as animals become themselves like animals. And may the judgment of God, Our Mother who sees what happens in private, come today.

Thanks for reading.

Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

Leave a comment

More Curious Reads

#2 This is your complete guide to the winter Olympics.—Wired

#3 “The Melania Movie is an American Obscenity”—Mother Jones

Share

#4 Enjoy this reflection on a dog beauty pageant… because you need some cuteness in your life. The NYT has been cataloguing “Best in Show” dogs at the Westminster Dog Show for 150 years. —The New York Times

(And then watch “Best in Show” in honor of the late Catherine O’Hara 😢)

#5 How food writers turned MoMA artworks into recipes. —Bon Appetit magazine

“Radishes!” I shouted, the second I laid eyes on this piece by Judy Chicago. I was certain nothing else in nature could provide the same round shape and bright, bold color. But radishes alone do not a recipe make, so I set out to create the rest of a salad that would make sense hidden beneath a shingled radish roof. After playing with a few components, I decided that the radishes (cut in a few different ways) could carry the team, alongside torn boiled eggs, briny olives, and a punchy mustard vinaigrette.

Get 30% off forever

Just for Fun…

Note: this is satire, Republicans… or is it? —McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

This week, I asked my Minnesota friends who had been posting about their communities and ICE to jump on a call. I’m sick of spin, of coverage, of takes. I just want to hear from real-life people about what they’re actually experiencing.

I need to know what’s actually happening from the mouths of people I trust.

A tearful and hopeful recorded conversation commenced. And today, we’re sharing it with you because we want you to see real people in their real lives interacting with DHS, and we want to demonstrate how Minnesotan families and communities are faring away from the gaze of reporters and algorithms.

The women who joined me are dear friends and colleagues: , , , and Maggie Keller. Many of these women are published authors. All are mothers and wives. Each has her own story of moving from conservative to progressive expressions of Christianity (though our conversation today remains centered on what their communities are experiencing, not national politics). Each is currently involved in churches, schools, and various communities within the Twin Cities, and many have volunteered to join mutual aid networks.

AND each woman also has a story to tell us about ICE.

Listen in:

(For those who prefer to read rather than to watch/listen, I have included a transcript at the bottom of this email.)

Can I ask you a favor? Would you use this video/post as a conversation starter with a friend who disagrees with you? Especially one who disagrees with you about how to interpret what’s happening in communities affected by ICE activities? And if you share it, would you tell me how it goes? You can DM me directly here—

I also have a bonus for you: my friend Leah (who did not wish to share her last name) sent in written responses to my questions.

This is Leah’s story of ICE in Minnesota:

I so appreciate that stories are being told. I was just reflecting on how seeing posts from other parts of the country and the world of people standing in solidarity with Minneapolis have been so powerful and encouraging. I think they have kept many of us going.

I would prefer to go by my first name because I am doing some sensitive work. And I may need to be vague about some of my answers for the same reason unless we were communicating on an encrypted email (which I now have).

I am just west of Minneapolis, in an inner suburb, about 9 miles of where Renee was killed. I go to school ten blocks from there for my Masters of Counseling and Psychological Services. Our school is currently all remote learning so I haven’t been in the area since the beginning of January.

I witnessed seeing a Somali woman taken by agents near my school before Christmas and I had an all out ptsd response. (My therapist has helped a lot but I am hypervigalent all the time. It is sometimes hard for me to put words to what I am thinking and feeling because I am so tired.) Days later, there was a report that ICE was outside of my son’s school and I started showing up to watch the school at dismissal. It was two people at the school before Christmas, me and one other mom, every day. I felt like I was seeing sitting ducks waiting in their cars outside of the school. I did see one probable ice vehicle one day but otherwise our school has not been affected directly since before Christmas.

In my community I have seen our group of people involved in rapid response (legal observers) and community care grow from about 20 of us before Christmas to nearly a thousand. We are a small suburb compared to others near us, and we are very proud to live here. When one of our beloved Mexican restaurants had an employee taken there was an outcry. The restaurant closed for a week or so (I can’t even place the timing right now) but it opened today and I expect it was packed.

I personally feel more connected to my neighbors because of this, many of us are involved in similar capacities. On Saturday night we got together for a candlelight vigil on our corner at 7pm and it opened up a sense of safety in me that allowed me to finally relax and cry.

But the bad is so bad. One of our neighbors was taken on Thursday morning. A family of four from Ecuador here seeking asylum. (Read their story here.) I received text messages while I was helping my kids get ready for school that multiple ice vehicles were spotted down the road. Because I am directly helping families, I cannot be a responder. I stayed on my phone watching messages come in as we slowly realized that the entire family was taken. There was a lot of confusion at first. Quickly I saw my friends step up and connect to those who could help including lawyers. They acted fast and got a court order for the family to stay in Minnesota, but they were sent to Texas within a day. Thankfully, the court order had an effect and they returned home at 2am this morning.

That same day, I was working with volunteers to get groceries to 11 families in the community. I think I was pretty numb by that point. We had to be sure our locations were off on our phones, I purchased a faraday bag for these sorts of things. Our instructions literally are to not have addresses on us in case we are followed or boxed in. I have had two volunteers be followed and are no longer able to deliver. We are doing nothing wrong. It’s wild.

Oh, and I genuinely don’t know what the media is getting right or wrong. I can hardly pay attention. Every time I turn it on I have a bodily response. I get my news from @Amandasmildtakes on IG and a few other social media outlets. Obviously the WH is lying.

Honestly, this fatigue is a level I have never experienced before. I hear POC saying that we get it now. If this is genuinely what they always experience we have not done enough to care for them. And I’m certain that is true.

Thanks for reading and engaging, my friends. Remember that mercy costs something. Are we willing to spend ourselves for the sake of our neighbors? I pray the answer is yes.

Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

Leave a comment

Transcript (unedited, with typos galore)

Liz Charlotte Grant, host: Here we go. Hi friends, this is Liz Charlotte Grant here, and this is actually our first empathy list video, anything. But I really wanted to hear from folks who were, and, and people that I knew who were in Minnesota right now because obviously so much is happening in your state and all of these women plus one more whose responses all actually just put in written because she just sent them in writing.

But my hope is to give these women here a chance to just talk about what they’re actually seeing in their communities. You know, one of the values that I hold at the empathy list is a sense of curiosity and also empathy for folks who are in the midst of what they’re going through, whatever that might be. And being able to communicate that to people who are not in the midst of those same things. And so like when I think about, you know, trying to reach across an aisle or just talk to a family member, sometimes it’s half, it helps to have these like very real stories of what’s actually happening.

So, that’s my intention for today. We have some really wonderful women here, folks that I’ve known through writing and also through actually Rachel, I’ve known for a very long time. From the first job I worked. Maggie, I’ve known from college. Elizabeth and Laura are both writing colleagues and I, I’m just delighted to bring you this conversation today.

So let’s just start out with who are you? Maybe give like a really brief, you know, here’s something I do, here’s my name and give me an idea of kind of where in the Twin Cities you are. So let’s start with Laura.

Laura Kelly Fanucci: I’m Laura Kelly Fanucci. I am a writer and a speaker. I’m a mom of five and I live in the Northwest suburbs of Minneapolis and my oldest two go to high school in downtown Minneapolis. So we are there a lot.

Liz: Yeah, I bet you are. Elizabeth, do you wanna go next?

Elizabeth Berget: Sure. I’m Elizabeth Berget. I’m also a writer and I live right down here in South Minneapolis. I live about eight blocks from where George Floyd was killed and another eight blocks from where Renee Good was killed. To kind of orient you there. I have three kids and yeah, we’re just kind of in the thick of it here.

Liz: Maggie.

Maggie Keller: Yeah, I’m Maggie Keller, also a mom to four. We are in South Minneapolis and we’re one neighborhood over from where Renee Good was killed. My kids go to school in the same neighborhood. Yeah, I, I work part-time at a church and I’m a seminary student in addition to all of this.

Liz: Rachel.

Rachel Pieh Jones: I am Rachel Pieh Jones and I also live in the northern suburbs. I have three kids, they’re all outta the house. My youngest is a junior at university and so that is interesting conversations with them as adults in this context. I also am a writer. I think I, maybe I said that already, but, and a PhD student in seminary. And so I resonate with a lot of your stories and I lived abroad in Somaliland and Djibouti for 21 years. And so that also feels relevant to this context having been an expat and some experience with Somalis.

Liz: It does feel unfortunately very relevant. I mean, fortunate for us to learn from you. Okay. You know, I just sent you a list of questions, friends, but the, the real thing I really wanna ask is, you know, what are you seeing in your communities? You know, how’s it affecting your families? What stories are staying with you? I think let’s anywhere in that, how about you? I’ll give you guys a chance each to just tell us what you’re seeing and experiencing from your part of Minneapolis.

And you know, to be clear, I’m really asking about ice raids and kind of how DHS coming to Minneapolis has affected each of these women’s families and communities that they’re in. ‘cause they’re all in unique communities as well. So, Laura, let’s start with you and feel free to take the time you need to tell us about it.

Laura: Yeah, I would say ICE is everywhere. You know, I see them all over the suburbs here as well as downtown. I have friends both who are US citizens and a couple who are not, who have been just staying home for weeks, haven’t left their house. Some with kids that haven’t left their house since, I mean, like before Christmas I would say I, a lot of stores and restaurants around us are either shut down because they’re, they’re understaffed.

Their staff has been, you know, the restaurant has been raided in a couple instances. Like the whole staff was just taken from a few restaurants around us. So we’ve been trying to go out and support, you know, especially immigrant owned businesses, stores, restaurants around us. But the, the doors are always locked. You have to, you know, knock to go inside. I see when I look around my church on Sunday, how different it looks. You know, a lot of brown and black folks are not coming to church. They don’t feel safe. We’re helping, you know, kids in our kids’ schools who need rides because it’s not safe for their parents to be leaving home right now.

Or because their parents are really worried about ICE showing up to the bus stops. So we’re trying to help out with that as well.

I mean, I see around us, I can always tell when it’s an ice like convoy on, especially the interstate because they go flying by at about 10, 15, 20 miles per hour. So you see them breaking all kinds of, even just traffic laws around us too. So in terms of like putting people in danger, it’s not even just those that they are going after or the bystanders, it’s literally any of us who are, you know, sharing the streets with them. On the flip side of that, like the incredible community outpouring of support, the mutual aid, the food donations, the way that churches and schools are showing up, like that has been incredible to see and to be part of.

So I would say it’s just, it’s constant, it’s draining. And that saying, that’s my perspective as someone who is not targeted because privilege and skin color I have. So it’s just a constant presence where we are, I think for all of us.

Liz: Thank you for that. Is there a particular story, Laura, that really stands out to you from what you’ve been seeing or hearing from friends?

Laura: I mean a lot and it’s one of them that really gets me is even just on my social media. I was asking folks to share stories ‘cause there’s so much misinformation out there and so much like vitriol that I just wanted more like you’re doing here, real stories in front of people. And someone I know who’s a a pediatric emergency room doctor was just saying how they’re seeing that families are waiting to show up. You know, they’re canceling appointments, they’re canceling baby surgeries. People who are, you know, kids who are sick and need surgeries, they’re waiting until much longer to go to the hospital.

So the pediatric intensive care units are packed and they’re not showing up to like the NICU to be with their baby. And I think that one really got me ‘cause I’ve had babies in the NICU and to just think those babies are alone right now because their families don’t feel safe going to be like that. They are so vulnerable that they can’t go be with the most vulnerable member of their family. That just haunts me. That’s just, yeah.

Liz: Thank you for sharing. Yeah. Hmm. Elizabeth, would you like to go next and tell us kind of what you’re seeing in your community?

Elizabeth: Yeah, I mean, I echo everything Laura just shared. I can vouch for and second all of that. You know, it, it’s interesting, there have been some days in the last few weeks where I’ll take a five minute ride to the library in past six ICE agent vehicles or suspicious looking vehicles and then other days where we’re not seeing them as much as they kind of move into different parts of the city. And so you’re just kind of always on this high alert of like, okay, is this gonna be a big day or a medium day?

And then in the medium days it’s like, like Laura was saying, like, we’re working so hard as a community to meet vulnerable families needs. So it’s just kind of that, that idea of constancy and the exhaustion in that even though I am not a victim, I’m not being targeted is, is a very real part of what life is like here.

You know, I think I know citizens who have been detained. I know refugees here with legal vetted status who have been detained and sent outta state already who are being revetted. I know people who are documented in here legally have been detained, you know, so and beyond that, like I know people who have been here over 20 years functioning, contributing members of our community, not a criminal record in sight who are being targeted, who have been detained. And so it’s just that narrative of kind of, oh, we’re going after the worst of the worst just feels very palpably and tangibly untrue.

It’s like, oh, you’re dragging my favorite taco truck lady through the street. You know, like, it’s just like, it’s, it’s just very, that dichotomy of those narratives is, is very hard to live in the tension of, you know, as, as someone living here who’s been very involved in mutual aid and care efforts, I mean, I’m on these signal chats and my phone pings literally from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed with people both expressing needs and those needs being met, which as Laura mentioned, is one of the most hands down, stunningly beautiful things I’ve ever been privileged to be a part of.

But it’s also like, for the very worst of reasons and in the very worst of circumstances, but it’s just that perpetual kind of reminder of this is happening, this is happening is literally on the desk in front of me, just ding, ding, ding all day of people who are going through the worst moment of their lives.

I think what’s been really interesting when I look at kind of the aid and care that’s being offered up by individuals and organizations and churches in the area, is it, it feels very much like kind of what I imagine the church and Acts two would’ve been like if they’d had signal chats. Like it’s just kind of, everyone’s like, here’s a need. And then people are like, I can meet that need. I can go shovel your walk. I can take your laundry to the laundromat. I can bring you food, I can take your kid to their eye doctor appointment. You know? So it’s just like everyone’s, and then there’s even, you know, there’s people who are just sort of like, I can show up and do these sort of basic human tasks that you are not feeling free to go do.

And then there’s also like lawyers who are working all night and day, contributing their special skill set, helping people track down people in detention.

There are midwives and doulas who are organizing home births with mothers who are afraid to leave home and go give birth at the hospital or their clinic. You know, so there are just like people showing up with their specific skill set and it just feels like everyone’s kind of contributing what they can. And the sum whole of that is this unbelievable organic network of care that I think is holding up so many in our city right now as far as, and, and, and I wanna just say like, these are not activists.

Like I think I, I I would not consider myself an activist. Like I’m pretty in tune with what’s going on politically. And I was that kind of kid that really cared about my inanimate objects in my room, you know? So I kind of have this like, bleeding heart from the day of my birth.

But like, I’m not, like, I mean, there’s certainly protesters and there’s certainly clashes We’re seeing that that’s, I’m not gonna say that’s not happening, but I think like most of us are just like moms who are walking around with whistles on our necks trying to make sure people feel safe. And I think that’s a, that’s a really underwritten narrative in all of this. As far as like stories that really stand out to me, a close friend nearby, she, she was already a notary, she just lives in the neighborhood here.

She was already a notary and started doing all this work for families to get like DOPA (Delegation of Parental Authority) forms in case like a parent was detained to name sort of a person who could legally make decisions for their child left behind or conting, she contingency travel forms, you know, she, she was started going out in the neighborhood just doing all this kind of work to notarize documents for vulnerable families.

And as she was picking up her child from school, one day a another mom approached her and said, Hey, I need you to come to this house with me. Like right away a kid got detained and this was like two and a half weeks before Liam, you know, who’s rightfully all over the news and all over our screens. And this child similarly was out his six-year-old out with his father who was going to an immigration appointment following the rules, doing it the right way. The two of them never emerged from the federal building where they were. And so this mother is distraught, you know, she’s, she, and then this group of people that came around here are making call after call after call trying to find both her husband and her child.

And she can’t find him. There’s no database of minors. So she spent days not knowing where her six-year-old was, not knowing if her six-year-old was with his father or detained separately, not knowing if they were in the state. You know? So I mean, it’s just like that kind of tragedy. It is not a one-off. Like I feel like it’s just every day we’re hearing story after story like that of, of people just living through hell.

Liz: Gosh, thanks for sharing that. Yeah. Yeah. These are such heavy stories. I mean, I, I just imagine how heavy this is for all your families. Maggie, do you wanna tell us about what’s going on near you?

Maggie: Yeah, and something that Elizabeth said, I just wanna be really clear that, that the story that Elizabeth just told is why it matters that we call these kidnappings, the language and the words that we use, they carry so much weight. And I think at first there was pushback. I think even I felt it like a little unease referring to these as as abductions or kidnappings. But as a mom, if I didn’t know where my youngest child was for days, that is a kidnapping like that, that’s the definition.

And so I think, yeah, our words really matter right now.

Yeah. As I, I echo everything that Laura and Elizabeth have already talked about. The, the part that is starting to occur in our neighborhood now is, you know, I’m on the same signal chats. We’ve got the neighborhood folks who are checking plates and saying, yes, that’s ICE. No, that’s not ICE. ICE agents are now trying to blend in with the crowds. So ice agents are now wearing whistles around their necks just like we are. They’ve stopped wearing face coverings, they’re trying to blend in.

And I think that is so insidious and so terrifying that now we would not even be able to trust our own eyes. You know, like, what are we seeing? Can I trust that I know who this person is? And I think that has been especially difficult. So the other thing that is really important for me to say is, as a lot of people are, you know, watching videos and things, it looks like there’s just like little demonstrations happening all over.

And I just wanna set the record straight that that’s just what our neighborhoods look like. These are just people who are walking down the sidewalk, they’re going about their daily lives, and then out of nowhere there’s an ICE convoy and or, you know, immediately swarmed by officers. I feel like I’m living in the Gospel of Mark, where like Mark’s immediacy is like, and immediately this happened. Like that is what it feels like in our neighborhoods. Like it was quiet and then it wasn’t quiet. And the beautiful thing of course is that when an ICE raid happens right in front of you, you know, we’ve got thousands of people who were trained as legal observers.

So there are people everywhere who are ready to step into, you know, their constitutional right to be able to film and record and document what’s happening. And so that’s both beautiful and horrible because every photo and video I’m seeing looks like, like that’s, that looks like a staged protest.

No, actually it’s just people who were on the sidewalk when it happened and they pulled up their phones and they started recording. So yeah, that’s the horrible, but you know, as Laura and Elizabeth talked about, the beautiful is the way that our school communities are rallying. I am part of a network of parents at our school who are meeting, you know, individual needs. And I think the, the most beautiful example that I saw unfold in the group chat was a parent who needed medical care and couldn’t, didn’t feel safe leaving the house to seek it.

And other parents from within the chat group saying, I will come. I am a I, you know, I’m a physician and I will come and I will treat dad. And then we had another parent who said, you know, I, I work in internal medicine, but I’m on, I’m, you know, working the ER tonight. If it’s really bad, I will meet you at the doors of the ER and I will take you immediately back, you know, so that you are safe. You get handed from one parent at school to another parent from school and I will take you back to a private room in the er.

And it shouldn’t have to be this way, but I have been so encouraged to see the number of people, you know, really stand, stand in the gap is the nineties phrase that’s coming to me now for these really vulnerable families.

Liz: Yeah, that’s really fascinating. It’s, it’s not very “oligarchy” to have doctors come out and give their services for free, right. It’s not very capitalist. That’s really fascinating. Rachel, what are you seeing? And I’m especially like, if I get to poke and ask you more, I’d, I’d love to hear about Somali families, what that has been like.

Rachel: So first of all, I wanna say that all three of you have just spoken so well, it’s quite moving and I, so where I am, to be honest, I’ve seen almost nothing in my neighborhood. You could believe that there is nothing happening if you stayed home here. And I live about a half a mile from the Islamic Center or an Islamic Center. I did see one car about three weeks ago.

And so also my context is I’ve been out of the country for the last 10 days, which I left, I can’t remember when, but just a couple days after Rinne Good was murdered. And then I came back on the day that the faith leaders were arrested at the airport, we landed and I was in Djibouti for those 10 days. And so I feel like I’ve missed a lot, which might be why I haven’t seen a lot.

And that’s been really hard actually. The, the timing of this trip was challenging and I felt discouraged and confused and then actually was going to deal with a, a pretty significant crisis of arrests, deportations, and torture that was happening in Djibouti. We were trying not, not to deal with that, we were dealing with other things too, but that was happening there and we were doing some, some advising and some help and it just felt like this is, I, I don’t know how to hold all of this both in my body and, and then coming back not knowing what I was gonna come back to.

So that’s a real personal story, which is again, from coming from a very privileged position of being a white blue passport-holding American.

I lost my train of thought. Oh. But while I was in route on the airplane, I did use the Wi-Fi. I try not to on airplanes as a writer, I wanna write, but I got Wi-Fi ‘cause I needed to know what was state, what was happening. And I actually got a request from my publisher asking me to write a story about what was happening in Minneapolis. And so I used my layovers to do some interviews and do some online searching, and I was able to write, which felt like, okay, at least I can do something while I’m away. And so trying to use my words and now that I’m back trying to get re-engaged and so I feel like I’m still trying to figure out how to get re-engaged with neighbors and seeing what’s happening in my particular suburb.

So that’s kinda my, my personal perspective.

I, I don’t have a lot to say about what is happening besides what I hear. I will share one story that has it. I think it just to me highlights the power of networking. And even someone who is a little bit, feels a little bit removed and yet is present. Just yesterday I got a text from a friend who’s a chaplain in a hospital and she had, I dunno all the details, but she had met a priest and he had a parishioner who had been detained and transported to Texas upon arrival in Texas was somehow discovered that they were a legal resident of the United States.

And so they were just put out of the detention center and like, see ya, not even an apology, nothing and no money, no papers because they were, you know, taken. And so they, you know, get yourself back to Minnesota.

And so this priest had asked the chaplain who then texted me, do we know anybody who speaks a little bit of Spanish, who would be willing to fly down there to, with, you know, papers to bring this person back home? And so, you know, just activated a network that I have and found somebody and so I don’t even know who it is or what they’re gonna do. I don’t need to know. And then, and then the friend texted me back and she said, why does this feel like the Underground Railroad just trying to get someone home? And so it would be easy to say, oh, they’ve been released, you know, but they’ve been the, they’ve been taken, they’ve been traumatized, they’ve been having all this fear, what about their family?

And then having to come back. It’s just, I mean, those kinds of things I know are happening all over the place.

And so I think what’s easy to forget is that even, even if someone is let go again, there’s all this stuff that’s happened to them in the meantime that is not okay and that they have to then deal with and has repercussions that ripple out to their family members and their community for the long term. And I feel like the, the, once we get to a point of being able to think about recovery, that’s a long haul for people like, who have been through stuff like that. And so again, that’s something I know deeply from my own experience of what it takes to recover from traumatic experiences.

And so I’m thinking long term, this is a real big weight to hold.

Liz: Well, and, and really for not even just for, you know, the folks who have been directly affected, but like you said, their families, the communities around, I find it really insidious, Maggie, what you were saying about ice agents blending in now because that automatically means that every white person is suspect, right? All of a sudden, like, are you a ice agent? Are you a ice agent? Right? And and the the point there is suspicion. Anyway, I…

Elizabeth: Yeah, I would love to speak to that. I was patrolling at a nearby high school during their dismissal a couple of weeks ago and I was standing with a group of moms who I didn’t know, but you know, I I was just, we were kind of, there’s clumps of us kind of around the school building and this Yeah, this man came up to us and was like, Hey, you know, I live two blocks away. I’d love to get involved. Like, are you guys on like, some kind of chat and like all of us just froze, like deer headlights, like, you gotta talk to your neighbors man. You gotta talk to people who know you. Like we don’t, I don’t know.

And that’s just so un-Minnesotan. Like I can’t convey to you how un-Minnesotan that is. And particularly personally, I’m like, Hey, let me tell you about my deepest trauma on a pr our first meeting.

Like, I’m such an open book person. Like let’s talk first periods, right? And I just feel like, like this man, like we all just looked at him, we’re like, you got, sorry, you gotta talk to people who actually know you. We don’t know you. And I have a friend who was born and grew up in Poland. She spent some time in the U.S, she’s currently in the U.S living here. And you know, like that kind of thing is what her childhood sounded like under a communist regime of like, I don’t, I don’t know you, I don’t trust you. Like, and that’s just so surreal and bizarre to be living in that reality in this moment.

Rachel: Yeah. Can I add something about that too? I appreciate you saying that. And in, in Djibouti, one of my very good Somali friends, we were sitting on this hillside and this was several years ago, but some white Americans came up to us. We were coaching a girl’s running team and they started asking us all kinds of questions about the running team and asking her questions, her name, where she lived, how old she was. And she lied every single answer. She, she did not tell the truth, let’s just say that. And I asked her afterwards, why, why did you respond that way? ‘cause my Minnesota response would’ve been to say everything, this is exactly where I live.

This is my full name, these are my parents. And but you’re absolutely right. Like her, she said, that was so inappropriate for him to be asking me those things and so unsafe.

And so that is absolutely what other people have experienced. And so to be bringing that back here is, it’s just really, really hard to see. And I can recognize all those things from my experience, which reminded me, you had asked about Somalis. I just wanna say a little bit a thing of that I do have some several Somali friends who are American citizens who have children who were born here who have not left their house. As someone had shared that too, since the, the garbage Somali comments, which were at least six or seven weeks ago, they’ve canceled gym memberships, they’ve not gone out, you know, they’re getting food delivered, all that kind of stuff.

My husband’s gone down to the Somali Mall and it’s just, it’s pretty empty. I was there for one of the protests and it, at that time there were still people there, but now it’s very empty.

So all those businesses are suffering and you know, there’s just all kinds of ice around there too. So I know that there’s a lot of, yeah, just fear of people who came here because they were afraid. And there’s not, it’s not, this is the other thing that I think you guys all know this, but to be an immigrant or a refugee is not because your life was so awesome before. Like there’s a reason that people left what was, you know, their, their history and it’s not, there’s a lot of grief and trauma there too, because that’s, that was their home.

And so like recognizing all the depth of what it means to leave a place and then come to a place and not, and then have to be so afraid and unsettled here. It’s, it’s deep.

Liz: Absolutely. Yeah. I’m really interested to hear if you all have stories from schools. I know at least I think three of you’all have kids in local schools. I don’t know if they’re public schools or what, but kind of doesn’t matter, I mean, you know, it could be any of ‘em. But I’m very curious how your kids are interacting with this and kind of what this is like as being a mom and Rachel, you can talk to this with your older kids, kind of how you’re talking to them about these things if you want to.

But if any of y’all have thoughts on that, I’d love to hear.

Maggie: I’d be happy to go first. Liz, I, I’m gonna try to be so, so careful because our family’s doing so much direct mutual aid and so I’m gonna speak in some just loose terms here. But we give rides and my kids, we had to have a conversation with them about how to, like, first after the first week I was like, Hey, you can’t point out every time you see an ice vehicle, like on the drive to school, because our friends are very afraid and like, we can’t, we can’t be pointing that out.

That’s not, that’s not a good practice. And so, but after, you know, like I had to form a safety plan with my husband if I have children in the car and I, ‘cause what’s happening is, you know, sometimes people are just driving down the street and all of a sudden the vehicle in front of them stops and the vehicle behind them stops and they can’t move their vehicle.

Like, what do you do? And you’re witnessing a, you know, a raid perhaps you’ve got vulnerable children in the car. And so we, we formed a safety plan, but what we had to tell our own children is, if you see something, we’re gonna use a code word. You’re gonna tell me like what a clock you see them at. Because if you see them, and I don’t, that is not safe. And so it, it, that’s terrifying and has inspired in my kids a sense of hypervigilance.

And so we are now making decisions, like on Saturday there were these beautiful vigils that happened at 7PM. Everyone was encouraged to go to their block and stand with their neighbors and hold candles and sing songs. And what a beautiful moment to be in community. Our, our family had already received an invitation to go to a school and play bingo.

So I just went to my kids and I said, we have two choices here. And you get to make the choice. You do not have to show up as a helper, a protector. That’s what my kids call the people. Those of you who are running patrols around schools, my kids call you protectors. And so you don’t have to be part of that all the time. You can, we can have fun and we can find joy and those are, those are great lessons to learn when you’re in elementary school. But my middle schoolers are really struggling with that.

My daughter could not finish her day yesterday. And I went and got her and she just said, it’s so unfair, mom, it’s so unfair that we get to go home and feel safe and our neighbors don’t get to feel that way. And I don’t, how can I, you know, keep showing up to school and school doesn’t mean anything.

Like I got assignments, who cares? Like when, when my neighbors are feeling this way, how can I continue with my daily life? And so making meaning and making sense of the moment that we find ourselves in and leading our kids in ways where they are participating in what we’re calling the resistance. I’m using resistance terminology as opposed to protest terminology, you know, but showing our kids the balance for the sake of their own mental health. I don’t know what I’m doing.

There’s no parenting handbook for this. I dunno how to, how to do this. We’re making it up as we go. But that’s, those are the conversations we’re having with our kids.

Laura: That was beautifully said Maggie. And to echo that, you know, as I said, I have five kids, the oldest is 16, the youngest is five. So I have to make sense of this at all these developmental stages and I, I’m gonna really try to watch how I frame this ‘cause I just need to be really careful for the families we’re helping. But the kids have a lot of questions. Like both of their parents have totally changed the way we’re spending our time. You know, the way that our normal flow of like who’s driving where all of that is different.

We keep going and doing these massive Costco and grocery runs and taking them places and the kids, I mean like the fun of that has worn off. They’re like, one, one of my kids last night said, oh, you and dad are both here tonight. This is so great. And I realized we have not both been here ‘cause we’ve been running and doing all these different things with all these different parts of our life.

The kids are scared. They, they want to help. You know, my 8-year-old would not go to sleep the night before last. ‘cause he kept saying like, that family, you said that doesn’t have enough heat. We had been a local restaurant. We had been bringing a bunch of donations to their staff after they had been raided by ice. And we were talking with the owner and he was sharing that in one of the mobile home communities where some of his staff lived, that some of the folks, their, their heat had broken and they were scared to have somebody come fix it because they couldn’t trust.

So the owner, we were talking to him about like, you know, how to, how to get these folks safe and warm again because it’s literally deadly cold outside here. And my 8-year-old was like, couldn’t go to sleep ‘cause he kept saying like, could we make blankets?

Could I learn to knit? I was like, oh my gosh, this is the human condition of like, what can we do in the short term versus like, that would be cool to knit and learn how to make these things. We can’t do that this week. So I think it, gosh, like you said, Maggie, there’s no handbook for this. My, my teenagers will have friends over and most of them aren’t white. And when I hear them all say like, we’re going to Chipotle to get food, I’m over here checking to see like this is a real story. I overheard them and then I’m like, wait a sec, is that safe? And I literally opened the door to my office and I’m like, you guys, you, you can’t go to Chipotle right now because ICE is there.

They were there 20 minutes ago. I’m just gonna order pizza for you and I’m gonna go pick it up because I don’t wanna send someone out to our house.

You know, like, so the most mundane of things, not only are the kids, they’re seeing how their schools are responding and our church and their families and all of that. But it’s also this, like this is still their childhood and this is still their adolescence and they wanna do normal things. And all of that is like reshaped because of their safety, their friend’s safety. Like just everything that’s going on right now. So it is like bewildering and exhausting. It’s that like decision fatigue that, that so many of us would talk about in the pandemic where every decision you make, I have this like list of things I do before we go somewhere.

Like check this and check these signal chats and check that. So yeah, it’s just, this is just bewildering and, and I hope maybe the good side is like the, is it formative for our kids? I’m praying that it is, that they see this is how we show up, this is how we care for people. This is how we put our faith in action. That’s my hope. But I also feel like I have been a subpar parent on her phone a zillion hours a day trying to coordinate all this work.

So it’s like a really hard and like laundry dinner, I don’t, our house is a disaster. So it’s like from the dire to the most mundane, it just shapes it all.

Liz: I mean, who needs laundry? It’s fine. Just re-wear that. Elizabeth, were you gonna jump in? Please.

Elizabeth: Yeah, I don’t have like a lot to add. Also, I’ve been just like chucking cheese sticks at my kids for the last two weeks. Like, I don’t know, let’s get frozen pizza again. Like we’ve just, you know, I’m like, ‘cause I do, I feel like maybe up to like 90 to 95% of my free time has been really to be involved in trying to care for our neighbors and that’s taken a lot of forms. But yeah, my own daughter was like, mom, you need to get off your phone. I’m like, and I’m not doom scrolling, I’m like texting people and coordinating rides and coordinating food, you know, and I’m like trying, you know, trying to convey that to her.

But she sees the stress on my face and she’s like, I think you need a break. And I’m like, true also. No. So, you know, I think, yeah, the kids are watching and what’s been really cool, and again I’m gonna echo Maggie and Laura and trying to be relatively anonymous, but the church I attend as a contingent of the congregation really got involved in like food delivery and things like that very quickly realized like there are no hygiene products, there are no home and health products at these food banks.

And so one of our leaders had kind of heard of an idea of a hygiene bank that someone else she knew was running in another state and was like, well what if we started one? And so literally within, I mean I think within a matter of like six or seven days, this went from idea to like the first supplies going to families in need. Like it’s been just the most build the plane midair amazing, wonderful, chaotic experience of my life. Like being a part of helping this happen and watching donations pouring from literally every corner of the world.

We used Amazon, which is like mixed feelings, right? But like that was the fastest way we could do it without setting up all this financial oversight for donations. So like, let’s just call a spade a spade. But you know, so it’s like our, like within days there were whole classrooms of our church building filled with towering boxes.

I mean people are just so eager to help. And it was just really a beautiful opportunity to really include my kids in that work. It’s like, okay, we’re going back to church this afternoon and we’re sorting and we’re stacking and we’re breaking down boxes and we’re labeling and you know, counting, we were trying to kind of do like a loose inventory and it was really meaningful to see a couple of my kids really get into the spirit of that and like, can we go back tomorrow? Can I, can you just drop me off? I’ll just go back and keep doing what I was doing. You know, I mean I think that is sort of one of the thin silver linings in all of this is to see them see that they can be contributors in all of this in their own way.

You know, even as they have like, you know, my kids are old enough, they’re in middle school that like, you know, they know friends who are not white. They have, they’ve got good friends who are not white whose, whose parents are worried about being outta the house, who are citizens who’ve been citizens for generations but are of a certain ethnic descent. You know, and it’s just like, I think some of that’s really hitting home for them.

You know, they’re growing up in a pretty high empathy household. But I think this is just kind of helping expose them to a deeper layer of some of the realities of what life looks like for people who are being oppressed and who are being marginalized.

Rachel: I don’t have anything to add to the conversation about parenting, but what I keep hearing both in this conversation and in general is the cost of showing mercy. And I feel like for the American church, that’s been something we’ve been able to ignore for the most part. It’s really easy to believe stuff. It’s pretty hard and exhausting to act and to move into behavior change. And there’s a cost involved in that. And I, as I read scripture, I’m really drawn to the stories where you see that where someone has, has paid a price for showing mercy.

And I, I think what you said about, I forget who said it, but I, that you’re praying this would be a formative experience for your kids. I pray this would be a formative experience for the church. And I think it, I think it is in Minnesota, I see that happening. I hear stories of that happening of people starting to actually understand what it means to show, to, to feed, to clothe, to visit those who are in prison and do all that for Jesus in, in the least of these. So that is one of, that’s one of my heart’s cry for this.

Elizabeth: And I think I’ll, I’ll kind of tag onto that, Rachel, think one of the things that’s been really beautiful, and I’m, I’m trying to think of how to share some of these stories without exposing anybody’s business to the internet, but I have had people who are, would consider themselves like fully unchurched, non-religious go, whoa, the Christians are showing up. And that’s interesting to me even so far as one person saying, maybe I’ll go back to church after this.

You know, like, I mean just, and that, and not, not only just other helpers, but like people, families that we’re serving who are like, oh, you’re from the church. And I mean like it’s, it’s horrifying that that’s kind of a surprise, right? But I think your, your take Rachel, of how the cost of mercy is, is high. The cost of care is high, is not something Yeah.

We’ve historically been great at, in the American church and i, I I think that we are witnessing in real time, I don’t wanna make this combative and decisive, but I think Jesus’s name has been dragged through the mud pretty intensely by the American, by sections of the American church in the last decade. And it, it is encouraging to me, it feels like a shot in the arm to watch the church respond and say, wait, actually Jesus looks like this actually.

This is what the hands and feet of Jesus look like. I mean I think there that’s, I’m I’m eager to see the ripple effect of that as time goes on.

Liz: I think I just have one last question for you all. I’m just so grateful that you have shared and I think you’ve done a really good job of protecting your people as well. ‘cause I have no clue. So, you’re good. But I think my last question really relates to, you know, what would you say to people who are outside of, out, out of state and particularly folks who might kind of come with a particular political persuasion to the conversation, whether it be left or right, what are they missing?

Like what are we missing about what’s happening and what would you say to them about this moment in Minnesota?

Maggie: My mind goes to the practical right away. So I feel so lucky to have been the recipient of some legal observer training back in November. And so much of my training was stated specifically, this is the best practice that we learned from Charlotte, that we learned from Chicago, the whistles that everyone see that came from Chicago. And so the idea that we are learning every city that ice goes to, we get better, we get faster, we get more nimble. That is super encouraging.

And so for folks who aren’t in Minnesota, I have already found myself in conversations with people in Maine and people in Portland and people saying, get ready because the time to get, to get a group chat of your neighbors is right now it’s, it’s now. Because if you wait, no one’s gonna answer the door for you. No one’s gonna want to talk to you ‘cause they, because of that erosion of trust that we talked about earlier. And so now is the time to organize and now is the time to get trained on, you know, how to show up. And I just find myself saying, you know, do you, do you, do you need some training manuals because we could tell you what’s been working here in Minneapolis and we can get your city ready, but like we need people to take it seriously, you know, to not assume, oh, ice would never come here, they’re coming, they’re already there.

And so it’s time to, time to mobilize, time to mobilize folks.

Laura: I would totally agree with that. And I would say that I have been a person in all the group chats with the friends outta state who is like doing the same thing. Like, I know you all think I’m being chicken little, I am not, like Elizabeth said, I don’t consider myself an activist, like this is not my full-time job. I am not a paid community organizer. But you need to understand that everything is changing and any groundwork that you can lay right now to get to know your neighbors better, to really know, and I mean know by name the vulnerable people in your community, not just be like, oh, we have some of these people.

No. Like, to get to know them, to find out what they’re needing. That is the, the work that I think we all have to do right now. And I would say no matter where you live, immigrant populations in your area are likely living under heightened anxiety and fear of what’s going on.

So to be, you know, supporting organizations that are doing mutual aid to be like just patronizing your local restaurants and grocery stores, there’s ways that we have power with whatever limited money we’re spending out there that you can be like in solidarity with your neighbors right now. I, I just feel like the number one thing is that like, like several of us have said, this is just normal folks showing up to this. So I understand because I’ve watched how many countless tragedies unfold and you kind of think like, well I guess the leaders are gonna step up, or the people who do the justice work, they’ll do this.

Like, no, there comes a time where even if you don’t have the gifts and you have a zillion other responsibilities in your life, like the world around you is gonna break open and you are gonna have to figure out how to help people. And so I just think, yeah, whatever you can do right now to be a person who can get to know your neighbors better and to figure out who’s already doing this work in the community, like eventually that moment of crisis is gonna come right to where you are too.

Elizabeth: Yeah, absolutely. Both Maggie and Laura, I’m, I’m doing similar things in my personal life and my online life and yeah, that readiness and that knowing people you live next to, which I think is like, it’s so aligned with the gospel too. You know, like love your neighbors yourself. You can’t love people if you don’t know them by name. Right. I think I’ll maybe take a different approach to this answer. And I, I was telling Laura the other day, I feel like I have like a 45 minute sermon I could deliver on this. So I’ll just like funnel it down and do a, a shorter summary here.

But this is kind of my soapbox lately, is that I think so many people either outside Minnesota or even outside the like greater metro area, maybe like outstate Minnesota, more rural areas or kind of more politically conservative leaning folks, you know, they’re watching these horribly chaotic and violent scenes on their nightly news and they’re, they’re thinking like, why can’t these Minnesotans just let these agents do their jobs?

Like, why they’re getting in the way they’re putting themselves in harm’s way. And like, I can, I can empathize with that if you are someone who sees your way of life being threatened or you feel like your safety is being threatened, if, if that’s, if that’s a narrative that you feel is true, like I can, I can empathize with that kind of frustration with what’s happening here in Minnesota. But like what we’re seeing here is, is not people even so much as protesting, but like showing up as protectors and not just protectors of illegal immigrants or aliens as they’re calling them, which is horrible language, but like we’re seeing people show up because they wanna protect the rule of law In America.

We’re seeing people show up because they want to see accountability for federal agencies who are very literally brutalizing people every day in unnecessary and reckless ways.

They wanna protect the constitution, they wanna protect the right to do process. Like I think so many people here in Minnesota, we see ourselves as, as not just like leftist scum, paid agitators who hate everything federal government, but more like patriots. You know, like we’re trying to show up and just exercise our civic duty here to be good citizens and to perpetuate the American values of freedom, justice, peace, liberty. Right? And I just wanna like extend this, you know, I, I don’t know who will listen to this, but like, if you are someone who thought you wanted this, who thought you wanted mass deportations, and maybe you still do, maybe you wanna see every immigration law on the books enforced to the nth degree.

It still doesn’t have to look like this. It still doesn’t have to look like this recklessness and this violence and this fear.

It doesn’t have to look like this. And if you’re feeling that stirring to say, I don’t like this. This isn’t, this is, this isn’t what I wanted. I do want strong immigration laws. I don’t want, you know, I’m someone, I don’t want open borders. I would love to see heavy immigration reform in our country, like personally, but if you’re someone who really cares about immigration enforcement, but you are not feeling comfortable with what you’re seeing unfolding, it is okay to change your mind. And that doesn’t mean you have to go from here to here. It just means you can just scooch down the line and say, I’m not okay with this. And like, it’s okay to change your mind. And no one who’s maybe on the other side of that argument is gonna be like, what took you so long?

You know, like we’re just all trying to do our best to show up as people who love Jesus and are trying to discern what the best response is in this moment. End of sermon. That was, that was long. I’ll stop talking. That’s so long. I, I feel so strongly about that. Some of those things that we’re just hearing different narratives, we’re not even watching the same movie. And I, Van Jones said that, I’m not trying to steal his quote, but like, that’s such a huge part of what’s going on here and, and the crisis we’re seeing.

Rachel: Yeah, I would hear that. I would listen to that full sermon if you ever wanna bring it. That was great. I yeah, echo everything that everybody has said already. One of the things that I came away with from our, my trip to Djibouti just last week was in the middle of the crisis that was happening there, there was a real discrepancy between how the, I’ll just like to generalize how the western foreigners handled what happened versus how the African Christians who live there as expats, how they handled the crisis.

And we had many conversations with people and I thought, oh, this is like, we have so much to learn from our African brothers and sisters. And the same thing here. Like, I think it was Maggie who said, reaching out to people in other states, people who have already been through stuff like this, they know how to show up, they know how to take care of each other.

They know how to theologically wrestle with some of the complexities of it. And so really learning from our global and national brothers and sisters who have experienced stuff like this and then passing on the lessons that, that we learn here now to the next place where it’s gonna move on to, that’s something I feel I still wanna think more about that and reflect on the conversations I had and really have some practical takeaways from what they did differently that would be practicable. And then also, Elizabeth, I appreciate what you said too about, I, I also am a person who wants there to be deep reform of immigration reform in this country.

And I do believe in borders, whatever that means, by believing in borders. Like I believe that nation states have the right to protect and guard a border. And I have been someone who’s lived on immigrant visas for the vast majority of my adult life.

I just came back to the U.S two years ago. And so I, and I, I knew I had to submit to the laws of that country. They had every right to do things, but there was systems in place and I was never afraid of being, of having that system like ripped out from underneath me in a brutal and terrifying way. And so there are ways to hold onto a conviction about the right of a nation or, or law. And this is not how it’s done. Like all the stories that we’ve shared are just full of violence and fear and sowing of division that is absolutely unnecessary and, and damaging and causing then people who, like, again, like you said, Elizabeth, who are actually doing things lawfully trying to, you know, act in their rights as citizens to, to observe and to, you know, whatever it is.

I’m not as gonna be as articulate as you were, but it’s, it’s not, this is just not how to do it. And the long-term implications are also really dangerous, I think for the, for the fabric of community, which is being just shredded, well shredded. And yet also all the stories we’ve shared are showing that it is being rebuilt. Like if you’re gonna shred a fabric of community, it is being re-sewn into something beautiful and I think sustainable also.

Liz: Yeah, there is something really beautiful about taking something broken and mending it, you know, because, you know, and, and I know a lot of our black brothers and sisters have been talking about this isn’t the first time the state has exerted violence on bodies of citizens and non-citizens in our nation. And I think there’s just so much to be learned from our African brothers and sisters, from our African American brothers and sisters about what things have looked like in the past and how we can show up for our neighbors and neighborhoods today.

And we as white Americans are kind of slow on that bandwagon. You know, we’ve been, we’ve been slow to learn this because we haven’t had to. And what I’m seeing in your stories, friends is a willingness to learn that. And I commend you for that. I’m so grateful to hear the ways that these communities are coming together and also so heartbroken to hear some of these stories of folks who are in pain and have experienced that violence personally.

But I’m, I’m very grateful that you all are the helpers there and grateful for the work that you’re doing. And I will continue praying and asking how things are going and I just encourage anybody listening, share this with a friend. I mean, especially somebody who’s like, what is actually happening? I don’t believe, da da da da. I want you to be able to share this from people who’ve seen it with their own eyes. They’re there, they know these communities, they know these people, and this is, this is real life stuff that they’re dealing with in their every day.

Let’s just kind of dispel some of the misinformation and have some real conversations about what should love look like, what should Jesus look like in the United States? Like how do we live out the ways of Jesus and what should immigration and enforcement of immigration law look like? We need to just have some real conversations with people with whom we disagree in this moment and to make space for people to change their minds. So thank you all for joining me.

You are just gems every one of you and I’m just so grateful to know you. Thank you so much.

How are you? Bad? Me too.

Last week, we lost a good woman, Renee Nicole Macklin Good, to state-sponsored violence. Yes, this is America, the free. And it’s happened again.

I’m not going to talk to you about the shooting because, God knows, if you happened to scroll social media this week, you’ve already seen the horrific replay.

Later this week, I’m hoping to share with you an essay I wrote for the Christian Century, an obituary to honor Renee.

Here, I want to tell you a side of the story you probably haven’t heard yet: did you know Renee Good was a Queer Christian? That she’d been raised within evangelicalism? That, according to her parents, former spouse, and current spouse, she’d been a devoted Christian for her whole life?

I had the chance to talk with a couple of people who knew her back in high school youth group and college biology. (Her middle school youth pastor even reached out to me, SOB). Renee also wrote this poem, offering us a glimpse into her faith journey as she sought to reckon with science and the pseudo-science she learned within conservative evangelicalism.

Minnesota Public Radio also offered this expansive tribute to Renee (WARNING: YOU WILL CRY READING THIS):

Renee Macklin Good’s wife, Becca Good, said that the 37-year-old poet and mother of three was made of sunshine: “She literally sparkled.”

…Behind that light was a well of deep values that Macklin Good lived by, including a conviction that every person — regardless of “where you come from or what you look like” — deserves compassion and kindness.

Becca Good described her wife in a statement:

Renee lived by an overarching belief: there is kindness in the world and we need to do everything we can to find it where it resides and nurture it where it needs to grow. Renee was a Christian who knew that all religions teach the same essential truth: we are here to love each other, care for each other, and keep each other safe and whole.

…We were raising our son to believe that no matter where you come from or what you look like, all of us deserve compassion and kindness.

…The people who did this [to Renee] had fear and anger in their hearts, and we need to show them a better way.

…[We ask you now to] honor her memory by living her values: rejecting hate and choosing compassion, turning away from fear and pursuing peace, refusing division and knowing we must come together to build a world where we all come home safe to the people we love.

This week has been a reminder to me that life is not fair. Good people die young and wicked people grow old, rich, and powerful. That is the order of this world in which we live. That is injustice. As a white citizen, I am often insulated from the wound of deportation and police violence—but not this week.

Yet I do not want to diminish the universality of these feelings. Every person who has lost someone understands this ache. Death is a soul violence. If you feel that level of grief today, I think that’s true and right. I am feeling the same alongside you.

I have friends in Minneapolis who are connected to the daily injustices perpetuated by the president’s goon squad, just as I had friends daily connected to the injustices in Chicago. In political moments like these, as an empath, I struggle to disconnect from the dread and doom, imagining the apocalypse around every corner.

In one sense, the apocalypse is here already. In another, I do not have ICE knocking on my door in Aurora, Colorado, at least not yet. I must live in this tension: anticipation that it could (will?) happen, and the reality that today, it’s not happening in my community. So must you.

Share

I do want to offer one pastoral word to you, my friends: let love be your guide, not fear.

“Loving our neighbors as ourselves” takes on so many shades and expressions, but it never looks like hiding, retreating, or rejecting responsibility for our neighbor.

Who is our neighbor right now? God’s favorite people are the ones at the bottom, always. So first, our neighbors are the ones lying bloody in the streets. That’s the story of the good samaritan acted out far too literally. The person who loves her neighbor will attend to the vulnerable, rather than fearing the dangerous and powerful.

But let’s get practical. What does activism look like now?

When Jesus related the parable of “the Good Samaritan,” he was not talking to an audience of vulnerable people, but to the powerful. Jesus was actually calling the abusers to repentance.

In this case, I’m talking about ICE.

Perhaps we might take a cue from , and connect with our inner drama queens? ;-)

I joke.

But not really.

Because have you seen this confrontation of Kristi Noem in the halls of Congress? (I believe this happened in December 2025.)

I believe this moment in our nation’s history requires action in community. That may mean we act boldly and directly, as in the above examples. Or it could look tamer—holding signs at a marches, attending vigils for neighbors lost to ICE violence, or praying in groups for immigrants and the downfall of ICE.

But certainly, it means that we do not flinch.

When the bodies of our neighbors are threatened, we may find ourselves needing to protect them with our own bodies.

I found myself deeply moved by the words of New Hampshire’s Episcopal Bishop of Manchester, Rob Hirschfield, as he encouraged his fellow priests to get their wills in order—because this might be a time for new martyrs.

In his own words:

“The times of ‘statements’ have reached a limit…

As someone who is a man of profound historical privilege… I want to speak to the Christians among us. …We are now, I believe, entering …a new era of martyrdom, Renee Good being the last of note of those martyrs.

…I have told the Episcopal clergy of New Hampshire that we may be entering into that same witness. And I’ve asked them to get their affairs in order. To make sure they have their wills written. Because… now is no longer the time for statements, but for us with our bodies to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable.

…Jesus Christ took the posture of weakness and vulnerability. That’s what we are to model. Because the life that God wants for us is stronger than the cruelty, the injustice, the horror that we saw unleashed in Minneapolis… Those of us who have to be prepared to build a new world, we cannot fear even death itself. Because God first loved us with a power that is stronger than death.

Share the Empathy List

I hope that none of us will be called upon to make that sacrifice, but we might. Historically, testing the mettle of Christians has meant martyrdom. And whether we believed it before or not, following Jesus has always meant death-to-self, just not always literally.

Christian responses that demand unthinking submission to the government because Romans 13 tells us so… is not really Christian. If we want to act like Jesus, then we must offer our ourselves as substitutes. Our safety, our wealth, our power, our privilege, perhaps even our lives—these we must offer, in memoriam of the savior who offered himself first.

(“This is a challenging teaching, and who can accept it?” we disciples ask ourselves. I don’t know. You’re going to have to wrestle with God to discern what this teaching means for you, my friend.)

Last, as we consider how to respond to this political moment: I want to encourage us to have hard conversations with those we love.

When Jesus answered the question, “Who is my neighbor?” in the gospels, he expanded the definition. But he also meant the people nearest to our hearts. So I urge us to remember that our loved ones on the opposite side of the aisle, they’re also our neighbors. We harbor responsibility for them, too, because they are also kids of God.

And now is the time to tell them the truth and to invite them to change their allegiances.

By the way, by “changing allegiances,” I don’t mean changing political parties, not necessarily. I mean, call them to change their mind about the humanity of their neighbors.

Tell them what you’re feeling, tell them who Renee Good was, tell them why the spin of this administration is hurting people, tell them what’s actually happening with ICE and immigrants. If you have to pull up the New York Times or Guardian on your phone, do it. Invite them into a new narrative, one that embraces empathy, curiosity, and the humble way of Jesus.

Subscribe now

When we see our government harm other people, we must speak up, and we must primarily speak up IRL within those relationships where we have influence and relational trust to spend.

For the sake of our more vulnerable neighbors, we need to try to have conversations that can lead to societal change. Because, remember, societal change happens one person at a time.

If you’re reading this and feeling overwhelmed, I get it. If you’re unsure of your place and cannot identify a right next step in your journey toward loving your neighbors in practical, IRL ways, I’d love to recommend a friend’s book—Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul by . Within, she highlights a HUGE variety of ways to practice activism, including ways that do not require you to leave your house. Because not all of us can take to the streets, but we each can support the efforts of making our nation and global community more just.

Thanks for reading. I know this season is SO heavy, and I’m hoping to offer you comfort and practical wisdom. Let me know how I can help in the comments, wouldja?

Leave a comment

Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

Just for fun…

Ranking sneezes so you don’t have to: thank you, at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. I needed this one today.

Queen Annie did warn me: “Almost every single thing you hope publication will do for you is a fantasy, a hologram…”

Exactly one year ago today, my first book, Knock at the Sky: Seeking God in Genesis After Losing Faith in the Bible, released from Eerdmans Publishing, making me a bonafide author.

As I reflect back on my year, I’ve decided to revisit a series I began in the month before my book arrived. I called the series, ”A debut writer’s publishing story,” and it was a glimpse behind the curtain.

Psst, the series starts here:

Now, that I’ve graduated to one year post-publication, I have thoughts. And I want to answer the question, “Now, what?”

After laboring for twelve years in the journalism mines (;-)), publishing at nowhere zines for zero dollars1 and then finally publishing in places you may have heard of, amassing several book publishing rejections, getting one agent and then swapping for a second agent, and then selling a book and finally seeing my words in print… what comes next? What does publishing mean to me now? What have I learned one year later?

The answer to all of the above is this: Annie was right. (She’s always right.)

Publishing does not fill all the swiss cheesy holes in a writer’s heart. But writing does.

What Annie Said

In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott confesses that she visualized the publication of her first book (at 26, by the way! By Viking!) in the register of a Hallmark commercial—so much leaping across meadows and bounding into pillows of wildflowers to be held within the muscled arms of success and self-esteem.

Trumpets would trumpet. Reviewers would weep for joy at the discovery of the next great literary talent. In fact, like every writer in her heart of hearts, Anne expected early retirement to arrive shortly thereafter.

“This did not happen for me,” she says.

In fact, she tells us, these visions of grandeurs did not materialize after the publication of book number 2, 3, 4, or 5. You could argue that right now, at the end of her career, Annie has made it. But for a writer, “making it” means that our typing addiction finally pays the bills. And paying the bills is a feat so rare for writers that it’s hardly worth considering the success stories. So says Annie, anyway.

Publishing, she says, “…will not make [my writing students] well. It will not give them the feeling that the world has finally validated their parking tickets, that they have in fact finally arrived. My writer friends, and they are legion, do not go around beaming with quiet feelings of contentment. Most of them go around with haunted, abused, surprised looks on their faces, like lab dogs on whom very personal deodorant sprays have been tested.”

But oh, how we writers want publishing to mean everything. Sigh.

I can relate to this idealized vision of publication, although I had plenty more opportunities than Annie to become disillusioned by the entire publishing landscape.

I did not publish a book in my twenties. I amassed 300+ writing rejections, in fact. I never made a 30 under 30 list (or even a 5 under 35 list), and at age 38, I suspect that my chances of making any sort of 40 under 40 list to be equally unlikely (LOL). I have still not published under a “Big 5” publishing imprint, and writing had never covered my monthly mortgage payment.

Having experienced the backside of the publishing industry, I understood better than most first-time authors how my publisher viewed me. Though I did find a press to publish my weird arty theology book, I knew that they did not expect my book to be a blockbuster. (Even if I had managed to nab some excellent endorsements—! ! And as a foreword writer, are you kidding me?) My very modest advance reflected this hesitancy.

However, my publisher still did its best to support me, and I’m fairly certain I worked my publicist, editor, and the design team to the bone with my detailed and endless email requests. (Thank you, friends, your sacrifice will never be forgotten.)

I also worked hard. I edited the manuscript like a mother f—er. I copyedited too many times, I reviewed art and print color swatches, and I sent so, so many emails to the team. I also bought a new microphone and a screen to place behind my computer so I could pitch myself as a podcast guest. (In all, I lined up nearly 50 interviews, 44 of which have released!) I made merch (cards, stickers, and riso prints, oh my!), canva graphics, and even hired a friend to illustrate quotes from my book for instagram. I created a behind-the-scenes podcast to document the artistic experience of making the book alongside my artist husband, and I paid a friend to produce it for us. I attended conferences both to network and to hand out free chapbooks with a sample chapter for readers to take home as a prequel to the IRL book.

All that before the release.

After the release date, the publicity campaign ramped up. Podcast episodes released. Instagram Lives were had. Substack collaborations commenced. Colorado friends threw me a launch party at a beloved coffee shop. Some reviewers raved, while others offered real criticisms (both were welcomed, by the way). Publisher’s Weekly and Foreword Reviews both deemed my book interesting enough to review, which I’m guessing was a surprise both to me and my publisher. And people started to place copies on their bedside tables.

Share

So then, how did my book do?

Did my book soar to the top of the charts? Did I hit bestseller status? Did I see photos of celebrities casually reading my book while on the subway?

Not so much.

My book did sell… just not meteorically, and not well.

No, I’m not going to give you a number. (The number ultimately matters less than the attention a reader offers. Even one minute is a gift.)

Truthfully, when I think of the precise number of books sold, sometimes I feel embarrassed. The number feels so small compared to the wide world. But I also feel awed that people—even one person at all!—would take my words onto their bookshelves.

What I will say is, in the first six months of my book’s publication, I did NOT earn out my advance—as in, I did not pay back the amount my publisher had paid me to write the book. And TBD if I have paid back my advance by the end of this year (today I sent yet another email to ask for the final numbers of book sold in the various formats).

Whenever I do pay back the advance, only then would I begin to see minuscule royalties on future book sales to the tune of less than 20%. So, the prospect of making money from this very good book I wrote does not look great. (Partly because I have spent more on marketing than I have made on book sales!!) Publishing has lost me money.

Because of these equations, some in the industry would consider my book a failure. I know this because, when I went to pitch a second book, editors did not line up to wave their checkbooks at me. (Rude.)

Then again, I did sell another book. I found a publisher for book 2, which was the one goal I had set for myself at the beginning of my publishing journey. I aimed to keep writing books. And book number 1 allowed me to do that… even if my advance for book number 2 still will not pay my mortgage. (Real talk 😉)

Share the Empathy List

But who needs a paycheck, anyway?

In fact, books don’t provide many authors with paychecks, just the tippy top percentage of bestsellers. However, books do provide their authors with other incentives.

Adding a published book to my CV has brought other sorts of opportunities, including the chance to write an online monthly column for the Christian Century magazine.

Here’s where I admit that I’d never heard of the magazine before I dipped a toe into the mainline denominations. Now I understand that it’s a historic kind of Harper’s Magazine for progressive protestants. (My editor calls it “the New Yorker for religion nerds.”) W. E. B. DuBois published in its pages. So did C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot, Marilynne Robinson, Wendell Berry. So did a pope or two. Martin Luther King, Jr. was an Editor-at-Large for a time, and that’s where he first published “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” in 1963. Friends, I do not mean to place myself on a level with these luminaries, but I want you to understand what it means to me to write a column for such a storied publication: it means a lot.

And my book did that for me.

I’ve also had the chance to speak with people IRL about my book and the issues it raises. I arranged a DIY book tour after my book’s release and visited 8 states this year (two places I visited on behalf of the Christian Century). While there, I talked in front of large and tiny crowds, presented off-the-cuff and with powerpoint, headlined/sidelined at conferences and churches alike. I talked on zoom some, as well, but the in-person gatherings meant the most.

And I’ve met so many other creatives, authors, theologians, podcasters, and thinkers throughout this year!! I have so many new friends.

And my book did that for me, too.

Subscribe now

But wait, there’s more!

The other thing my book did for me? It exists.

Here’s what I mean, and here’s where Anne Lamott proves herself a genius once again: the fact that someone invested money to print my words on a page and that others have bought that book to read, well, that accomplishment never goes away.

Here’s how Annie puts it:

“…The fact of publication is the acknowledgment from the community that you did your writing right. You acquire a rank that you never lose. Now you’re a published writer, and you are in that rare position of getting to make a living, such as it is, doing what you love best. That knowledge does bring you a quiet joy.

…There can be a great deal of satisfaction in being a writer, in being a person who gets some work done most days, and who has been published and acknowledged. I carry this around in my pocket, touch it a number of times a day to make sure it is still there. Even though so much of my writing time is stressful and disheartening, I carry a secret sense of accomplishment around with me, like a radium pack implanted near my heart that now leaches a quiet sense of relief through my system.

She goes on to acknowledge that “you pay through the nose” for this small sense of relief, the relief of having been published once. The ego, the self-doubt, the financial woes, “ruin, hysteria, bad skin, unsightly tics…”: these go with publishing a book. And eventually, you do have to sit before a blank page again and pray that another idea descends to your finger tips.

But still: my book exists. And I’m so damn proud.

So, what does publishing mean to me now, one year from the release date?

Everything and nothing. It’s both gift and burden. And, no surprise, I love writing the most. (Publishing does not compare.)

One last word of advice from Queen Annie: “Try to bust yourself gently of the fantasy that publication will heal you, will fill the Swiss cheesey holes. It won’t, it can’t. But writing can. So can singing.”

This is life advice, not writing advice. Success, accolades, positive press, an adoring public, any sort of public at all: these do not make us whole. They actually escort us further away from wholeness, so that now we have to traverse the treachery of parasocial success in addition to our interior sense of failure. That makes two mountains to scale.

I have learned over and over that being good enough is interior work. No outside accomplishment—not even publishing that first book, the accomplishment of which I had dreamed since I was a child, fingering the names on the spines of the books stacked on the family room bookshelf—not even this fills the needy Swiss Cheese heart.

The best medicine to meet those needs? It’s the very ordinary daily stuff: people, Jesus, rest, food, art, gathering, sunshine.

…but publishing is terrible medicine. ;-)

Leave a comment

Thanks for reading.

Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

P.S. Friend, if you’d like to buy my book for yourself or a friend, or if you’d like to leave me a review on Goodreads, I’d be grateful for the support!

Buy the Book

Review on Goodreads

Just for Fun…

A selection of the 30 most disappointing people under 30.—the New Yorker

This past Saturday, the morning of the protest, I felt nervous. I didn’t know what to expect, so I packed for the worst: medicine, toiletries, a waterproof notebook, whatever I thought I could need for an overnight stay in jail, if I happened to be arrested.

A small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk in front of Aurora’s detention center. A few held signs (the largest said, “God Loves Everyone”). Most bundled in winter coats, hats, gloves, scarves. The woman at the head of the group—a retired pastor with a shock of bobbed purple hair—wore a knitted beanie. We were white, middle-aged or older, and a few parents had brought their children, around 25 of us in all. The leader handed out song sheets: Silent Night, O Little Town of Bethlehem, Joy to the World. We had come to carol sing near the gated entrance. I belted as loud as I could, hoping the wind might carry the tune to the hundreds of men held within the concrete block facility.

As we sang, we watched men and women walk up the sidewalk toward the closed gated entrance. We began to notice a glut near the gate, a few people on each side, talking urgently. The purple-haired song leader went to investigate.

As it turned out, our group had arrived at one of the three times per week designated for visitation. Family members, lawyers, and advocates had arrived at the scheduled time to see those inside. But, apparently, the guards in the facility had deemed our presence—the presence of protestors—as a security threat. They had shut down the entire facility to do a head-count of the men inside, and they were not allowing those who had entered already or those who had arrived for appointments to leave or enter.

The song leader had asked, urgently, what if we moved backward? What if we sang from across the street? She was polite, eager to comply.

But it was too little, too late. We had occupied the sidewalk with our sheet music for twenty minutes before dispersing. And our brief, peaceful occupation of the public sidewalk had resulted in ICE officers closing the center to all visitation for the entire day.

The organizers of this carol sing (not me, not my church, but an entirely different organization) had made real mistakes. They had failed to claim a permit for the event. (!!) They had also failed to check the times for appointments, so they hadn’t known that Saturday was one of only three visitation days per week. And they hadn’t realized that ICE officers within our own community could be so cruel, so capricious.

Because visitation hadn’t always been on Saturday. The administrators frequently changed the times.

I later tried to reason with the guards myself—"Listen, we’ve gone. Can’t you let these people in now?”—the ICE officers declined and cited “policy.” When I asked who I could talk to about the policy, they said the organization that ran the facility, Geo. They referred me to Corporate.

Share

These officers did not mention the facility’s warden. They also didn’t mention what I found out later—that the policy of this very facility had a way of shifting daily based on the whims of the officers.

And, of course, we were no threat. Not one person in our group touched the fence, yelled at a guard, or even held an aggressive poster. We handed out snacks to people coming and going. We were polite to officers. We even offered hugs and support to a woman who came up to us, asking for rent assistance (we connected her to a neighborhood nonprofit and to a local church’s aid fund).

Despite seeing ICE in the news do such dramatic harm to migrants, I still found myself surprised and angry when I realized the way they had hoped to manipulate us.

ICE was making us—the “protestors”—the bad guys. We had messed up the visitation schedule. Our presence had hurt the very migrants we wanted to help. Blame the allies. They hoped to dissuade us from staying, and to discourage us from ever returning.

Leave a comment

And, you know what? My and others’ ignorance had been harmful to immigrants, but only because our presence offered ICE officers a weapon. We became a tool by which ICE could manipulate the situation. ICE dangled visitation, and then took it away, blaming a church group on the sidewalk.

Even though the right to legal counsel, to communicate with family members, and to be witnessed by advocates is what the legal system calls “due process,” Aurora officers refused to give it, instead using it as a bargaining chip. The opportunity for visitation, in this circumstance, became a way to control both the men inside the facility and their family members outside.

The cruelty was the point.

I admit, I underestimated them. I thought the worst ICE could do to us protestors would be to put us in a cell for a night before dropping whatever false charges they’d filed. I was wrong. They manipulated us into regretting that we’d come at all. That’s master-level manipulation.

And it makes me angry and afraid.

Thanks for reading. You’ll find a few lighter-hearted curious reads below, and you’ll be happy to hear that they are NOT political reads. ;-)

Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

Curious Reads

#1 Norman Rockwell, the activist? Learn about Norman Rockwell, the artist-activist, and how he changed his politics because of Ruby Bridges. (by yours truly)—The Christian Century

#2 Australia has banned social media for under 16s. And everyone’s waiting to see whether the ban will stick. —Wired Magazine

#3 The 50 Best American movies this year, according to reviewers. And you’ve probably only seen 1 or 2 of them… —The Guardian

#4 Why does AI write like that? Analyzing the chatbot’s very weird writing voice. —New York Magazine

(You can also listen to this story ;-))

Get 30% off forever

#5 Instagram’s favorite cartoons of 2025 prove that we’re all going through something.—The New Yorker

Leave a comment

Just for Fun…

The Best/Worst break-up lines that people have ACTUALLY SAID IRL to end their romances. —the New York Times

Much ink has been spilled in the past five years about women and the American Evangelical church. I know cause I’ve expended much ink myself, and because I have left behind the borders of White American Evangelicalism within which I grew up.

I really did used to be a good evangelical. What am I now? I suppose that now, I’m just a progressive evangelical—because you can take the girl out of church, but I’m not sure you can take the evangelical out of the girl. ;-)

This struggle with church and gender finds an insightful narrator in . She’s published every media outlet you’ve heard of, and now, her journalistic memoir, Famished: On Food, Sex, and Growing Up as a Good Girl, narrates how diet culture intersects with purity culture.

I MEAN, COME ON, THIS IS THE BOOK WE ALWAYS NEEDED.

I love a good memoir, and I especially love one that spills the tea on the evangelical culture that I have both adored and despised in equal measure. And the ties between diet culture and female purity—rhyming scripts, Anna calls them—have hardly been discussed. There’s a lot to say.

Anna embarked on a monster reporting journey, talking to dozens of us who lived through both the “heroin skinny” of the 2000s and the “True Love Waits” craze. And this book is her own story and theirs. You already know these stories because if you’re here, reading this, I have a hunch that her story and yours and the stories of the women you love does not look so different.

And we especially need this book right now—when “heroin chic” is back and Christian Nationalist pastors are telling single women on the the internet that if they want to get married, then they need to lose 20-30 pounds. (How does it feel to live with your foot in your mouth permanently, Joel Webbon?)

Anyway, I hope you’ll pick up a copy for yourself this Christmas. (TREAT YO SELF!)

@primevideoaunzON OCTOBER 13, WE TREAT OURSELVES 🥰 #Parksandrecreation #parksandrec #AmyPoehler #RashidaJones #AubreyPlaza #NickOfferman #LeslieKnope #Pawnee #Retta #AzizAnsari #TomHabberford

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

Thanks for reading, pals.

I take it slower around December. You’ll hear from me at the Empathy List at least one more time this year, perhaps twice. But I don’t post according to my normal weekly rhythm.

I hope your Christmas and advent season is exactly as you need it to be. For me, that means restful, joyful, and connected to my people… and trying my best to mostly ignore the men in the White House. (Not sure if it’s possible. We’ll see.)

Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

The Woman Problem

by

I am a Christian woman who has struggled to remain in the church.

I detail this struggle at length in my forthcoming memoir, Famished: On Food, Sex, and Growing Up as a Good Girl. Like many women, I’ve grappled with blatantly patriarchal interpretations of scripture. Loyalty to male power has led church leaders to excuse the inexcusable: covering up sexual abuse scandals in the Southern Baptist Convention, excusing sexual misconduct by celebrity church leaders like Ravi Zacharias and Bill Hybels, and showing allegiance to our self-confessed predator President, just to name a few.

This same forgive-and-forget nonchalance has also informed interpretive readings of Scripture that defend indefensible male behavior in the Bible. I’ve listened to many sermons that engage in intellectual gymnastics to justify male-coded sin, blaming Bathsheba for her own assault because she had the audacity to bathe, for instance.

So, when I read Liz Charlotte Grant’s gorgeous book Knock At the Sky, I wasn’t surprised to see that early church fathers engaged in spectacles of creative reinterpretation to excuse Abraham from the sin of bigamy after he impregnated Hagar, his wife’s slave.1

Not only did Augustine blame Abraham’s wife Sarah exclusively, claiming a “defect in her nature” (127) he also purported that somehow, Abraham refrained from having any lust during his encounter with Hagar. Ambrose, a bishop of Milan, argued that impregnating Hagar was a matter of “moral obligation” after the population had been wiped out due to the flood (this feels like a pronatalist argument I may soon hear on the news). And Didymus the blind insisted that the sexual act between Abraham and Hagar was performed “without passion,” as if the presence of pleasure is more of a sin than another human being’s transactional exploitation.

There is much historical precedent for the “plain reading” of scripture to side with male power and female oppression. If male sin isn’t reinterpreted into nonexistence, it is often quickly forgiven with little regard for justice. Men can fall and rise and again, but a fallen woman has little hope for ascent.

Subscribe now

It shouldn’t be a shock, then, that women are leaving the church in unprecedented numbers. This is unsettling for the church, not just because losing a demographic is concerning, but because (historically) women volunteer in church more than men. Mothers are integral to passing faith traditions on to their children.

During the Boomer generation, men were more likely to disaffiliate from the church than women. But those demographics have now flipped. As more younger women identify as feminist, they have rising concerns about gender hierarchy in the church.

Women in these surveys say that their decision to leave the church wasn’t based upon any one thing. Rather, they experienced a steady accumulation of negative experiences based upon gender.

I can relate. I grew up attending a Southern Baptist church (while enrolled in a fundamentalist Christian school). In college, I longed for less rigidity and more grace. I found that (to some extent – smoking and drinking were no longer contraband, at least) when I joined a Reformed Presbyterian congregation.

Still, I couldn’t escape the sexism. My desire to leave the church was a slow burn, a gradual realization of all the ways my identity and value as a woman had been minimized – and weaponized – in the church. The harsh comments about female bodies by male religious authority figures. A friend’s assault by a youth pastor, and the lack of accountability to which he was held. The false promises of purity culture. The expectations for women to endlessly serve without ever receiving discipleship or support. The consistent use of exclusively male pronouns for God and humankind, alike, from the pulpit.

I felt like I had two options: be perfect and conform to rigid gender standards which did not seem to make room for my needs, interests, gifts, or humanity. Or leave and reject Christianity entirely.

Share

In my reported memoir Famished, I detail my own faith crisis. I describe an inflection point brought on by personal trauma. I didn’t want to leave the church, but I wasn’t sure how I could continue to stay.

As I wrote the book, I interviewed dozens of women who grew up with a similar religious background and asked the question, “How did your experience in purity culture impact your relationship with your own body?” Their responses were loaded and long. And their modes of healing varied, too. Some had left the church entirely, while others were able to still find faith in the Christianity.

But no woman I spoke to felt neutral. No woman remained unscathed by the wounds of patriarchy disguised as the righteousness of God.

One of the chapters I was most drawn to in Knock at the Sky was about Hagar, the enslaved woman who was impregnated by Abraham and then banished into the wilderness after Sarah could not manage her own jealousy. In Grant’s rendering, I saw Hagar anew: an enslaved woman with no power, now pregnant (nauseated and vomiting, perhaps), famished, and without hope in the desert.

Share the Empathy List

But God found her there. Banished and alone, God sought her, even though she’d been rejected by Abraham, the patriarch. God asked Hagar to return to her home. Who would have blamed Hagar for refusing? And yet, where else was there for her to go? She had no other place to turn. Out in the desert, she would die. And so, Hagar returns to the home of the patriarch, the site of much exploitation.

But this is not simply a narrative about Hagar quietly submitting to unjust authority. This story is much more hopeful than that, because in the desert, God makes Hagar a promise: her descendants would be “too numerous to count.” She wasn’t being called to shrink, but to expand.

Hagar, a fallen woman, would rise again. God would see to it.

This kind of promise is what gives me courage to continue in the church, too. I have experienced the precarity and scorn of patriarchy in my body as a woman. I have been in the desert, and I have experienced the pain and scars of embodied injustice. And yet, I felt the call to return home. Not because I am blind or ambivalent to injustice. The injustice is real, but I have hope for a better future.

About the Author

Anna Rollins is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, Salon, Electric Literature, Joyland Magazine, and other outlets. She is a 2025 literary arts fellow with the West Virginia Creative Network. Follow her @annajrollins on Substack and Instagram.

And guess what? Anna’s memoir RELEASED TODAY: Famished: On Food, Sex, and Growing Up as a Good Girl. Let’s support her!

Buy the book!

I’ve been haunted by historians lately.

Last October, I attended Theology Beer Camp, and and told us from the stage that Trump would win and Harris would lose. ( said the same on his Substack, if I remember correctly). I didn’t believe their predictions—I couldn’t. Not until a month later, when I sat on a friend’s couch, watching states tally the election results in between Colorado Rapids plays (hockey), did I understand. With my jaw in my lap, I realized that the historians had called the election before anyone else.

That same month, I picked up Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny, and a few months later, William Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. Snyder paints a bleak picture of waning democracy as authoritarianism threatens and overtakes European countries in earlier eras, while Zinn reveals how capitalism has always been the greatest authoritarianism threat to our nation’s democracy. (Zinn’s history is more of a socialist, protest history of the United States, making those who lived on the underside of our economic system the protagonists of the American story. I needed that corrective!)

As I read these works, what alarmed me the most was my own naiveté. I thought I had understood the depth of America’s history, and in fact, I had been insulated by my own privilege. It was time to decolonize my politics.

This past August, I spent time at San Diego’s border port of San Psidro, crossing on foot from San Diego to Tijuana, and back again.

Over those two days, I witnessed the same blatant disregard for the law within Border Patrol and Customs agents that we’ve seen ramp up in Chicago. Agents were defensive, they refused to allow any immigrants to claim asylum (including physically blocking them from walking into ports of entry to legally ask for asylum in the first place!), and they sought to make the process of border-crossing as unpleasant and intimidating as possible, even for us citizens.

(I will publish a travelogue of the experienced in the Christian Century magazine within the next year, but no pub date on that yet.)

Worse, at Trump’s request, the border wall that I saw with my own eyes had been lined with razor wire—literal razors that stuck out of curled barbed wire, wound into the barrier between our countries—presumably to catch and rip the skin of any immigrant who got too close. When Trump deployed the National Guard in San Diego, their task was to place this wire on the border wall.

Share

Contractors under Trump’s orders have also raised the American side of the wall to 30 feet. Why? Because when a migrant climbs the wall and falls from that height, they won’t just break bones, but become permanently disabled or will actually die, and thus will be unable to enter the United States ever again. Hopefully this will do double-duty and discourage others from traveling the same hazardous route.

What I mean to say is, the cruelty at the United States border shocked me.

And not only that—this entire Trump administration has shocked me.

I am a white American citizen, and before this year, I still believed the positivist lie that America was ultimately country of law and order. Justice would prevail in our justice system—checks and balances, congressional oversight, judicial independence, etcetera, etcetera.

The worst of American history was behind us, and before us stretched unending democracy.

Even the events that caused the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 seemed a derivation to me—because, remember, the insurrection of January 6^th had resulted in many convictions. Trump himself faced judgment in court after his first term. In fact, I can recite a list of American evils from the deep past that I assumed, mostly, to have been resolved:

the Jacksonian Indian Removal Act and the extermination of indigenous peoples and their sovereignty,

the rise of the Klu Klux Klan and mob justice during Reconstruction,

the federal imprisonment of activists during the Wilson administration,

the cultural and sexual censorship under McCarthyism and the accompanying Lavender Scare.

The most embarrassing evils committed by my government and countrymen had occurred exclusively within the deep past.

We had reached a moral summit. Now, finally, we were colorblind, enlightened, inclusive, pluralist, globalist, and most importantly, not like our grandparents. We had learned our lessons from the past. Perhaps we had opened the door to utopia, after all. (See: Barak Obama as the first black man to be President, ABOUTDAMNTIME.)

Share the Empathy List

In fact, we have made progress since those days. Yet before the Trump administration’s second term, I confess that I felt apathetic about politics because some part of me assumed I would have no role to play. In fact, I assumed that the play had, essentially, concluded.

Well.

Timothy Snyder (AND EVERY SINGLE HISTORIAN) would like a word.

As Snyder states in the epilogue to his chart-topping book, democracy is not a stable, static reality of my nation, as I had once believed it to be.

“Until recently, we Americans had convinced ourselves that there was nothing in the future but more of the same. We allowed ourselves to accept the politics of inevitability, the sense that history could move in only one direction: toward liberal democracy.”

He states that many Americans seemed to accept the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 as “the end of history.” The end of dictatorial communism had ushered us into a sort of political retirement, with democracy forever ascending and the traumas of fascism, dictatorship, and genocide in the deep past.

Here lies the end of activism, our elders seemed to tell us. But in accepting this premise, Americans “lowered our defenses, constrained our imagination, and opened the way for precisely the kinds of regimes we told ourselves could never return.”

So then, when a leader—say, like our current president—entered, dragging with him populist policy, factual confusion, and unrestrained oligarchy, trying his damndest to abolish the basic tenants of a democratic state (like due process, free speech, the right to assemble, and freedom of religious expression), we are tempted to extend the inevitability further. We can find ourselves assenting to the leader’s political narrative without realizing it, even when we disown the leader himself.

Snyder explains, “If you once believed that everything always turns out well in the end, you can be persuaded that nothing turns out well in the end.”

Share

Political nihilism lies at the base of a belief in perpetual democracy, just as political nihilism lies at the base of belief a democracy’s inevitable decline. In both scenarios, an individual actor accepts that they have no meaningful power to change the nation’s direction.

Our government turns into an abstraction, too big to steer. If government is an untouchable utopian ideal, then it can also become an untouchable nightmare. And in that case, we may ask ourselves, what good does protest do when we hold so little power? Yet if we imagine “democracy” as disembodied and abstract, then we cede our responsibility to each other.

In fact, government lives in our bodies because politics describes how we live together. Democracy is just a word that defines an equitable way to live together as neighbors.

If we see politics as bodies and voices joining together in the communal effort toward a good life, then our individual actions do matter. Speaking up for a neighbor at a town hall tells that specific neighbor that, to at least one person in their community, she matters. Calling a senator gives the politician a real-time report card from one IRL citizen using her voice. Canvassing can humanize the side you represent to the person on the other side of the door, and when you meet a neighbor who disagrees with you, a neighbor who may fear the picture of your demographic that a politician has painted, well then, demonstrating your humanity, that you are not evil, that you and your neighbor have more commonalities than differences, that disproves the rhetoric of their politicians in real time with more efficacy than any political advertisement could.

Your neighbor is not the enemy, and you are not your neighbor’s enemy, and we can work together to make our communities healthier for everyone. That is democracy at its purest.

No, you can’t rewrite laws by yourself, you can’t depose corrupt politicians single-handedly, and you can’t fact-check the information spewing from the liar’s mouth with enough umph to make it stick in the minds of your (my) in-laws.

But you can say no, and you can say no in community. And that no matters.

Subscribe now

When I say I have been feeling the need to “decolonize” my politics, I mean that I need to decenter the white narrative of our national history. I need to understand politics from the perspective of those who have suffered under the policies enacted by my european ancestors.

I’m seeking to learn from the political history and activism of African Americans and other minorities, in particular, whose ongoing struggle for civil rights can offer truer perspective on this political moment in our nation.

And according to historians of the Civil Rights era, protest is essential to achieve progress. Yet the efficacy of protest movements cannot be judged in terms of days or weeks, but years and decades.

As Gloria J. Browne-Marshall—another historian—told NPR reporter B.A. Parker, reflecting on her book A Protest History of the United States, she sees protestors resisting that slow movement:

“There’s an impatience. [We have the attitude that] this is the 21st century. People don’t want to re-protest what was already protested and won, you know? So consider the Montgomery bus boycott was in 1955. We gained the civil rights legislation in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

So many lives were lost [in those protests]. So many people were assaulted. So many protests happened during that time period of 1955 to 1965. But [today we] want the TV version…

NPR Reporter: Some protests happened, and it was all done, and it was fixed.

Browne-Marshall: And it was all done [back in] 1965.

NPR: I saw that movie.

Browne-Marshall: Yeah. You saw the movie “Selma.”

Share the Empathy List

As she points out, the fact that folks protested in the past does not mean protest does not need to continue into the future. In fact, seeking justice requires continued commitment to protest movements, and to participate over the long-term, activists must cultivate resiliency.

“[Progress] is something that’s two steps forward, one step back, but it’s two necessary steps - necessary - or else you’re always going backwards. That’s why it’s so important to understand that protest is a necessary part of our work.I think we need to think about and look at the future. And are we going to be freedom freeloaders, or are we going to invest in a future in which there are people who gain rights and protections based on our work, the same way we gained them based on other people’s work?

In other words, yes, this moment is scary. But we must continue to tell the truth, demand justice, and show kindness to our neighbors because those actions matter. So does the work of protest over a weekend, even more so, the work of protest over a lifetime.

As Browne-Marshall points out, African American activists have made notable cultural and political progress over the decades since the Civil Rights movement, progress that even this administration has not been able to undermine—progress that enfranchised black voters in the South, made lynching culturally unacceptable and illegal (mostly—I know that black deaths still happen and that the perpetrators are not always held accountable!!), and caused the national parties to seek ways to make elections fairer.

Sure, the administration hasn’t finished yet, and much can happen in three years. But I urge us to learn from the good work of our black neighbors who chose justice over the long-haul.

What does it look like to admit the truth of how scared we are, and yet to hold hope for the future? I don’t know. But I am seeking to learn to hold my fear and hope in tension. (What other choice do we have?) After all, fear is not the enemy, and neither is hope.

Thanks for reading, my friends.

Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

Tell me: what scares you about this political moment? What gives you hope?

Leave a comment

I’m anxious right now. I feel anxious watching so many of the good systems1 established by progressive policy in the U.S. face down a wrecking ball by the name of Donald Trump. But more than that, I feel deep grief for those most directly affected—like those held within Broadview Detention Center and the protestors who stand outside, facing down lines of Illinois State Police in riot gear with their cans of tear gas.

In that way, I have felt relief receiving the prescient words of my friend in this moment. She’s been on her own long journey with anxiety as a woman within the American church, a writer in the world of publishing not made for mid-listers like us (I’ll explain this sometime), and a white woman progressive in a world of misogynistic, racist politicians.

I need Sara Billups’ wisdom, and I bet you do, too.

Today, I’m sharing an excerpt from her book that just released LAST TUESDAY called Nervous Systems: Spiritual Practices to Calm Anxiety in Your Body, the Church, and Politics—which is a book exactly for THIS moment in history that seeks to meet those of us who are anxious for real, scary reasons with an embodied hope offered by ancient contemplative practices. More importantly (to me), Sara’s a good writer and she tells stories in this book alongside its more practical elements.

And she tells the truth. There is no total cure for anxiety. (Don’t believe the man behind the curtain at the Department of Health!!!!). Yet as Sara writes it in her introduction, “Jesus said, ‘Do not worry,’ and I believe he meant it. To say it plainly: My anxiety did not dissipate.” The contemplative practices she has enacted in her daily life have not “fixed” her anxiety, bringing her to anxiety inbox zero. “Instead,” Sara writes, “God met me repeatedly in its very presence.”

Isn’t that what we need more? More than inhabiting a place of total peace, we need the presence of God as we wrestle with anxiety. We need God more than we need peace. At least I do. And Sara models a way for us to seek God even when we feel afraid.

We all need a lesson in letting love, not fear, lead us.

…plus this excerpt talks about energy vampires, which makes me think of the best energy vamp of all time, Colin Robinson. You’re welcome. ;-)

Enjoy!

Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

On Energy Vampires & the Gift of Diverse Community

by

The New York Times ran a 6-Day Energy Challenge in January of 2024. Daily themes were on topics like how to eat better and gain more focus. Day four stuck out to me: Identify your “energy vampires” and “chaotic friends.”

The article invites readers to conduct a “friendship audit” and lists questions to consider to determine if a person in your life is an energy vampire:

• Who, if anyone, do you consistently put off seeing or dread responding to?

• Who often makes you feel so irritated, keyed up, or fatigued that you have to recover after seeing them?

• Who makes you regularly zone out during conversations because they aren’t involving you?

Oprah was interviewed for the article and said, “You are with the wrong friend ‘if you are around anybody that makes you feel less than 100 percent yourself, if you’re around anybody that makes you feel like you can’t shine or say whatever you want to say.’ ”

I’m certain I’ve been an “energy vampire” to friends in different times, and I can think of a few people in my life who would fit the bill of those three questions—friends who feed my anxiety. But I winced when I read this article. The message underneath a vampire friend audit is clear: We can dictate who is in our lives based on how they make us feel; we need to be close to people who can do something for us. I wasn’t comfortable with that.

Don’t get me wrong: No one should be forced to stay in a relationship or a church that is abusive or remain in any setting where harm is done. But consumerism is dripping all over the notion of the friendship audit. I can freshen up friends like a wardrobe. The same thinking can apply to a church that isn’t perfect—which is every church.

I thought about the article for several days and reread it a few times. I wondered if my frequent emotional hangovers were a sign of some internal draining, a drawing out of my personal stores of energy.

Psychiatrist Judith Orloff explains that emotional hangovers are “ ‘energetic residue’ left over from an interaction with an ‘energy vampire,’ or someone who, intentionally or not, saps your mental and emotional energy.”

Share

Ha, I thought. Sure, other people can deplete us. But what do you do when you suck the life out of yourself?

What do you do when you are, in fact, your own energy vampire?

I began the Ignatian Exercises in 2023 around the same time I was thinking about energy vampires. I had some personal work to do in understanding how we can be our own worst enemy. Part of the nine ­month retreat (for me, an hour in the morning before work) involves asking God to surface our authentic and false selves so that we can begin to differentiate our appetites from God’s desire for our lives. The authentic self is rooted in God’s love. The parts of us driven by love reveal our true identity. I have mine and you have yours.

Thomas Merton wrote in New Seeds of Contemplation, “My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God’s will and God’s love.”

My “false self” surfaced quickly over the first weeks of the retreat, featuring emotional heavy hitters such as loneliness and ego. My authentic self surfaced in gentler ways, including an inclination toward faithfulness.

Share the Empathy List

Loneliness diminishes when we’re committed to a group of people. Unfortunately, the ego can be poked and feelings hurt. When we pursue a part of our authentic self, which in my case involves a bent toward fidelity, that desire is usually tested. Church is a petri dish.

I want to be in a community with people I can learn from even if we don’t have the same taste or a lot in common. I want to grow to love people who are not like me, those younger and older than me with different stories and experiences. I believe that’s what a healthy church community looks like. That’s how empathy grows. But first and always, new and uncomfortable interpersonal situations pop up; there are constant invitations to choose kindness, patience, and self-control.

And that’s a good thing.

Leave a comment

About Sara Billups

Sara Billups is a Seattle-based writer and cultural commentator whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Christianity Today, Aspen Ideas, and others. Sara writes Bitter Scroll, a monthly Substack letter and co-hosts the podcast That’s the Spirit. She earned a Doctor of Ministry in the Sacred Art of Writing at the Peterson Center for the Christian Imagination at Western Theological Seminary. Her first book was Orphaned Believers, and her second, Nervous Systems, just released LAST TUESDAY!

This is an excerpt from ’ new book, Nervous Systems: Spiritual Practices to Calm Anxiety in Your Body, the Church, and Politics, published by Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group, copyright November 4, 2025. Used by permission.

Buy the Book

In the past few weeks, authoritarianism has descended on Chicago—

in the form of zip ties, tear gas, pepper balls, rubber pellets, and ominous white vans of masked men in green fatigues.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are the masked men in green. They’ve been joined by the Illinois State Police, AKA “the brown shirts” as one commenter called them, and together, they have descended upon the city to carry out “Operation Midway Blitz.”

There is SO MUCH INFORMATION being chucked into the void right now—if you go on social media, you’ll be overwhelmed with news about immigration, deportation, and the organization known as ICE. Some of it’s true, some is false.

Today, I want to narrow your scope with a glimpse into one scene of ICE, immigrants, and protestors in Chicago: Broadview Detention Center.

…it’s still a LOT of information, though, so buckle up. ;-)

[BTW Chicagoans, legal experts, and immigration advocates, feel free to chime in if I get something wrong! I’m not an expert, just a fascinated researcher trying to understand what’s happening in Chicago. But I care about this being factual, so please let me know if you catch an error!]

First, what is “Operation Midway Blitz”?

“Operation Midway Blitz” refers to ICE’s descent into the Chicago region to perform targeted raids within the city and surrounding suburbs. (Midway is the name of a local airport.)

Millions of immigrants live and work in the region. As in most places, some immigrants in/around Chicago are documented and have governmental permission to be in the U.S.; others don’t. They may be partly documented, incorrectly documented, or waiting for court cases. They may be here on a visitation visa, but be living and working. To immigrate “the right way” to a country takes deep knowledge of bureaucratic systems within our government. Even seasoned legal professionals can get the process wrong, partly because it’s always changing. So, when an immigrant arrives, it’s easy to get a step wrong, which then makes them vulnerable to deportation. Others came here on purpose, intending to hide and do wrong. Both are true. But the former is more true.

However, Chicago is a “sanctuary city,” meaning a safe place from border prosecution for immigrants. The city government has passed a “Welcoming City Ordinance”—that means, Chicago policy does not allow government programs or workers to ask about an immigrant’s legal status in the country, will not disclose information about an immigrant’s status to the authorities, and will not deny services to anyone, based on immigration status.1

Many democratically run cities have passed statutes like Chicago’s, with the aim of making their cities attractive to newly arriving border crossers.

The Department of Homeland Security has stated that their targeted effort in Chicago is part of a larger strategy to capture and deport undocumented border crossers—particularly ”the worst of the worst.”

They seem to assume that more of these “worst” immigrants will be hiding within Sanctuary Cities, making these cities catnip for Border Patrol agencies.

Of this “worst of the worst” deportation policy, the DHS website states:

“Day-in and day-out, DHS law enforcement is removing the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens from American communities, including murderers, rapists, pedophiles, drug dealers, and more. 70% of ICE arrests are of criminal illegal aliens charged with or convicted of a crime in the U.S.”2

Several of the words in the above statement do some heavy lifting: the word “criminal,” for example, generally refers to federal crimes which a person has been “charged with or convicted of.” Those legal designations matter, and they imply that a person has received some form of justice within the U.S. court system.

However, border crossing without the correct documentation is a civil misdemeanor, not a federal crime.3 So, when DHS says that “70% of ICE arrests are criminal illegal aliens,” readers who take them literally will assume that 70% of ICE arrests are those who have committed a crime other than crossing a border, or at least that those arrested have crossed into our borders more than once (reentry causes the misdemeanor to advance to a federal offense).

However, outside fact checkers have taken issue with the stats provided by DHS.

For example, the claim about arresting only “illegal aliens” is false. In one single day, federal agents arrested six U.S. citizens in the Chicagoland area.4 Some were protestors, including clergy; others were citizens who were racially profiled by ICE agents and swept up in immigration raids.5

This tracks with a wider DHS trend this year, according to ProPublica, who identified over 170 American citizens whom ICE illegally “kicked, dragged, and detained for days... without being able to called loved ones or a lawyer.”6

Further, even among those ICE detains who are immigrants, ICE has overwhelmingly failed to capture those with criminal records.

An NBC-5 investigation found that 18 out of 22 detainee names that ICE had released to the public had no criminal record in Illinois or nearby states Wisconsin and Indiana. Nationally, Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a data tracking org out of Syracuse University, has noted that as of September 21, 2025, ICE held nearly 60,000 people in detention across the country, and of those, 71.5% had no criminal convictions.

So, then, what exactly is ICE doing?

Share

Broadview Detention Center: A Microcosm of Immigration Policy and Response

Since “Operation Midway Blitz” began in September, Chicagoland’s Broadview Detention Center has played out this scene of U.S. immigration policy and response in miniature.

The government’s force, unaccountability, and disorganization is on display. So, too, is the determined dissent of protestors on the street outside.

Add to this the omnipresent white vans that shuttle in and out of the compound, arriving with the newly detained and then sending detainees elsewhere once the first round of processing is complete. The Trump administration has tasked ICE and DHS with quotas—3,000 arrests per day. So the white vans are in constant motion.

What do detainees experience inside of Broadview Detention Center?

First, a note about the center itself: Broadview was never meant to host overnight detentions, but to act as a pass-through processing center, moving immigrants from their holding cells at Broadview to more permanent detention (or release) within 12 hours.7 However, the center has begun holding its 200+ detainees at a time for much longer. Lawyers and detainees have reported stays as long as three days, with the longest stays clocked at 5+ days.

Share the Empathy List

That’s a problem because the facility does not have appropriate facilities for hundreds of people to stay for days on end. Detainees forced to spend days at the crowded center experience inhumane conditions.

For example, no way to wash themselves. Broadview has only one single shower in the building, a shower that was last noted to be out of commission, according to a 2023 congressional audit. Detainees also do not receive soap or toothpaste from agents.

Another problem: no medical personnel or chaplain work on site, a violation of the law.

The center also provides no opportunity for food preparation, limiting how detainees can eat during their stay. In fact, detainees described their meals as exclusively ham and cheese Subway sandwiches (the childrens’ meal at Subway), plus bottles of water. That’s if they were lucky. Other detainees described only bread and water rations. Some described not even receiving water.

Cells contain no cots for sleeping, “only scant plastic chairs for dozens of men” and a cold, crowded, filthy cement floor on which to lay out.

One cell is stuffed with 30+ people, and inmates described overcrowding, with people “stacked one next to the other one.”

One toilet and one sink is installed within each holding cell. Toilets sit “out in the open.” Women, in particular, found this unacceptable, as they were being held in glass cells. So, for privacy, three to four women would stand to shield each other from the gaze of agents, just to use the toilet. Some menstruating women described being handed a single pad and a bit of toilet paper daily.

Yushell Alejandro Yin Del Toro of Mexico City summarized his three days spent at Broadview:

“They treated us like animals, or worse than animals, because no one treats their pets like that.”

Eréndira Rendón, vice president of immigrant justice at The Resurrection Project, described the isolation of detainees:

“We are not allowed to speak to any of our clients that are held in that facility. It is a black hole, and people go missing for days.”8

Protest Outside of Broadview

If the inside of Broadview is disorganized and inhumane, outside is chaos.

Outside, in picketing zones marked on the sidewalks and driveways surrounding the facility, protestors agitate for the sake of those without the opportunity to resist. They hold signs, chant, and scream at agents. Protestors also pray and sing, their hands raised toward those held within the brick walls.

Several priests, pastors, nuns, and interfaith leaders have volunteered to deliver spiritual counsel or to officiate communion for those inside; ICE has refused them all entry.

Subscribe now

A History of Clergy Protest at Broadview

Several of the clergy protestors at Broadview have been praying outside the facility for decades. A group of Catholics—originally two nuns and a local immigration attorney9—held vigil every Friday since 2006, spurred by the coordinated raids of six Swift & Company meat packing plants in the Midwest.

Sister JoAnn Persch, now 91 and one of the original to attend these weekly vigils, said she’s shocked by the changes in policy toward immigrants and toward those who meet outside the facility to pray:

“The things I see happening at Broadview are so against what I believe Christianity is. To be shooting [protesters] with chemicals, pushing them down, even people with collars on; and inside [Broadview], the denials of pastoral care, of legal help, of family contact—everything that’s happening is just the opposite of everything my faith challenges me to do.”10

Because she’s been advocating for immigrants for 40+ years, even longer than she’s been praying in front of Broadview, she’s seen this change in policy firsthand. The Sisters of Mercy, the order of both Sisters, have provided housing and mentoring to asylum-seeking families in Chicago over decades.

In a co-authored article about their ministry, the two Sisters wrote, “Over the years, we [have] built good relationships with immigration officials at local processing and detention centers in Chicago, and one even came to Sister JoAnn’s 90^th birthday party last year. But they will no longer talk with us — they too are afraid.”11

The policy changes have shifted how DHS agents engage the community, including protestors like Sister JoAnn and Sister Pat.

(By the way, you can read a delightful day-in-the-life essay from 2020 on these two activist nuns here.)

“A Campaign of Intimidation Against Dissent”

You won’t be surprised to hear that Border Patrol agents are no longer attending protestors’ 90th birthday parties. (womp womp)

Both ICE and Illinois State Police have used “excessive force” against (the rowdy, but peaceful) protestors at Broadview—agents have deployed bully clubs, rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper pellets, and riot gear.

And that’s not just the word of protestors against agents, but the findings of a report via the Human Rights Watch12 and a justice who agreed that the agents had used excessive force.

Agents of both agencies have also arrested and detained clergy and journalists, often releasing them without charges.

Last month, one of the most visible protestors was Reverend David Black of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago. (above) A photographer captured the reverend at Broadview: off balance, arms splayed, he turns toward the photographer and away from the masked man in fatigues who squeezes a blue aerosol bottle inches from his face.

The agents who stand across from him are unrecognizable, an anonymous force; meanwhile, he is a white blonde man in a clerical collar. And agents had already shot him in the head with rubber bullets before deploying tear gas into his face twice, at close range.

(In footage of the event, Black yells, “God damn you! You’re pathetic! Your country is ashamed of you! God is watching you! God is watching you! And you will pay for this!” as walked away after being hit by bullets from officers on Broadview’s roof.13)

Share

Rev. Black described the ordeal to a journalist later:

“There is a video that shows an ICE truck coming out at that moment, but instead of ordering us to disperse or giving a warning, they shoved us down, slammed protestors into the concrete and maced us with so much chemicals that I was drenched. My denim jacket, my jeans, my long underwear were drenched by the amount of chemical weapons they were deploying against me and others,” the reverand said.

“I just want Chicagons to be thinking if this is what they are doing to pastors, and to journalists, and to teachers, and to mothers and elders who are gathering to sing and pray outside of this facility, what might they be doing to our neighbors who are behind those walls?”14

Another clergy member, Rev. Hannah Kardon, was arrested at Broadview. A video shows her quietly facing down a line of Illinois state troopers in riot gear before being dragged to the ground and handcuffed as protestors beside her chanted, “Who do you serve? Who do you protect?” As police walked her away, she told them, “This is wrong, God stop them.”

She told writer Mara Richards Bim at Baptist News Global that she’s never been arrested before, that officers beat her with a baton as she prayed with those in her group, then dragged her away.

She said, “I hope if anyone sees this video and is disturbed by it, …think…, if they are willing to do that to a clergy in broad daylight, imagine what they are doing to detainees in the dark. We have to end ICE’s kidnapping and detentions. We must remove them from our communities or this violence will continue.”15

Another clergy member, Reverend Abby Holcomb of Urban Village Church, was also shot with rubber bullets by agents at Broadview.

She told UM news, “I told [ICE] they might not have to answer to me for this one day, but they will have to answer to God for what they’re doing — and that they need to put their weapons down immediately.”16

Rev. David Swanson, pastor at New Community Covenant Church on Chicago’s South Side, was also harrassed by DHS “Midway Blitz” chief patrol officer, Greg Bovino, while attending a peaceful protest at Broadview, the only demonstration he’s attended.

Jack Jenkins at Religion News Service reported that at one point, Bovino walked over to a group of protestors and began shoving the pastor while yelling in his face. Swanson, who was wearing a clerical collar, said Bovino yelled, “I’m not going to tell you again,” even as the pastor continued to move backward. Jenkins continued:

Swanson said the experience differed dramatically from demonstrations elsewhere he has attended. In the past, he said, he has tried to be “a presence for peace in situations that can get volatile” and a “person who different sides can be able to approach and talk with and have conversations with.” But his experience at Broadview felt different.

“This was the first time that I felt like there was absolutely no regard and no respect for a person who was visibly associated with a faith tradition,” Swanson said. “It did not seem like it made one iota of difference.”17

A Lawsuit

A group of protestors, including many of the clergy mentioned above, recently joined a suit with journalists and community groups, who complained the ICE had used “excessive force” to restrain their protests.

The judge ruled in their favor, issuing a temporary restraining order on ICE activities, and saying that the DHS officers had violated the protestors first amendment rights and the freedom of religious expression. She banned DHS members from deploying “riot control weapons” on “members of the press, protesters, or religious practitioners who are not posing an immediate threat to the safety of a law enforcement officer or others.”

Read more

I’ve been writing about the dangers of Christian nationalism for coming up on a decade by now. In that time, I’ve watched creators and authors come and go.

Zach Lambert isn’t one of those. He’s stuck around. Over and over, he’s beat the drum of liberation in Jesus—despite the trolls, the lost opportunities, and the conflict it’s brought into his life.

Case in point: Zach was kicked out of youth group in seventh grade for doubting… and encouraging others to ask the youth pastor questions he couldn’t answer. And then he and his church endured a two-year-long “trial” before his church planting network expelled them from its ranks for being fully LGBTQ+ and women affirming. So. He’s been through it.

If you can relate, you’re going to enjoy this conversation between me and Zach, two ordinary Jesus people who chose to walk the long obedience in the same direction, repenting publicly when we f— it up. (Which we both have, and will do.)

We’ve also both written books about reading the Bible from a lens of liberation rather than authoritarianism.

(And fun fact: the one and only wrote both of our forewords!)

Zach’s book is Better Ways to Read the Bible, a practical and personal guide to re-approaching your Bible after it’s been weaponized against you.

My book is Knock at the Sky: Seeking God in Genesis After Losing Faith in the Bible, a personal, wandering, artful commentary through the first 32 chapters of Genesis… which also happens to be the most difficult book to read after you’ve left behind fundamentalism.)

Zach’s a pastor and I’m a creative writer, yet we’ve come to the same place: the Bible extends empathy to all people and salvation to anyone who asks, no exceptions.

Chime in when something resonates, will ya?

Thanks for reading, my friends.

Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

About Zach Lambert

Zach W. Lambert is a writer, public theologian and the founding pastor of Restore Austin. He’s the co-founder of the Post-Evangelical Collective. His new book is Better Ways to Read the Bible: Transforming a Weapon of Harm into a Tool of Healing. He writes on Substack at .

Buy Zach's Book

About Liz Charlotte Grant

Liz Charlotte Grant is an award-winning nonfiction writer and former birth doula, whose essay about Elisabeth Elliot at the Revealer Magazine went “evangelical viral” in 2024. She’s a columnist at the Christian Century Magazine, and her first book is Knock at the Sky: Seeking God in Genesis After Losing Faith in the Bible. She writes on Substack at the Empathy List.

Buy Liz's Book

Zach Lambert Was Kicked Out of Youth Group…

…and Now He’s a Pastor Who Reads the Bible for Liberation, not Authoritarianism.

Liz: The first thing I want to talk about was youth group because—I don’t know how old you are, I’m 38—but I think we probably both grew up in this, like, heavy youth group culture of the 2000s.

Zach: 100%. Totally. I’m 36. I‘m with you, yeah.

Liz: I also went to Christian school.

Zach: And I got kicked out of Christian school in the fourth grade…

Liz: Well, you tried.

Zach: I tried the best I could, K through four. But the school had a rule that if you got sent to the principal’s office six times in the six weeks, then you got an automatic expulsion. And they gave me some grace. So, the eighth time, I remember I walked in and the sweet principal just goes, “Zach.”

Liz: Just shook her head.

Zach: “Zach.” She was just like, “I can’t, I can’t cover for you anymore.”

Liz: “I know you might be a pastor someday, but I, I just can’t condone this behavior.”

Zach: When I run into people from [my] childhood now—cause I still live in the same area where I grew up—a lot of them are like, “I thought you were either going to do this or end up in jail. So, I’m glad you’re a pastor.” And I am like, “Hey, fair.”(laughs)

Liz: They knew you in a past life.

Zach: Exactly. Where’d you grow up?

Liz: I grew up on the East Coast mostly, but also I lived a lot of places—Kansas and Pennsylvania and then Switzerland for a bit, and then I went to college in Illinois. And now I’m in Colorado. But, you know, sometimes online, I get DMs from people and they’ll be like, “I totally saw this coming,” or “I never knew.” (laughs)

I had one friend tell me, “Oh, yeah, you were always the rebellious woman at church.” Which was really surprising to me ‘cause, at that time, in my early twenties, I was really trying to conform! It didn’t work apparently, no one was fooled.

Okay, but you gotta tell me about the time you were expelled from youth group.

Zach: In the book, I used the phrase “parade of expulsions” to describe that season of my life because I was, yeah, kicked out of a Christian school in fourth grade, kicked out of youth group in seventh grade.

I open the book with that youth group story: I was at Bible study one Wednesday night around Easter time. And my youth pastor was talking about Jesus on the cross, that part of the story where Jesus says, “Father, Father, why have you forsaken me?” And the pastor says, “Well, you know, Jesus said that because Jesus had all of our sin on him and God can’t be around sin because God is holy. So, God turned his back on Jesus so Jesus would feel the full weight of all of our sin.” That was coupled with “we nailed Jesus to the cross” kind of stuff, and every time you lie, for example, you push the nail farther into his hand.

But I was just not buying it, even as a middle schooler. I raised my hand and just blurted out, “I thought you said that God was like a good father and trustworthy and loving, but God turns his back on his son in his greatest time of need? And also if God can’t be around sin, how can God be around any of us at any time? That doesn’t make any sense.” So my youth pastor said, “Go sit in the hallway.”

That’s what he always said. He never made good faith attempts to answer my questions. He just sent me to the hallway—that was a regular occurrence for me. But that night, my youth pastor talked to my parents when they picked me up. He said, “Your son is disrupting my Bible studies. He’s causing the other kids to doubt their faith. He’s letting his doubts and questions take hold of his own faith, and now his doubt is affecting other kids. And I won’t have that. I won’t have him disrupting my youth group. So, he cannot come back.” I could join for Sunday school, but not Wednesday nights, no youth group, no mission trips.

Part of me was relieved because I hated going, and my parents made me. But another part of me—a part that I would excavate much later through therapy and self-reflection—was devastated.

Here was thing—Christianity—that was the most important thing to everyone in my life, and I’d been explicitly told I couldn’t be a part of it. I couldn’t take part. That was pretty damaging as a middle schooler, you know? And it led to me trying to find identity and belonging in more harmful places.

Liz: Yeah, more harmful than “asking questions”?

Zach: Exactly, that’s what I always tell people when they’re like, “How do I respond to this question that my kid has?” I’ll just say, “Listen, the questions don’t go away. You can pretend they’re not there, you can tell them to not ask, but they’re going to go ask them somewhere—like the internet or ChatGPT or their friends or whoever. And wouldn’t you rather have the conversation with them than leave them to figure it out on their own? If you’re a pastor, wouldn’t you rather have the conversation with people than sending them to spaces that may or may not offer helpful feedback?

Share

Liz: I think, in a sense, you’re asking, what is a pastor for?

I’ve been part of a lot of churches that I have actually, um, been invited to leave (laughs)…or have felt it was time to leave. I got good at identifying the signs. But one of the things evangelical pastors and I tended to clash over was this definition of pastoral ministry: was it about guarding doctrine or than shepherding people?

In what you’re describing, I’m just hearing that you would rather walk with the person and hear their questions. And that’s not what your youth pastor wanted to do. Your youth pastor wanted to transmit doctrine according to what the church said was right and true. And so because you were disrupting that, he couldn’t transmit it, and so therefore you couldn’t be there.

Zach: That’s a great distinction. We have an axiom at RESTORE, our church here in Austin: we say, we pastor people, we don’t policy people. My real job is to meet people exactly where they are. We should aim to meet people exactly where they are, helping them to take the next faithful step. And you don’t get to control what that step is, you don’t get to determine what it is, you just get to be present.

Authoritarian Pastoring

Zach: Assuming you grew up in similar spaces, Liz, did you run into that same type of pastoring throughout your early years?

Liz: It’s funny, actually, in my early years I experienced the least authoritarian pastoring, because my church was very East Coast, white, and wealthy. It was Bill Hybels-lite, like seeker sensitive. It was consumer Christianity, Big Box store Christianity, like they were trying to create a franchise and bring in the most people possible. So, with that goal in mind, you just don’t preach controversial things, and you don’t preach deep theology either. I remember thinking, “Why does no one want to mentor me?” And now I get it, cause no discipleship was happening in that church. It wasn’t personal. (laughs)

Share the Empathy List

I had the opportunity the other day to chat about one of my work experiences I loved the most was getting to volunteer with younger students in the youth group. So I was like [your wife] Amy in the youth group, except that nobody cared at all what I did. And so I just got to do whatever I wanted, which was basically mentor younger women. Mike Yaconelli’s book about relational discipleship was my guide. So, I was a high schooler mentoring middle school students, and then I was a college student mentoring high school students. After that, it became like I’m mentoring young moms.

In fact, I was a birth doula for a while, and that was just such a natural expression of this shepherding that’s part of my own nature. Um, but you can imagine how that conflicted with many evangelical male pastors.

For example, I was a part of an Acts 29 church as a 30-something-year-old intern. And decided that I was a peer of the pastors and I refused to [acknowledge the hierarchy]. I remember thinking, “I’m not gonna treat you like you’re better. Sorry.” [Laughs] So, uh, we had lots of… heated discussions, and I did a lot of, um, poking and prodding, which was not their favorite thing.

But I was also performing lay ministry among people on the edges of the congregation. Acts 29 had their own recovery program that they wrote—basically AA, but adapted to reformed, complementarian theology. And my husband and I led those groups together, and then we led kind of small groups with those same people. And I met with women one-on-one and prayed with them and talked with them as a lay counselor. It was just really special.

However, in that setting, it was not the important work. Over and over, that’s what I heard: “The work that you’re doing isn’t actually that important to us. We won’t prioritize it.”(laughs) So, of course, they didn’t pay me for it either.

Of course, they did hire me to do marketing things.

Zach: Right.

Liz: But they wouldn’t hire me to do pastoral care.

Zach: ...they wouldn’t hire you to do the thing you had all the experience doing—mentoring and caring and disciple-making.

We [as evangelicals have] sideline[d] all of these folks who are incredibly gifted, and then we wonder why these areas are underdeveloped. “Why is there no mentoring and discipleship happening?” Yeah, well, because you’ve basically said that only certain types of people can actually do this [men, cis-gendered, white, seminary educated]. We are grasping water in our fists. But the more we try to control the work of the spirit of God and the movement of the church, the less effective we are, right?

Resisting Hierarchy at Church

Liz: That’s one of the things I like in your book, Better Ways to Read the Bible. You and I have some overlap here, where we are actively resisting authoritarianism and hierarchy in church. Can you talk about what that looks like for you?

Zach: I frame the book around discussion of harmful lenses for interpreting scripture and then offer healthier alternatives. One of the four harmful lenses I outline is this lens of hierarchy. And it’s hard to say which of the four lenses is the worst, but [historically] I would certainly say the hierarchy has a [historical] case.

Subscribe now

If we really peel the layers back on the hierarchy theology that was used to sideline you as a woman in an Acts 29 church [or that] is used to exclude LGBTQ+ people, that theological framework is the exact same one that was used in [support of] Jim Crow, chattel slavery, Native American displacement and genocide. That same lens appeared in Nazi Germany, saying that a certain type of Germanic Lutheran was actually God’s preferred person, and everybody else was supposed to serve to them, and if someone couldn’t accept that, they were killed. It’s hard to overstate how damaging this scriptural lens really is.

Most of us in modern society would have said, “Okay, well,... Chattel slavery, Nazi Germany, that, that stuff is all in the past.” But it’s not all in the past. We’re experiencing authoritarianism and Christofascism at unprecedented scale in our country right now. And we’ve perhaps changed some of the expressions of supremacy, but we actually haven’t changed the theological underpinnings.

Which I think is something you do so well in your book, Knock at the Sky, by the way.

Also I was just looking at this when I pulled it out your book for this conversation—this Barbara Brown Taylor quote on the cover—“It’s wonderful to read someone who knows what language can do when it’s let off the leash”? That is badass. You know, like, Barbara Brown Taylor said that about you and your work.

Liz: She’s very kind. (Laughs)

Zach: Anyway, one of the reasons this hierarchical lens is so powerful is that it removes responsibility from the individual and places it onto God. So, let me give you an example. Like, if I walked up to you, Liz, on the street, and I was said, “Hey, you’re actually supposed to do whatever I tell you, because I’m a man and you’re a woman, and you should be obey me.” You’d be like, “You’re a sexist and a misogynist, and get away from me.”

Liz: I’d be like, “Hi, John Piper.” (Laughs)

Zach: You look good, John. (Laughs)

But you could walk into many American evangelical churches today led by male pastors who would tell you, “Hey, God’s design is that you[, woman in my church,] are submissive and subject to your pastor, your husband, other men in your life, and that’s God’s opinion. It’s not my opinion. I’m not sexist. I’m not a misogynist. That’s God’s design for the world, the way that God set it up.” Adding “God said” to sexism gives a level of credence to those beliefs, even if they’re false.

I just finished A Well-Trained Wife, Tia Levings’ book. And, oh my gosh, it’s just this horrific picture of what that looks like when complementarianism is carried to its logical conclusion. Certainly, there are complementarians who are rightly horrified by what she went through. But my point is, her account illustrates the logical conclusion of the subjugation of women. Which is why I think Jesus was so clear about equity and equality, and I think why the trajectory of scripture is toward equity and equality. Reading hierarchy into the Bible is wildly harmful.

Christian Authoritarianism in the Government (Yes, we went there 🫣)

Liz: Related to that, let’s talk about Christian authoritarianism, which seems to be everywhere right now, especially in our government. You know, you have Pete Hegseth suggesting that maybe women maybe shouldn’t vote, like, maybe we should repeal the 19th Amendment. There’s a lot of overlap here where they say, “Okay, maybe women shouldn’t do this, do that.” …shouldn’t be in the military, shouldn’t be leading, shouldn’t be voting. They have to meet certain fitness or weight standards.

And that’s ultimately about control. [I say this as a happy fat lady!]

That’s the part of complementarianism that I always chafed against. I just never was that submissive in church spaces, despite trying. I always felt, “I don’t actually fit here.” And I’m not the only one, right? I’m not the only woman, I’m not the only marginalized person at church. So, as one of these people, you go, “Okay, if there’s actually only one right type of person, there’s actually only one right type of body.”

And that ultimately arises from having one right type of way to think about the scripture—because there's only one right way, right person, right gender, right body, right race and ethnicity.

It’s not just about interpretation. It’s about defining what it means to be human.

Especially when I think about interpretations of image-bearing. In those early chapters of Genesis, is woman made in God’s image? This is a real question that women bring to the text because we are told by men that that we aren’t God’s image, not really. We are an aberration. Even more so if you’re gay, if you are intersex, and the question becomes even more urgent then because of the active discrimination happening.

But I think as a woman in the church, I grew up believing I was wrong in some way because the original human form is Adam. And male is what God’s like.

Share

Zach: Yes, that’s the origin of complementarian theology.

…Complementarianism is basically the idea that women and men are equal before God, but different in their “role[s],” or what they’re allowed to inside of “God’s divine plan.”

Complementarianism is 35 years old. So it’s super young. What [came before that] was, women are ontologically inferior to men. Basically, women are malformed males. That was what every church father believed and taught.

That belief became so societally unacceptable… that in the ‘70s and ‘80s, evangelicals and fundamentalists were like, “Okay, we can’t keep hawking the “ontologically inferior” argument anymore. So we gotta re-package it.” And they created “complementarianism” in its current form. It is [evangelicalism] repackaging the full subjugation of women and ontological inferiority of women.

So, the natural conclusion for somebody like Pete Hegseth is, “Well, if women shouldn’t be leading men in any capacity [as the Christian church says], then they shouldn’t be voting, especially if they’re [voting on] a male candidate. How dare a woman!”

I think it’s helpful to remove all of our modern gentility, trying to dress this up as something palatable and say, [this discussion about equality] really is a binary. Either all sexualities, genders, expressions are fully equal before God and in society, or they’re not. And if they’re not, that is incredibly problematic, because then it opens the door for all kinds of subjugation to exist in the world.

Church Trials and Tribulations

Liz: I want to ask you about your experience around the inclusion stuff. Can you talk about planting your church with a particular network, and how that went for you all?

Zach: I was naïve, Liz, you know?

Liz: Oh, I get it.(laughs) I mean, I decided to be an intern at an Acts 29 church as thirty-year-old and I assumed I was going to be an equal to the dudes I served with. I get naïveté.

Zach: I was 24 when I met the guy who led that church planting network, he was probably seventy at the time. When I had my first conversation with him and talked about being a place of egalitarian leadership between sexes, a place of inclusion for LGBTQ+ people, wanting to do racial justice stuff... I think what he heard was, “Everybody’s welcome.” You want to plant a church where everyone’s welcome.

That’s on every evangelical website in America, you know? “No perfect people allowed. Everyone’s welcome.”

Then when we launched the church and we started doing kid dedications and baptisms and installing elders, and among those were women and queer people and historically marginalized populations as leaders and full participants in everything, then he was like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.”

So, I had to explain, “No, that’s not what I said. I said we’re gonna be equal.”

And I was just naïve. At the beginning, I thought, “Yeah, we’ll probably be on the progressive end of this movement, but isn’t it great to have a ‘big tent’ ecumenical movement? Isn’t that what we all need?” I just didn’t realize that that was not gonna be a long-term possibility.

The church planting network we were part of put us “under investigation.” At that time, they did actually not have an anti-LGBTQ+ policy in writing, so we spent two years “on probation” so that they could write a policy, pass a policy with their board, and then kick us out of the network.

Liz: What a waste of time. Zach, I’m so sorry. And what a waste of money!

Subscribe now

Zach: I don’t think I shared this in the book but one of the really wild parts [of this ordeal] was related to a family emergency. When we moved to Austin [in 2015], my son who’s now 11 was eight months old, and he started having seizures. (He’s doing great now, by the way. He was diagnosed with febrile seizures, which are basically fever-induced seizures when you’re little and your nervous system can’t handle it. We got him all worked out.)

But regardless, we had no idea what it was at first. He stopped breathing a few times, and it was terrifying. [We] spent weeks with him in the hospital, and these leaders from this network came to the hospital [to support us], laid hands on my son, prayed over him, laid hands on me and my wife Amy, prayed over us, said, “We will always be here. If the church fails, it doesn’t matter. We will always be here to support you and your family and your son, no matter what.”

And less than a year later, I’m getting emails saying, “You’re a heretic and an apostate, and we have to expel you from the brotherhood [and the network].” It was such whiplash.

I’d experienced [that] as a kid, but I [assumed,] “Well, that’s just these really fundamentalist places…” But it’s so much more prevalent than [I] realized.

Liz: Yeah, I myself had a health issue in the year before I did this internship [at the Acts 29 church]. Literally, I had a pastor give us a car for $5.00 [to support us during that time]. I think about the level of care that I felt from the congregants in that church, and yet the rejection that I [later] felt. Those two realities are both true, which is very confusing for a nervous system. (laughs) I belonged, and then I didn’t because I changed how I think about women’s roles at church.

That’s a very common experience for folks to be like, “On the one hand, I feel very loved. On the other hand, you don’t want me anymore. So, either I did something wrong or something about me is wrong.”

So, how did your church metabolize [the “discipline” and trial]? How did you?

Zach: Whether it was getting kicked out of youth group in seventh grade or this expulsion and defrocking that I experienced [Zach also had his ordination revoked], what I realized was that I was being pushed aside… because of something that I believed.

But I began to connect the dots when considering those within my congregation: people all around me were being pushed out, cast aside, and marginalized for who they were. I could choose. I could’ve lied about what I believed. I could’ve changed my belief to fit in. But others can’t. Like, my queer friends can’t change their queerness.

So, I began to realize, this is happening on a much broader scale, and my eyes weren’t open to it because of my level of privilege as a straight white guy.

That realization felt like a calling from God to double down on what we were doing at RESTORE [his church], to really be this place of mutuality and flourishing for all people, and especially those who’ve been marginalized by the Church in the past.

So, I remember when we [Zach and the elders] went to the church members and told them, “Hey, you guys, this is official, we’re kicked out.” And people applauded. People said, “Hell yeah, we did.” They understood that it meant we had stood by them.

Trumpism is Forcing a Crucible

Liz: So much about this season with Trumpism is revealing the guts of Christianity in America. This administration has forced Christians to clarify, what do we really believe? Why are we still doing this? What is the point of our faith practices, you know? And that’s become more and more important personally to discern for myself, and even for whatever communities and relationships I have, what is it that we’re actually about?

Zach: I think you do that really well in your book, but those other places where you write or speak or belong, what does that call for clarity look like in a moment like this?

Liz: Well, I’m working on my second book, which is protest stories—of American women and women in the Bible. But another thing is, as I’ve attended “No Kings” protests, as a part of my preparation for that, I thought about, what if I get arrested? I started thinking through, what am I willing to sacrifice to speak the truth? And if detention or arrest is a possibility, how can I prepare for the sake of my family—my husband, my kids?

Share the Empathy List

I’ve been more direct in what I’ve been writing lately—more political commentary, which is not my normal “beat,” but feels important right now. I’m going to speak as loudly as I can, even putting my body in the way of those who are vulnerable, if I get the chance.

For me, right now, living faith looks like excising fear and encouraging folks in my life toward the same. To say to them, listen, we actually need to have these hard conversations. We can’t skirt around this [white supremacy, greed within capitalism, Trump, harmful theology] anymore. We have to be direct. And we have to be willing to bear the consequences of that directness, too.

I want to create opportunities for myself to actually live out my faith as a weirdo, white, progressive, post-evangelical Christian socialist, you know?(laughs)

I do hope that this political moment will become a crucible for some Christians, where they can define how their faith interacts with real life (i.e. politics). And I am hopeful that questioning like that would lead to growth, in us as individuals and as a church community.

Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church

Liz: I’ve been relating this moment, in my own mind, to Bonhoeffer’s time. It’s humbling to realize that most Christians just did not take a stand in Germany.

Zach: Right, before [anyone] became the “Confessing Church” or the “Third Reich Church,” they were just The Church in Germany, ...and you didn’t know what was underneath. And the politics clarified it. As a German Christian, you were forced to say, “I’m either like pro-Nazi, or I’m anti-Nazi.”

[Read more about the Confessing Church vs. the Third Reich Church]

And the same sorting is happening right now. There have been a million “purple” evangelical churches that have just skated by on “We’re apolitical, we are not engaged in social things, we’re not controversial, it’s just fun for your kids and we’re gonna also talk about how Ruth was a great mom…”

Liz: …run from famine, I guess? Is that what mother Ruth teaches us? (Laughs)

Zach: …Seduce the guy in the barn… (Laughs) It gets real tricky.

But I appreciate what you just said about how like it’s okay that this time is a crucible, it’s okay that this time is clarifying. It’s scary, absolutely, and the consequences can be tremendous. We are not just skating through some soft “nothing is required of me version of faith.”

This moment confronts this kind of mile-wide inch-deep faith that doesn’t really require anything of you. We’re facing exposure as Christians, and that’s okay.

I’ve been in this navigating this political moment in the church since we started a pre-launch church planting process in 2015 for our church. Then, we were coming off the heels of Trayvon and Ferguson, and then you had the 2015 Republican primary, right? So, for a decade people have been coming to me for advice. It is difficult, and I’m sorry for that. But also, this revealing is a gift. It’s a gift to be able to know that you can’t live out an inch-deep faith anymore. That’s a liberation.1

Nonsense Theology from our Pastor/Politicians vs. Healthy Ways of Reading the Bible

Liz: You and I both have big thoughts/feelings about the negative ways to approach the Bible. And I believe one of the gifts (and curses?) of this time is that the Bible is being used in all sorts of insane, nonsensical ways. Like, DHS (Department of Homeland Security) is posting Bible verses on its twitter, and so is the Department of War.

There are worship services happening at Charlie Kirk’s memorial, where the President happens to be the keynote speaker/preacher. It’s just such a wild time to be Christian… and to have any biblical literacy whatsoever. …Which I’m not convinced that most of them do. (Laughs)

Zach: For sure no.

Liz: So, what are some positive ways that we can approach the Bible, and particularly the story of Jesus? I mean, I have questions about the Old Testament because I’m completely obsessed with the Old Testament.(laughs) But that might be beyond the scope of this conversation, so do with that what you will, Zach.

Zach: In the book, I outline these four healthier lenses [through which to read the Bible]: a “Jesus” lens, a contextual lens, a flourishing lens, and a fruitfulness lens. I’ll focus on the last one, the fruitfulness one, which is the most pastoral. It addresses that old question: how do I know if I’m doing the right thing right now? That’s a harder question than ever to answer, because there’s so much to be done. How do I know if I’m doing enough? How do I know if I’m doing it the right way?

Whether we’re talking about our Bible interpretations or our beliefs or our behaviors, I suggest we should be running them through the filter of fruitfulness—are they producing more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, in us and in the world around us?

If you can answer yes, then that is the fruit of the Spirit of God. Jesus said, “You will know my followers by their fruit.” We can use this question as a filter, a barometer, as a check. Because, referring to what you just alluded to, so much of our modern Bible interpretations and modern expressions of Christianity are producing hate not love, right? They’re producing cruelty, not kindness. They are producing sorrow and pain instead of joy.

Jesus gives us this one sentence mission statement: “I came to bring life and life to the full,” which is everybody experiencing fullness and flourishing.

When we juxtapose that phrase with the first part of that sentence, where Jesus says, “The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy,” we see that the reality is that some of our Bible interpretations and our expressions of Christianity have led to what Jesus said the thief, the enemy is trying to do—death and destruction and theft. That should arrest us. It should cause Christians internal turmoil and pain and struggle to see our faith weaponized in this harmful way.

The Department of Homeland Security putting out videos with verses from Isaiah saying, “Here I am, send me” [to recruit ICE agents,] and then [those] agents terrorizing immigrants? That’s the enemy, not Jesus. That’s stealing and killing and destroying, right? That’s not life and life to the full. That’s not flourishing.

And we should be able to stand up—we have to stand up—and say, “This is not of Jesus.” In fact, this is anti-Jesus, and if we are ever wielding the Bible in ways that harm our neighbors, then we’ve got a tremendous problem.

Subscribe now

Liz: Well, and what’s at the root of using the Bible like that? What does DHS intend when they use the Bible like that? We can presume that they do intend harm. They intend to control, to make people afraid. They intend authoritarianism. They intend to raise up one group of people above another.

That’s another picture of the hierarchical lens [that you mention in your book], which is the opposite of this flourishing lens. We must ask ourselves, what is the egalitarianism of the Bible? It is that we each get to flourish because of the mercy of God, because of the generosity of our Father who made us.

So, if every one of us is God’s image, there isn’t a hierarchy, right? In fact, we get to raise up each other in mutuality and generosity. And that’s different than what we’re seeing in the social medias at the moment… from our pastor-politicians. (laughs)

Zach: Amen. Amen.

But what about hell?

Liz: I’d be very curious to hear you talk about hell and judgment, because you write that people have said to you, “Okay, you’re leading you, your family and your church into judgment.” That could turn you away from the idea of “judgment” altogether. Yet “liberation” as a doctrine also comes with a side of justice, meaning judgment.

That challenges these progressive Christian ideals that say, “Listen, we’re all welcome. We’re all accepted.” But even these wackos using the Bible to nab immigrants? Even them?

I know we agree that God loves every single one of us, but also there’s this justice piece, so what do we do with that? Like, what kind of justice, and for whom, and for how long? How does it work? (laughs)

Zach: That is a doozy. I do not believe that progressive sentiment of, “hell is all fake and it’s just made up to control you”… You have to erase large swaths of scripture and large swaths of history [to make that case]. And then you have to deal with the fact that hell is almost always connected to God’s justice in scripture.

By denying hell, you’re neutering God’s justice when you just dismiss it out of hand like that. On the flip side, there are very few theologies more damaging than eternal conscious torment in hell.

So, I do believe hell is real, but I believe that it’s temporary and purifying. I have a very George McDonald/C.S. Lewis view on it, that God offers a perpetual invitation. Revelation 21 says that the gates of the new heaven and new Earth will never be shut, and the Spirit of God says, “Come. Anyone who is thirsty, come.” There’s this beckoning all the time. And we still have to deal with the sin, the pain, the harming of others, things we handed ourselves over to.

That same passage, Revelation 21, references murderers standing outside of the gates of the new heaven and new Earth. And, my take on that is, they’re outside because they have yet to leave behind their harmful ways of living.

But there is a constant invitation to leave behind the hell we’ve created and to enter heaven as a person committed to mutuality and flourishing. I think that invitation is forever.

And I think that that kind of version of hell outside of the gates is purifying, inevitably bringing people to a place where every person will eventually say, “I have to lay this down. It’s too harmful to me, and I can’t do it anymore.”

Share

Liz: I think I’ve settled in The Great Divorce camp myself. But I feel heartened by the idea of a constant invitation, even after death.

Jesus stands at the door and knocks, and the invitation does not end.

When my husband and I most recently talked about this, he asked me, “Yeah, but will Jesus chase them down in the far corners of hell, and what about…?” I said, “I don’t know.”(laughs) I just don’t know how to make sense of the afterlife and God’s justice, but I know that goodness includes some version of justice, and I can’t separate them. It has to. How else do you make sense of this entire life, including the parts that include ICE? But it’s challenging to hold out for unity, like, “You know what? Everybody can come. And also, what you did is serious and it matters.” And repentance really is real. And, and there are real consequences. How do we judge that? I don’t know, but I don’t feel like I have to make that decision. (laughs)

Zach: Thank God. (laughs)

A Word to the “Dones”

Liz: One last question for you: What would you say to folks who are done—like, “Ugh, I don’t wanna have to deal with the Bible right now. Because it just feels like such a weapon.” What would you say to them?

Zach: You’re the person I wrote the book for. And I’m not trying to trick you into reading my book so that you’ll become a Bible person again. It’s okay if you’re at a place where you just can’t pick it up, you can’t engage with it, there’s too much trauma, there’s too much pain. I’m so sorry that happened to you.

But the ways that scripture inflicted that trauma and pain was not how scripture was ever intended to be read, and it’s certainly not how Jesus wants us to apply the Bible. I believe there are better ways.

And Better Ways to Read the Bible is one piece of a larger prophetic witness that includes you, Liz, and a lot of our other mutual friends who are doing really great work—whether it’s related to expounding upon the liberation within the Bible or, whether it’s advocacy or activism, this work matters. I do think it is making a difference because there is a confessing church, so to speak, right? The one that’s been around longest is the Black Church, but there’s also a growing movement of us saying, if it’s not a Christianity centered on Jesus and justice and inclusion, then it’s not a Christianity that Christ would have anything to do with. And that rising response to these Christofascist movements is encouraging to me.

Liz: And we’re not done yet.

Zach: No way.

Leave a comment

P.S. Don’t forget to check out Zach and Liz’s books!

If you’re overwhelmed by the news, you’re not alone.

Right-wing extremism seems to be expanding its membership under the second Trump administration, and not only in the U.S. of A. (Did you hear about the attack on a synagogue in Manchester, UK? Or the mosque fire in Sussex, UK? We are not okay.)

But of course, we have plenty to be getting on with in my nation—from ICE assaults (including ZIP TYING CHILDREN as if CHILDREN can be CRIMINALS, WTAF1) to DOD’s Hegseth fat-shaming generals to a Chicago takeover to a government shutdown that has led Trump’s admins to slash as much of the federal government as possible in Congress’s absence.

And if you’re like me, reading stories like these makes me feel so powerless.

I can’t re-open the government, fire top political officials for incompetence or corruption, or restore justice to the justice system. I can’t even lead an organization in protest… because I don’t lead an organization.

But that doesn’t mean my protest—or anyone else’s—is ineffectual.

My next book (for which I just signed a contract!!!) is a project that tells stories of American women’s protests alongside the stories of women protestors in the first testament of the Bible.

As I’ve researched these stories, I’ve begun to pay more and more attention to contemporary protest in the news. Often those who protest don’t make the front page, yet when a story of protest comes across my feed, their courage emboldens me.

Suddenly, witnessing other examples of protest, I am reminded of the power that I possess. These protestors make me want to resist, to make good trouble, and to be loud about speaking the truth.

This moment is teaching me the power of ordinary voices to stand as allies, friends, and prophets reiterating God’s unequivocal love for all people.

As a white woman, in particular, I’m beginning to see my job as a simple one: speaking up, standing up, and protecting others with my body.

I will use the power and privilege of my white body and my American citizenship to pay attention to others who are more vulnerable than myself, my own safety be damned.

In the rest of this email I want to tell you a few of those stories that have lent me courage. These protestors are doing exactly that.

Share

I’m also starting a new section to my newsletter: the protest of the week.

A few times per month, I’ll send you a short description and link to a story of someone standing up for what’s right. I hope these stories inspire each of us to take courage and enact love in our neighborhoods in tangible ways—as tangible as standing between an ICE agent and a person they’re trying to reach, as tangible as wasting the time of authoritarian politicians, as tangible as offering some of the extra zucchini from your garden to your local food pantry.

Seriously, let’s get as practical and hands-on as we can. That’s how we fight the Big Authoritarian Lie that politicials-turned-theologians have been preaching: they seem to be saying, we are not all created equal.

But the truth is more powerful: God made and loves each one of us. And we are EQUAL before God. No person is better than or deserves more than another. Whether citizen or non-citizen, whether light-skinned or dark, God has created us in God’s own image.

That’s a truth we can stand up for.

BTW, when you take your stand, will you tell me about it?

Leave a comment

I want to celebrate this community of Empathy List readers for your courage and tangible love within your own real-life communities—because our good actions matter. And we are not alone.

Thanks for reading, my friends.

Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

Leave a comment

Here’s one practical thing you can do to protest and/or stand up for vulnerable people this week:

Sign up for a local immigration rapid response team’s newsletter and texts, add their phone number to your contacts, or join their facebook groups. These teams offer a variety of ways to be involved in caring for your immigrant neighbors—you can call to report an ICE sighting nearby, or you can volunteer to watch ICE in the street. You can donate, or you can write your senator to make sure this kind of group is protected. By your actions, you can tell your immigrant neighbors that their presence in our nation is needed and wanted—or, at least, that they deserve American law enforcement to follow our nation’s judicial processes for them, too, whether they’re citizens or not.

Colorado's Rapid Response Team

To find a group like this in your area, search “your state + rapid response immigration.”

A list of current protests and protestors that have inspired me:

• The crowd in Chicago that helped this guy escape from ICE as they tried to arrest him (seriously, you’ll want to watch it, it’s WILD. Cars stopping, honking, people throwing away zipties…)

• This comic artist!!!

• The Portland frog standing up to ICE agents with hip thrusts. He came back to this protest line even after agents released pepper spray into this suit’s vent hole!

Share

• Washington D.C.’s “Sandwich Guy” who threw his sandwich at the National Guard in D.C., the first instance of Pres. Trump’s new liberal city takeover plan.

  

• June 14th’s “No Kings” protests across the U.S., in photos:

• Greta Thunberg and her activist flotilla that sailed toward the Israeli blockade, in hopes of breaking through and providing aid to Gaza (she and her fellow activists were arrested)

  

• The historical “Bread and Puppet” theater, whose show, this year, centers the genocide against Palestine. One of the actors told NPR, “The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.”

• The pastors and priests who are protesting at ICE facilities while wearing their collars, including this man whom ICE officers assaulted:

• This priest who plans to walk for 50 days from Chicago to New York, in order to “pray in motion” in support of immigrants

• The person who plays Darth Vader’s theme song to alert neighbors when ICE arrives

  Share the Empathy List

• Photographers with a backbone, like Pete Souza. (Guess what’s happening at the bottom of the escalator lol!)

  

• All the white women who have put Mexican/Latin American flag bumper stickers on their cars just to waste the time of ICE officers who racially profile your neighbors.

• Antifa’s “urban farming division,” who planted kale in the wheel well of a police car…

  

  

• San Diego Catholic bishops and priests who have attended immigration hearings alongside immigrants in their communities and congregations.

…AND MORE TO COME! Tell me about the protests that have inspired you, both from history and especially in this present political moment. Let’s keep adding to this list, shall we?

Leave a comment

This week, I’m delighted to bring you an essay from a writing pal, . I know you couldn’t possibly be sick of hearing about Charlie Kirk LOL… but she has written an interesting take on his memorial service. For example, have you wondered which musicians headlined Kirk’s arena memorial? They included some of white American evangelicalism’s most popular worship leaders.

As a musicologist, this is Kelsey’s wheelhouse, so I wanted her to take on the question of worship music at the memorial head-on. Because I bet your relatives are still thinking and talking about it like mine are. (Or would be, if they let me talk politics with them! That’s an essay for another time.)

In the meantime, I hope, like always, that you know that you’re not alone in this fight against Christian Nationalism. It is heresy, and Charlie Kirk’s memorial was just one more time the American evangelical church demonstrated its hypocrisy and capitulated to Donald Trump. And it’s still not okay with me.

Take care of yourself, my friends.

Thanks for reading.

Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

Leave a comment

Worship Music is Not Political—or at least it shouldn’t be.

Who were the worship leaders who performed at Charlie Kirk’s memorial? And what did they compromise to be there?

Halfway through the televised memorial for Charlie Kirk, worship artist Cody Carnes stepped up to the microphone, Bible-in-hand, and began to invite the massive crowd of 90,000 to worship. He started to speak about the song they were about to lead, saying, “There’s hope in Jesus, Amen?” He continued, but then stopped mid-sentence. His wife, fellow worship artist Kari Jobe, walked over to nudge him and whisper something off-mic.

They were realizing that, as they were inviting the room to sing along, President Trump was looking out from his plexiglass-enclosed box, pumping his fist, revving up the crowd, and they were starting to chant—“USA! USA!”—in his honor. Carnes let the moment pass before beginning again.

After the crowd’s chanting died down, Carnes read from John 1, and told the audience that “The Blessing” had been one of Charlie’s favorite songs. On the stage leading the song were Carnes, Jobe, Chris Tomlin, Tiffany Hudson, Brandon Lake, and Phil Wickham. That roster represents almost all of the major players in the contemporary worship music industry, a web of collaborators and recording artists that produces the most popular songs used by thousands of American churches in their services.

The moment when Carnes had to pause and wait stood out to me as I watched the event. It illustrated the compromised position of worship leaders who consent to lend their voices and spiritual authority to political causes.

We all watched in real time as worship leaders deferred to the president of the United States, who had captured the crowd’s attention and enthusiasm, usurping a moment of reverence and grief with political fervor.

In some evangelical circles—especially in those where charismatic influence has grown—there is a belief that Christians can and should take advantage of mass media to evangelize, and that they can “hack” existing platforms or outlets for the gospel. Many watching and participating in the Kirk memorial likely celebrated as they perceived that Christians were capitalizing on an opportunity to share the gospel in front of the largest audience in a generation (Billy Graham similarly saw mass media as a tool for evangelism and wielded it to reach millions). Savvy Christians were taking advantage of the moment.

But as I watched, I wondered, who is using whom?

Share

I was 14 years old the first time I tearfully sang “How Great is Our God” along with Chris Tomlin, lost in a sea of people in a darkened auditorium in Salt Lake City in 2006, where I’d attended a conference for evangelical teens called “Challenge.” That event baptized me into the world of arena worship, and I loved it.

So I understand why people showed up and tuned in to Kirk’s memorial and thought, “This is revival.” When 90,000 people unify in song to worship God, whatever the venue or reason for gathering, God must be doing something big there, right?

Community music-making on its own is a powerful force for building unity among a group of people—within religious communities and without. When you combine that with the spiritual earnestness and devotion of a religious group, you have a potent cocktail of associations, beliefs, and experiences.

You may not get the same emotional intensity from a crowd singing “Sweet Caroline” at a baseball game, but people who would normally never sing in a group stand up and shout the lyrics. And it’s those little moments of unity and camaraderie that make in-person baseball games more than just athletic competition.

Share the Empathy List

Turning Point USA is a hybrid political organization and a para-church ministry. Arena worship, like at Kirk’s memorial, attracts people to the community. The memorial event effectively packaged and broadcast an experience of community that outsiders to evangelical Christianity find attractive, mobilizing that fervor for the sake of a political cause.

As a conservative teenager who sang tearfully with Chris Tomlin and marched in parades with local Republican political campaigns (some campaigners were my family members), I also longed for the kind of community that coalesced around these high-intensity, value-driven movements and organizations.

If I loved God, I was told to act out my faith, preferably as a Republican.

I’m not accusing these artists of platform-seeking and grifting–though the contemporary worship music industry has become intertwined with the entertainment industry in ways that introduce potentially troubling financial wrinkles. (It doesn’t help their case that, as Sojourners’ Darren Saint-Ulysse put it, their songs received a “Superbowl” type bump, pushing the songs of these worship leaders into the top 40 on the iTunes charts, where they have remained.)

But political actors are proving that they have learned how to borrow the faith and community-building power that they see offered by musical worship–without centering God.

Carnes and Jobe have appeared in the Trump White House before. Of that opportunity, when Carnes and Jobe accepted a summon to Trump’s Oval Office, Carnes told RELEVANT,

“Man, I don’t care whose administration it is. If that invitation comes across our table, that we get to go into that house and lift up the name of Jesus and invite the presence of God into that house? … It was just to honor God in the way that we were getting invited to and we were just doing our best to do that.”

Lake explained his presence at Kirk’s Memorial like this:

“This wasn’t a political stunt. This was not saying I’m siding with anyone, other than, we were going to go minister to a widow who’d just lost her husband, who was a man of faith, and we wanted to honor their family. And I thought it was so amazing that she was like, ‘I want worship to set the tone. I want worship to lead the way as we celebrate his life.’”

And we can let Chris Tomlin explain for himself why he accepted the invitation:

Taking them at their word, my most generous read is that these worship artists said “yes” to the Kirk memorial because they saw it as an evangelistic opportunity. Yet for a day, these musicians lent the power of what they do to a political movement, in an environment where worship defers to politics. It’s an “away” game.

And we cannot separate our faith from the place where we practice it.

Attendees showed up at Charlie Kirk’s rally ready to worship something. The desire to experience the connection, the collective effervescence, the divine is, I think, something to take seriously.

I just wonder, who were they worshipping?

About the Author

Kelsey Kramer McGinnis is a writer, musicologist, and educator based in Iowa. She holds a PhD from the University of Iowa.

Kelsey is a regular contributor to Christianity Today, where she writes and reports on worship practices, the music industry, and church culture. She is also an adjunct professor at Grand View University in Des Moines, where she teaches music, theology, and social justice.

She is the co-author of the forthcoming book, The Myth of Good Christian Parenting: How False Promises Failed a Generation of Evangelicals (Brazos press, October 2025), which releases next Tuesday!

Leave a comment

You can follow her on substack here.

#1 This week’s Top of the Fold is the story of a cultural revolution—

That is, Chinese immigrants reflect on how American culture increasingly mirrors the authoritarian “cultural revolution” of China, including the curtailing of humorists, à la Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert.

Read these two companion pieces at the New York Times—

“Many Chinese See a Cultural Revolution in America” by journalist Li Yuan

People in China are expressing alarm at what looks like a familiar authoritarian turn in the United States, their longtime role model for democracy.

Read

“How to Silence Dissent, Bit by Bit Until Fear Takes Over” by Li Yuan

In China, journalism and public debate were opening up, and then a leader took over and used a series of steps to dictate speech.

Read

The Highlights

This Trump term feels different for Chinese immigrants in the United States.

Having long been a paragon of democratic free speech and political and artistic expression, the U.S. has begun to mirror the Chinese cultural revolution, also known as “the decade of turmoil.”

“Coming from an authoritarian state, we know that dictatorship is not just a system — it is, at its core, the pursuit of power,” Wang Jian, a journalist, wrote in an X post criticizing Mr. Trump. “We also know that the Cultural Revolution was about dismantling institutions to expand control.”

Even Chinese citizens have noticed the shift. On Weibo, beneath a post by the U.S. Embassy in China, one comment read, “Beacon of democracy, 1776-2025.” This account used to act like a bulletin board for Chinese citizens to see America apart from the Chinese government’s propagandistic lens. Now?

“Most striking is the language government agencies have used in social media postings. The tone, people say, sounds like Chinese Communist Party propaganda,” says one scholar.

The Chinese people have begun to identify the symptoms of cultural revolution: sycophantic underlings who fawn over a dictatorial leader, entrepreneurs vying for governmental favors, and “intimidation of the media.”

On that note, we turn to Jimmy Kimmel.

In early March, [journalist Li Yuan] asked a lawyer, a naturalized citizen living in Texas, whether he shared the unease among Chinese immigrants that American politics under President Trump was beginning to echo the China we left behind…

He shrugged. As long as late-night talk show hosts can still make fun of the president, he said, American democracy is safe.

For those of us who grew up under strict censorship, late-night comedy always felt like an emblem of American freedom. The idea that millions of Americans could go to bed each night having watched their presidents mocked felt almost magical, something unimaginable where we came from.

Because dictators do not laugh at themselves, and they do not allow anyone else to laugh at them, either. Dictators rule by fear, and laughter defeats fear.

Share

So when ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s show after Trump’s FCC signaled Kimmel’s cold open monologue criticizing Charlie Kirk would not fly, immigrants who fled China’s stifling media environment began to worry.

The 10-year Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 1960s to 1970s made the traditional, the intellectual, and the artistic suspect. Any norms, institutions, and religions had to be purged as an act of loyalty to Mao and the proletariat/communist aims. Former party leaders were mistrusted and sometimes killed. Cultural sites were destroyed by mobs. Essentially, Mao’s cultural revolution stood for populist mob rule, bringing about the downfall of any and every institution for the sake of rebuilding society so that the poor could ascend and the wealthy and influential, descend. (The topic is SO COMPLEX, so I’ll leave you to discover more on your own.)

Yet contemporary China holds even more parallels to this moment in American history. Chinese censorship and anti-intellectual/anti-institutionalism began with the Cultural Revolution, but by the 1990s and 2000s, Chinese society held space for expression and opinion. Though dissenters could still face jail time in the 1990s and 2000s, Li Yuan writes, free speech itself had not been outlawed.

However, Mr. Xi changed that. Within a few years of Mr. Xi’s takeover of the government in 2012, “Investigative reporters became extinct.” Those who delivered bad news—including bad news (even negative facts and statistics) about the Chinese economy—faced retribution.

He muzzled a newspaper’s editorial, elevated the role of a government official to control the internet and declared that all media must “love, protect and serve the Communist Party.”

Strikes, protests, and displays of solidarity echoed across China, yet Xi’s government arrested, penalized, and prohibited the resisters. The internet became a self-aggrandizing tool of the government, rather than a raucous place of debate and opinion, representing the fear within China that led to its current mode of public silence and propaganda.

Yet societal silence has a cost.

And one consequence of this “muzzle” was the COVID-19 pandemic.

When an unknown pneumonia surfaced in Wuhan near the end of 2019, Dr. Li Wenliang tried to warn colleagues and friends. He was reprimanded for “spreading rumors.”

Because no bad news allowed. As a result, the news of the virus was squashed, and the public health response was slow. And the virus was not contained. Silence led to illness led to death. We ourselves, Americans living halfway around the world, hold the record of that silence within our bodies.

Dr. Li himself perished. However, he left us with one haunting message: “A healthy society should not have only one voice.”

Subscribe now

Reflection

This one quote from these articles will stick with me for a long time:

“Free speech rarely vanishes in a single blow. It erodes until silence feels normal.”

Censorship is nothing new in America, and certainly it’s nothing new within the white American evangelical subculture in which I grew up. As I’ve written before, I did not read the Harry Potter series until my mid-twenties, after the birth of my first child, because my upbringing barred me from “witchcraft” in every expression, no matter how mild. (See this essay I wrote about Harry Potter and Fundamentalism.)

The 1960s featured public hearings of American political censorship in the form of McCarthyism, in which accusations of communist tendencies led to removals, blacklists, and public shunning. The “Red Scare” in the U.S., despite its focus on liberals as the baddies, rather than the conservative-leaning traditionalists and bourgeoise in China, did not feel so different from the cultural revolution.

…Minus the violence!! The Red Guard was brutal.

Which, of course, illustrates an important difference between China and the U.S.: we are different culturally, politically, economically. Our governments run distinctly, and so do our politics, our justice system, our press. I am not, by any means, saying that we are the same.

And yet, I implore us to consider the lean of America toward censorship.

Share the Empathy List

If we cannot disagree—if we cannot disagree loudly, if we cannot disagree humorously, if we cannot make fun of the president without consequences—what does that say about our democracy?

What does it portend for the future months with a president who has threatened a run for a third term? What does it tell us about the race for cultural power in our nation, and what have we already learned about the fragility of institutions? (Especially media institutions!)

I keep reminding myself that we are only nine months into a four-year term. That fact chills me.

I find Timothy Snyder’s book, On Tyranny, instructive. These are his “rules” for resisting authoritarianism:

I would urge us toward the first bullet: DO NOT OBEY IN ADVANCE.

That resistance likely requires backbone and money. But I suspect that resistance will maintain our independence.

As Stephen Colbert said elsewhere, ABC’s move to so quickly suspend Kimmel represented a move of “blatant censorship.” He explained, “With an autocrat, you cannot give an inch. If ABC thinks that this is going to satisfy the regime, they are woefully naive. And clearly they’ve never read the children’s book If You Give a Mouse a Kimmel.”

I hope that we can continue to say “no” to the demand of bending to the will of the ruler. That’s how we’ll make it to the next election, my friends.

Thanks for reading.

Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

Leave a comment

More Curious Reads

#2 Soooo the rapture didn’t happen today, even though evangelical tiktokkers really wanted it to happen today. (Who can blame them?!)—Mashable

#3 I know you, like me, must surely love weird science facts. So how about a walk through the worlds of butt breathing, a tar-like goo that turned out to be a new lifeform, and Victorian picnickers poisoned by ice cream? —Popular Science

Share

#4 Most of the good white Christian women of Germany did not resist Nazism. And ’s 2021 essay examining their acceptance of Hitler is worth re-reading. —The Christian Century

#5 A short story about a honeymoon interrupted by a first encounter.—Electric Literature

This story is part of a larger novel about “an unnamed Archivist—transgender, nonbinary—begins researching Barney and Betty Hill, an interracial couple from New Hampshire who experienced the first widely publicized event of alien abduction in the 1960s.” And it hooked me.

Get 30% off forever

Just for the Fun of Making Fun…

This nonfactual article brought to you by the Onion. (These writers are doing the Lord’s work.)

Leave a comment

You know what happened. We’re all talking about it and thinking about it and we’re all wondering who’s next. Charlie Kirk, probably the most polarizing political pundit of my generation, the millennials, was shot and died on stage while answering a question about gun violence.

Right now, we don’t need novels, we have the news. [sob]

Extremely online authors this week kept saying, no editor would let this stream of events pass for a believable plot, no way, no how.

Yet, apparently, we now live within a violent, virulent surreal dystopia without hard facts or safe places.

(I told my husband this week, Trump is one thing, but Trump and AI? I cannot handle their combined chaos, not at the same time. Together, they stretch my brain to its limits.)

In one week, we could choose to watch a man shot, or we could see the faces of children as they ran from an active shooter. All this through a tiny flashlight the size of our palm, one that contains so much of ourselves and yet remains alien to us, revolving with endless bad news and rage, which may or may not originate within a human mind or heart. (Possibly it’s only bots rage-hallucinating together. SIGH)

In America right now, the threat of violence is palpable. The political anger has moved beyond screens and into our real lives, disrupting our ordinary living with abrupt endings and sundered bodies, blood and tears and screams and an entire crowd dropping like a bomb has detonated.

My children also duck—beneath their desks and for practice, just in case a man storms into their Denver Public School with a murderous death wish. Since I live in Aurora, a short 30-45 minute commute from the school where yet another shooting occurred last week, this unreality does not feel so unreal as the others.

(Video Credit: The Knotted Gun, a Nonviolence Art Project)

Every American mother I know despises American gun policy, policy supported (supposedly) by the second amendment, a cost that our children must pay for the sake of corporate lobbyists, gun companies, and violent offenders (because, btw, I know that the hunters among us understand the difference between an AR and a hunting weapon, so don’t bullshit us in the comments. The guns active shooters use are meant for war.)

Some of us parents are so tired and afraid that we have dis-enrolled our children in favor of home learning, an extremely imperfect solution since public executions do not just happen at school, but also in movie theaters, concerts, night clubs, churches, grocery stories, parks, and any public venue where bodies congregate.

Within driving distance of my home, I can count out two hands worth of public gun violence, most at local schools, some at places I frequent, like the Aurora movie theater where I watched Freakier Friday with my daughter last week, sharing a bucket of popcorn and a pint of Coke Zero. In 2012, a shooter entered that same theater lobby, volleying bullets. These acts of public gun violence happen regularly in my neighborhood and community, and frankly, it’s a miracle I or my children haven’t had to meet the eyes of a gunman across a room.

At the moment, I refuse to look up the statistics for gun violence in my state, but I know off the top of my head that hundreds of lives have been lost. In Canada, according to one social media poster this week, eleven people have died of school-related gun violence—ever. That number includes Canada’s entire history of gun violence. [Fact check me, if you want—I hope I’m wrong and that less people have died everywhere.]

By the way, public shootings are not the majority of gun deaths, either. Self-inflicted or accidental shootings occur daily, hourly even, to the tune of thousands per year in the U.S., ending more Americans than traffic accidents or terrorist attacks. Guns kill more people than fentanyl.

Share

Guns are ubiquitous in the United States, and we Americans don’t seem to give a damn about public safety, only personal safety, and so we won’t legislate their use enough to keep kids safe at school.

No one can agree about how to move forward. In fact, there seems to be a major disconnect between those of us who experience these events on the ground and those who legislate. For some reason, we cannot, will not institute public safety in America, despite the high death toll.

Even worse, those of us who must prepare our children to face this inevitable grief and terror at school, those of us who are educators or who love educators, those of us who know and care about children, we cannot even convince those closest to our kids to change their minds about this one issue.

Within my family (and many others), our kids’s grandparents will cast a vote that supports gun rights, rather voting for the safety of their grandchildren.

Share the Empathy List

Here’s where we return to the public murder of the American far right pundit and devout Christian, Charlie Kirk. He proclaimed the name of Christ, yes, a fact that many church people have taken to social media to exclaim. They believe this makes Kirk a martyr.

However, I’d like to offer a counterpoint. Consider his 2023 statement,

“It’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment…”

That is a shattering, jaw-dropping statement.

What exactly is worth it, i.e. “some gun deaths every single year”? What is gained by reading the second amendment as an unbreakable, unalterable promise to gun owners that America will barely legislate their gun ownership? What is gained by owning a gun? Is it safety? Security? Power? Masculinity?

Is there any other way we can cultivate these values without trading children for theoretical “rights”?

Lord, have mercy.

Subscribe now

But Charlie Kirk kept talking. Here’s the full quote:

I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational. [Emphasis mine]

Kirk said this at a conference hosted by Turning Point USA Faith, the religious arm of Kirk’s conservative group, on 5 April 2023. He made this statement to an audience of faith leaders who, it seems, agreed with him, at least enough to pay to hear his words live.

Here Kirk is asserting that the second amendment is the way we protect what God has given us, all those other human rights, and if you don’t have violent means to protect your humanity, you cannot be safe. The opportunity to enact violence on others is what provides you holding the gun with safety.

At the heart of Charlie Kirk theology, gun theology, is the fear of an enemy. That enemy will try to take what God has given you, to rip away what is yours. They can, in fact, overpower and overrule God.

Kirk implies that God cannot or will not protect you. Your safety isn’t guaranteed—unless you’re willing to take your safety by force. Then you can keep yourself and your people safe. Then you can defy death, disagreement, fear, and insecurity. By means of a gun, you will take power and authority by force. You can stop evil before it reaches your door—God won’t act, but with a gun, you can act.

Either God is impotent, or worse, God is the bully with the gun. God is MAGA in a cutoff flannel with an AR-15 balanced over God’s muscled white shoulder. God in their image.

…except God doesn’t carry. And that’s not what God is like, according to centuries of Christian tradition and according to the Bible itself.

That’s not what God is like.

Leave a comment

The irony of Kirk’s tragic death—which I wish had never happened and hope/pray will not be repeated—is that he misses the actual Jesus as Jesus appears in the New Testament, and Kirk, in fact, seems to prove Jesus’s words about the futility of violence.

As Roman soldiers approach Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, themselves agents of political assassination, Peter draws a sword on his political enemy, slashing at the ear of a Jewish collaborator. Peter’s anger slashes and flashes, the solider yelps, and then blood runs, skin hangs, exposing a gaping wound.

In response to Peter’s violence—violence committed on Jesus’s behalf to protect the teacher—Jesus rebukes Peter:

Put away your sword! Don’t you know my power? How many companies of angels I could call down upon these few men to battle on my behalf? No, I choose this path because those who live by the sword will also die by the sword. (Here I’ve paraphrased Matthew 26:52)

That single phrase—“Those who live by the sword will die by the sword”—has swum in my mind all week as I’ve considered the assassination of Kirk.

I do not believe my feelings are vengeful, yet I wonder at the strange irony. In a moment when Kirk is on stage, defending the second amendment, he receives a bullet in the neck. He and his cronies excused gun violence for the sake of owning guns themselves, and then his own end arrived through the butt of a barrel.

I hate that Charlie Kirk died like this. What a tragedy. No one should die like that. No one should watch your husband or father die like that.

Also, I cannot ignore the symmetry of the man’s teaching and his death. Kirk lived by the sword and died by the sword, proving the words of Jesus.

Subscribe now

To be honest, writing those words about Kirk’s death—in a way condemning him— makes me deeply uncomfortable. I am a woman who believes devoutly that people can change. And I believe that Jesus is different precisely because he loved his enemies, he did good and offered kindness to those who hated him, and he prayed for those who persecuted him. Those who betrayed him, exploited him, and misunderstood him, he called us family.

Christians are called to this same reconciling work as Jesus did.

But we must not be fooled believing evil has no consequences.

Charlie Kirk, a man who advocated that death by guns was unfortunate but a reasonable trade for the sake of gun owners everywhere, died by a bullet.

Every act of gun violence is evil—including Kirk’s death. Also evil: allowing violence to persist when you could do something to stop it. By not advocating for change in our gun policy, Kirk planted the seeds of his own death. His inaction was evil.1

That is tragic.

Let us hold this tension—the evil that Kirk perpetuated, and the evil done to him—and let us be those who love our enemies in response. Yes, even him. He, too, is worthy of the love of God, and he, too, will have it if he repents. That’s in God’s hands now.

Thanks for reading, my friends.

Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

Leave a comment

On a (slightly) lighter note, I enjoyed this curation by Artspace, featuring seven works of contemporary art that take a stance on gun violence.

Read it

Also for those who want to JUST DO SOMETHING, I recommend volunteering and/or donating to my friend Mike Martin’s organization, Raw Tools.

Donate + Learn More

At the end of August, the President of the United States told Fox and Friends he’s hoping to make it to heaven—and that if he can only stop the bombing between Russia and Ukraine, well then, he might have a chance.

“I want to end it. … if I can save 7,000 people a week from being killed, I think that’s a pretty [good] — I want to try to get to heaven if possible. I’m hearing I’m not doing well,” he said. “I hear I’m really at the bottom of the totem pole. But if I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons.”

This was a curious statement out of the mouth of a man whose crimes of sexual assault have been both thoroughly documented and covered up. (Though, it turns out, the fighter jets that flew over the news conference Epstein survivors held where they asked congress to release the files? Those jets were co-incidental, not related to silencing the voices of victims. Supposedly). Not to mention the business fraud. Or the lying, oh so much lying.

What does it take to “get to heaven,” according to the Chief Officer of the United States? Ending war. He’s already stopped six or seven, according to his count, and if true, that is an accomplishment. Saving any life—each one sacred and known to God—is a profound gift. And Trump’s desire for peace is right and good.

But, of course, though Trump has brokered deals, he has ended neither of the most dramatic conflicts plaguing the world. And since he’s publicly said that his ending-of-cage-matches-between-nations should come with a Nobel Peace prize, well, that torpedos his credibility a tad.

And there’s one more thing: Trump sent out a fundraising email asking for help… “getting into heaven.” He told supporters, if only he can raise just $15 from you and you and you, then he can complete the mission God gave him as governor of the Empire itself. Why else would God have saved his life from that errant bullet last year? He is a g-d damn walking miracle, and don’t you forget it.

Share

I admit, I am angry. I do not take the bastardization of my religion lightly. Trump cares about himself, not about heaven, I think.

It is too easy to write off this statement of Trump’s as one more vapid, self-serving nod to the religion of my youth, a bone thrown to distract the evangelicals from his other more glaring sins, rather than as sincere desire from the president.

But Karoline Leavett, his super hot soccer mom press secretary, confirmed the president’s statement: “I think the president was serious,” she said. “I think the president wants to get to heaven — as I hope we all do in this room as well.”

And so I want to take the words seriously for a minute. If Trump does want to enter heaven, well then, what does Trump’s heaven look like, smell like, taste like? How does it operate? And who sits at the head of the banquet table, host of the feast? Who walks through the gates? What’s the appeal of heaven to a kazillionaire who seems to possess no conscience?

I’ve already written once this month about my own vision of heaven and hell. Despite my lean to the theological left, I do still hold a conception of both, which I believe lines up with the abstract idea of heaven and hell within the Bible. (Which is to say, we do not have much concrete information about either heaven or hell, so I’ve taken some liberties. As do we all. 🙃)

Share the Empathy List

But I bet that my idea of heaven and Donald’s do not line up. If Donald’s heaven includes unfettered power, limitless use and abuse of women and immigrants and the poor, if it only welcomes the rich or excludes those who disagree with him, or if Donald envisions pools of gold coins in which he can practice his Scrooge McDuck impression, then, I suspect he will be disappointed with the reality.

The Bible doesn’t say much about heaven, but it does contain some uncomfortable stories about the afterlife, including a parable about the mythic “Abraham’s Bosom” (which is a sort of purgatory middle space between the two).

In Luke 16, Jesus tells this story:

“¹⁹ ‘There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. ²⁰ At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores ²¹ and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

²² “The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. ²³ In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. ²⁴ So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

²⁵ “But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. ²⁶ And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’

²⁷ “He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, ²⁸ for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’

²⁹ “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’

³⁰ “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’

³¹ “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

They will not listen, they will not hear, they will not change, says Abraham of the rich bros, not even if someone beats death itself.

I wonder how Donald—or the spiritual sycophants that surround him— would interpret this parable from the mouth of God.

Subscribe now

Another example: to the rich young real estate mogul, Jesus says, this one thing you lack: sell everything and give what you have to the poor. Then you will inherit a place with God.

In St. Basil’s “Sermon to the Rich,” an exposition of the story of the young ruler and Jesus, he speaks directly to the rich of his day:

“Tell me, what better service do silver beds and silver tables, ivory sofas and ivory chairs provide, when because of these things wealth fails to pass over to the poor, and thousands huddle about the door, all of them letting loose a miserable howl? You, however, refuse to give, declaring that it’s impossible to satisfy those who ask. With your tongue you excuse yourself, but by your own hand you’re convicted; for even in silence your hand proclaims your falsehood, sparkling round from the ring on your finger. How many people could one of your fingers release from debt? How many broken-down homes could be rebuilt? One box of your clothing would be able to dress the whole shivering populace; but you, unfeeling, dismiss the needy, not fearing the just repayment of the Judge. You have not shown mercy, you shall not receive mercy; you’ve not opened your home, you shall be evicted from the kingdom. You haven’t given of your bread; neither shall you receive eternal life.”

One thing is very clear about the wealthy bully of the Americas: he has not devoted himself to relieving the pain, anxiety, and anguish of the poor. And that seems to disqualify him from heaven.

That said, even if he ends up there—as I hope every one of us will, because how can we wish even our greatest enemy into hell?—Donald will not be the boss of heaven. Donald will not win the trophies of heaven. Donald will not have the ability to fire whomever he likes from heaven. If Donald goes to heaven, it will be because Donald has learned to accept his own limits, Donald has learned how to say sorry and make reparations for his wrongs, and Donald has learned a new way to be.

I hate to tell you this, Donald, but that means standing at the back of the line, no cutting, and no angles. Just pure humility.

And if that’s how someone gets to heaven, as I suspect it is based on the model of Jesus, well then, Donald, I have some bad (or good?) news for you.

Part of what interests me about this question of Donald “getting into heaven” is that it reveals that even the most despised among us wonder about our mortality and the moral state of our selves. What makes us worthy of paradise, if there even is an eternal place to go after our bodies expire and decay? What makes us unworthy? What makes us good or bad? What “totem pole” measures our being, when the end of life does arrive? (It always arrives.)

These are the questions that have concerned philosophers and theologians across human history. And despite having left the evangelical church, I still believe in the fundamental ideas of morality: “Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.”

That is goodness, me actively doing kindness to you first. That is the Bible, the history of the church, the nature of God in a nutshell. And the reason I still follow Jesus is because Jesus modeled it for me. When doing good for someone else meant that Jesus himself lost out, even to his own harm, he did good anyway.

I cannot and will not stand beside or behind almost any man in the history of the world, but I can stand with a man like that.

Share

The other part of this story that interests me is what came after, when a group of progressive Christians wrote Donald back.

Read at Red Letter Christians

Unlike my initial rage, cynicism, and dismissiveness about Mr. Pres’s expression toward God, my fellow progressive Christians at Red Letter Christians attempted to take him seriously. My prayers for he-who-shall-not-be-named have, I confess, looked more like a wavy middle finger at the sky, the radio, and toward the general direction of Washington, D.C. I have leaned into the imprecatory psalms, asking for the demise of a man whose policies have devastated many people. This letter does not shy away from those realities.

Yet these faith leaders—many of whom are well known activists and theologians within the Black American church tradition—do not stop with anger. With this letter, they are reaching out a hand toward the most powerful and narcissistic man in the room, and I’d argue they are doing it without any hope of him taking their hand in return.

Probably its writers have mixed motivations. And probably he won’t hear them or pay any attention. But does that make their action meaningless?

Why try to change another’s mind, especially someone like Donald?

Theologically, Christians believe that people can change fundamentally, that our instincts and desires and personalities can undergo dramatic overhaul for the better, that we can leave behind our addictions, fears, and abuse (the abuse others have committed toward us and the abuse we have perpetrated).

Subscribe now

Sometimes, like a good Christian, I believe such change is possible, while at other times, I doubt. I doubt to the tune of my eyes rolled into the back of my skull so hard I’m not sure I’ll be able to return them to their front-facing position.

And I do not know if Donald can change or not. I do not know what the next steps for Donald would be, in making things right with God and the whole entire world.

Zaccheus, who the writers mention above, gave away every bit of wealth and power he had, offering quadruple reparations for the harm he had committed against others. I suspect the type of change that would be required of Donald would be as costly.

But God made Donald. God knows Donald. And possibly, God can still invite Donald to dramatic change, perhaps even in the afterlife. (Not sure how it works, but maybe?). At the very least, I can be certain that God does not abandon God’s creatures. Even now, God is reaching out God’s own hand—still, even after everything.

And if God reaches out God’s hand, do I? Am I the kind of person who hopes for reconciliation above revenge? What kind of person do I hope to be?

I hope that even after everything, I remain tender to the hope God offers. And that may mean reaching out my hand to a man I hate.

God, help me.

Thanks for reading, my friends.

Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

Leave a comment

#1 This week’s top of the fold story considers the ethics of covering a school shooting—that is, when a tragedy like the Minnesota school shooting occurs, is there a “right” or “best” way to tell the story? Whose voices are centered? What information does the public need to know? And what type of images, stories, or information can become an impetus for justice and policy change?

As Minnesota students returned to school last week, tragedy pulled up a chair: a woman with three guns pointed her weapons at a private Catholic school, injuring 21 and killing 2. The students had gathered in the school’s chapel, where they worshipped during an early morning mass. The bullets entered the building through the stained glass windows.

Afterward, a debate began online about the morality of interviewing students about the event. And it got me thinking about the way we tell stories.

Normally, a “Curious Read” will focus deeply on one story—this time, I’m tackling a topic, with a single essay as home base.

Read “From Sandy Hook to Uvalde, the Violent Images Never Seen” by Elizabeth Williamson in the New York Times

Frustrated Americans ask whether the release of graphic photos of gun violence would lead to better policy. But which photos, and who decides?

Read it

What happened in Minnesota?

Church of the Annunciation began the first week of school of a new year with a theme verse: “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘…Plans for a hope and a future…” Those words almost sound like a threat from this side of history, with two children, ages 8 and 10, shot dead as they sat praying in the pews of their school’s chapel, gunned down by a former student of the school.

Rather than devolve into chaos, the gunshots moved the students to action. Older children threw themselves over the bodies of younger classmates, saving their lives. One ten-year-old fifth-grader described a friend’s bravery to a reporter. He was interviewed, by the way, almost as soon as the school had been evacuated and the body of the shooter recovered. He walked over to the camera crews with his father and grandfather to share his story:

“I was, like, two seats away from the stained glass window, so the shots were… right next to me. I think I got gunpowder on my neck.1

First, when I hear it, I thought, what is that? Then the second time I heard it, I just ran under the pew and then I covered my head.

My friend Victor saved me though, cause he laid on top of me. But he got hit. My friend got hit in the back. …he went to the hospital. I was super scared for him, but I think now he’s okay.”

After a visit to the crime scene, the mayor said, “Don’t just say this is about ‘thoughts and prayers’ right now. These kids were literally praying.”

The school principal echoed his words in an address to the community: “There’s an African proverb that says, ‘When you pray, move your feet.’ So I beg you, I ask you to please pray, but don’t stop with your words.”

Share

Cue the Calls for Gun Control

Every act of mass violence—especially school shootings—follow a narrative pattern, with predictable sides forming around their preferred explanations. I live in Colorado, and unfortunately, I have repeatedly witnessed this futile dance up close.

Like so Americans I’ve talked to, I feel weary, heart-broken, furious, and so discouraged about the legacy of gun violence and the NRA in my country. I feel especially crazed when I consider the state of violence in primary schools, leading some kids and parents to choose home education only because they do not feel safe in public settings. (And who can blame them?)

Yet the answer to school shootings is not to abandon schools, but to abandon guns, particularly the kind of guns and gun implements that make public violence so potent.

Read about gun control policy options...

Of course, those of us who want gun reform face stout opposition, mostly in the form of groups like the National Rifle Association—who seem to have the most money and politicians in their pockets. (The NRA is also protected by misreadings of the second amendment—see this essay from the Brennan Center for Justice)

Yet a horrific shooting can often feel like the right moment to push for policy change. With the cost of guns so visible, the press advantage can feel irresistible to those seeking to reform our nation’s laws. So activists, journalists, and politicians often find themselves in the uncomfortable position of wanting to use the stories of these victims for their own ends. Granted, their ends are the same as the victims, many of whom become activists themselves after such events (for example, Taylor Schumann). But other victims may want privacy to work through their loss of safety, to grieve for their harmed or lost loved ones, and to make peace with the trauma they’ve endured.

Leave a comment

Telling Victims Stories (in Words and Photos) is… Complicated

So, as you can imagine, parsing the ethics of storytelling around guns is difficult. A victim may come forward to share a story in the moment, but then change their mind later, wanting to retreat from the spotlight. They may request anonymity, but then want to agitate or speak up later on. The media—both the social and traditional variety—does not tend to make space for equivocation. Reactions must be immediate, and they often seem to be intractable. (No take backs.)

One way the media has sought to be sensitive to victims is to focus on the perpetrator, who is the natural enemy. This answers the natural question, why? Why did this happen? Why did the shooter do it?

Yet telling the perpetrator’s story brings its own problems. No media outlet wants to turn a shooter into an infamous figure, an anti-hero for other villains to aspire toward, though you could argue that has happened in the past. And affected families may resist coverage centers the one who harmed their love one and ignores their victims, whose stories they believe should be centered.

Further, while traditional media outlets may abide by the victims’ wishes around coverage, there’s no guarantee that social media coverage will comply. Influencers and activists generally do not. (Consider Alex Jones and the Sandy Hook conspiracy theories)

Subscribe now

What good does storytelling do?

You may ask, since sharing such stories remains thorny, why share at all? Throughout history, the photos and testimony of horrific events have led to just policy.

According to Williamson’s essay in the NYT:

In a 2020 seminar at Columbia University’s Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma titled “Picturing Black Deaths,” Professor Bernard discussed a Civil War-era photograph of a formerly enslaved man, called Gordon in some historic references and Peter in others. Disseminated by abolitionists, the image of the shirtless man, his back severely scarred from beatings, “was essential to the development of the campaign against slavery,” she said.

In 1955, Mamie Till-Mobley invited a Jet magazine photographer, David Jackson, to photograph the brutalized body of her 14-year-old son Emmett Till, who had been savagely beaten, shot and dumped into the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi by two white men who were speedily acquitted. The images, and Emmett Till’s open coffin at his funeral in Chicago, helped ignite the civil rights movement.

In 2020, the cellphone video of a Minneapolis police officer kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, which was filmed by Darnella Frazier, a teenage witness, sparked global fury and some of the largest protests in American history. But the recording also kindled a fraught discussion over the ubiquity of images of violence against Black people, and the relatively few depictions of white victims.

The question of which violence is publicly displayed—whose hurt bodies are visible?—is an essential one. Certain bodies hold more cultural weight, in a society that prizes whiteness. And the idea of the “politics of sight” means that, as a society, we prefer for the most gruesome parts of our life together be hidden. We are fragile, and our life together is even more fragile.

In that way, revealing harm publicly can be a generative act of resistance, as it was in the case of the enslaved man who allowed activists to share photos of his scarred back across the United States. [I will not share that photo, but you can see it here]

Share the Empathy List

As I insinuated earlier, the fact that journalists interviewed a 10-year-old boy only minutes after he had left behind the traumatic scene of an active shooting event… that was controversial.

I will point out that his father and grandfather were with him as he spoke to reporters. Even so, would I let my kid talk to them, even if he requested it? No way in hell. I cannot comment on the motivations of these families or the reporters, but to me, it seems as if the boy himself wanted to commend his brave friend. And if family members of victims request a news outlet share their perspective or photographs, their request should be considered seriously.

I can also relate to this boy’s instinct to tell his story. As a memoirist, I need to own the narrative of my own story. If I lived through something like this, knowing me, I’d be taking notes in the moment. And I wouldn’t want a journalist to tell my story, I’d want to use my own voice, share my own photos, and step into the public eye voluntarily. That would be an important step in my own healing, a way of asserting autonomy and taking back the event from the narrative of the perpetrator.

Share

Reflection

In researching this topic today, I stumbled upon this incredible example of victims’ stories shared in the media—and it’s in a college newspaper. After a shooting event at the University of North Carolina, the student paper, The Daily Tar Heel, shared the stories of students, and I find their treatment to be both inspiring and respectful.

Editors anonymized text messages sent in the minutes the active shooter was patrolling around campus, and they used those messages to retell the experience of the event as it was lived by students. The resulting stream-of-consciousness document provides an intimate account of surviving a school shooting without forcing any one student into the spotlight. And it’s deeply moving, offering a compelling argument for gun reform.

There is no single way to tell a victim’s story after a mass violence event.

However, I would urge reporters to move gently, to respect the autonomy of individuals and communities, and to tell the truth. Other than those guidelines, I believe victims themselves should decide whether they tell their stories in public.

And if you or someone you know has been through a school shooting, frankly, the same rules apply. Treat their story gently, tenderly, give them space to tell the story their way and to decide when and how they want to share. Preserve their autonomy and privacy while offering your presence. Pray with your feet, and most of all, be with them.

I wish we didn’t need their stories to amplify the need for policy reform, but their stories may actually help to change minds. I don’t know for sure. But I believe victims themselves must choose whether to join the parade of us asking for change, or whether to preserve their privacy. Either way, they can be assured that we’ll be praying and walking on their behalf.

Thanks for reading.

Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

Subscribe now

More Curious Reads

#2 Turns out, there is an extra state of matter and it is RANCH DRESSING. —the Unexplainable Podcast, Vox Media

“As a kid in school, I learned about four states of matter. Solid, liquid, gas, and then plasma. But recently, I spoke to a physicist named Rae Robertson-Anderson, and she told me that there is actually another state of matter out there: Ranch dressing. Or shampoo, or scrambled eggs, or snot, or even to your eyeballs. Also toothpaste and yogurt, ketchup. Anything that you think of, anything that's like squishy or gooey materials that are sometimes somewhat like a liquid and somewhat like a solid. All of these are part of this extra state of matter. It's… called soft matter.”

…I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this episode since I listened to it earlier this summer. Because it means that we STILL do not understand the science of our everyday lives.

#3 Welcome to the age of the spiritual chatbots (and their influencer handlers).—Wired Magazine

“A growing number of prominent social media figures are now co-opting the language of New Age spirituality, wellness, and quantum woo to position AI as a gateway to numinous wisdom, through which their followers can inch closer to enlightenment.

[Even] OpenAI CEO Sam Altman referred to the company’s AI products in a September X post as “magical intelligence in the sky”—a seemingly tongue-in-cheek comment comparing them with traditional conceptions of God.”

Share

#4 Did your summer include a road trip? Here’s my version: read about my family’s road trip to Noah’s Ark this past autumn.—The Christian Century

#5 Elizabeth Gilbert’s new memoir is… strange. As in, “did she just confess to attempted murder?”-level strange.—The New Yorker

Get 30% off forever

Just for Fun…

I’m never giving up the em dash, which you’ll have to pry from my lifeless fingers, Mark Zuckerberg. (Read the whole thing at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency)

Welp, I have a hunch that you’ve heard the news: the evangelical pop psychologist, Dr. James Dobson had passed away, the man who founded Focus on the Family and aimed his significant influence toward preventing marriage equality in America (or at least in Colorado Springs, Colorado.This is also the man who endorsed our current president in 2016 because he and Don had talked for a few minutes, so Dobson could assure his followers that Don was now a “baby Christian”.

And this is also the man who gave me the sex talk (and probably many of you, too).

I have written about JD in the past here—

However, today, I want to focus on something more personal—I want to talk about spanking, because spanking is how many of us learned that we were bad to the core.

But first, a confession:

I spanked my daughter once.

She’s my firstborn, and she was two, maybe three years old. She had grown overstimulated, and she was crying, yelling, hitting, kicking. I do not remember the circumstances as clearly as I remember our bodies—me, sitting on the wooden floor of her room, my back leaning against her door, her body, thrashing in my grip. In those days, I often had to duck her elbows when she was mad, but I had determined me move closer to her, not further, when she was angry or sad or confused. I would sit with her in her room, on the floor, blocking the door, while she raged, and often, I had held her to keep her from hurting herself or me in her rage.

I do not know how it started or what led me to do it, precisely, but I remember that my anger felt hot as I placed her, belly down, onto my thigh and smacked her bottom with my palm. The first time wasn’t sharp enough, I decided, since she hardly responded, so I repeated the gesture. She burst into tears. And right then, I knew that I had hit my daughter to assuage my own anger, to stop her own feelings intruding upon my own, and I hated myself for it.

Share

I apologized to my daughter immediately and held her in my arms until she calmed and resumed her play. Then I called my husband Jeremy, and together, we decided that my own rampant anxiety, so high during this period of my daughter’s life, meant that I struggled to metabolize her emotions with the calm of a grown-up. I knew the kind of mother I wanted to be—calm, unflappable, and present. Yet I found myself wanting to rage at her, or even to smother her feelings in her mouth (metaphorically only). Jeremy helped me acknowledge that my fear of our daughter’s anger and sadness had little to do with her—that was my problem.

So, I returned to therapy for the third (?) time, to settle the interior question that my toddler’s emotions had raised within me: why did my daughter’s negative emotions make me so afraid?

Dobson is famous for his teaching on spanking kids. In an earlier draft of this post, I spent quite a few paragraphs quoting his words and realized, neither you nor I want to read them.

Instead, I’ll give you the gist: In Dobson’s own words in Dare to Discipline (EW WHAT A TERRIBLE TITLE), spanking is “the shortest and most effective route to an attitude adjustment.” The kid can have their big feelings, sure, can even disagree with a parent, but when it comes to action, a kid must comply to the caregiver’s whims. Because that is the order of the universe. Parents over kids, husband over wife, God over all: the umbrella of evangelicalism’s traditional gender roles.

And, preferably, that kid to parent obedience should happen quickly and efficiently in a way that won’t embarrass the grown-up. And spanking becomes the way a parent makes the family automatons.

Okay, I’ve already admitted that I do not spank my children. The pediatric research discredits the “effectiveness” of corporal punishment, even in the best-case scenario, and I myself have experienced the complexity of administering such a punishment from the side of the parent and child. (I was spanked by my parents, as were most of us raised within white American evangelicalism of the 90s and 00s.)

But my primary disagreement with Dobson centers on autonomy.

Dobson describes spanking as a way to teach a kid about a social “danger,” and lists the dangers as “defiance, sassiness, selfishness, temper tantrums, behavior that puts his life in danger, etc.”

What does Dobson mean, precisely, by “sassiness”? The danger appears to be within the tiny human, originating with his will and emotions. The danger is original sin.

Or perhaps the danger is the parent: when a child dissents or expresses any other version of will, intent, autonomy, the danger is that the parent will hurt her for it.

Confusingly, Dobson’s definitions deepens when set beside another nugget of advice, in which Dobson encourages parents to let their kids express dissent respectfully: “The child should be free to say anything to his parent, including ‘I don’t like you’ or ‘You weren’t fair to me, Mommy.’ …[though] the parents should prohibit the child from resorting to name-calling and open rebellion… and Dad should be big enough to apologize to the child if he feels he was wrong. …It is possible to communicate without sacrificing parental respect…”

So then, what’s the difference between “respectful dissent” and “sassiness”? What counts as reasonable and respectful disagreement? When can a child put their foot down and be heeded as an autonomous being? And how do we teach a kid to say “no” to other types of abuse when she learns that those who love her can use or hurt her body, without her consent and supposedly “for her own good”?

Share the Empathy List

Dobson’s book The Strongwilled Child demonstrates his real failure as a teacher: rather than acknowledging the preciousness of diversity within humans, those he deemed the “strongwilled” as flawed. In order to fit the nonnormative into their parents’ (or white american suburban evangelicalism’s culture?) expectations, the spirits of these chidlren had to be broken.

This is not so different than the philosophy of the American prison system, as Howard Zinn writes in his prescient book, A People’s History of America: "The approach was summed up by the warden at Ossining, New York, penitentiary: ‘In order to reform a criminal, you must first break his spirit.’”

When I read those words, I thought of Dobson. What is the solution to taming the wild child? Break her. In fact, the metaphor Dobson uses in The Strongwilled Child is that of domesticating a dog and claiming mastery over his animal. Fundamentally, Dobson’s work seems to take issue with relational conflict between parents and their children, and the way to fix that conflict is to physically domineer over the smaller and weaker party.

So, ultimately, my issue with Dobson is not spanking, but authoritarianism within parenting. The long slow slog that is relational, gentle, or respectful parenting (whatever you call it) means that I MUST treat my nearest neighbor as myself. That doesn’t mean a parent can’t lead a child, that a parent can’t set boundaries. But it does require respecting my child as a whole person, a person made in God’s own image.

Personally, I never felt that level of respect or trust from my parents or other adults when I was a kid and teenager growing up within white American evangelicalism.

Tell me: how are you thinking about the deaths of men like Dobson, McArthur, or other giants of white American evangelicalism?

Leave a comment

Within my family now, my husband and I aim to teach our kids bodily autonomy. We have learned to expect a certain level of relational chaos in our home because we want to encourage our kids’ expression because we have seen it result in independence, autonomy, and self-awareness that can allow our kids to become healthy adults. That’s a trade that, to me, is worth it, even if it means that we have to leave dinner at a restaurant early to resolve a disagreement. My own convenience is worth less than my child’s dignity.1

Which leads to the last point: one overlooked element of Dobson’s legacy is family estrangement. Focus on the Family admits as much, and they now offer paid courses and teachings for parents whose children won’t talk to them.

(See ’s work on estrangement in authoritarian family systems here, including discussion of the courses offered by FotF, sheesh.)

I believe is as an admission of failure. The methods Dobson believed would work—to make kids into copies of their Christian parents—simply don’t. And in Dobson’s wake, we see broken families. I myself am one of these estranged daughters, and I can tell you that estrangement breaks the hearts of those on both sides, whether parent or child, whether the boundary-setter or receiver.

Subscribe now

As we weigh the legacies of men like James Dobson, I pray that we would remain tender, that we would seek out the nuance and complexity in the stories of others, and that we would uphold the dignity of the vulnerable.

We can honor those he dishonored.

In the end, I believe that’s the most beautiful corrective to Dobson’s teachings that we can offer to each other.

Thanks for reading, my friends.

Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

Psst, for a wider lens on how the wider exvangelical community views Dobson, I’d point you to ’s excellent run-down:

Du Mez CONNECTIONS

Discipline & Punish

I was sitting in a faculty meeting when my phone buzzed. And buzzed again…

Read more

8 months ago · 509 likes · 122 comments · Kristin Du Mez

Or to ’s summary of Dobson’s action and influence during his lifetime:

STRONGWILLED

Ding Dong the Witch is Dead

Yesterday morning, on August 21st, I woke up to the news that Dr. James Dobson — who we credit with starting the modern Religious Authoritarian parenting movement here in the US — had died…

Read more

8 months ago · 140 likes · 9 comments · D.L. Mayfield

1

Despite my many disagreements with Dobson, I have to admit that I was never especially bothered by the spankings my parents administered to me as a kid—I was a normative, co-dependent, goodie two shoes, a first born girl, and the shiny apple of my parents’ eyes. So, of course, my parents’ “discipline” approach, while influenced by books like Dare to Discipline, never looked extreme. (Believe me when I say my family had other problems, which is likely why spanking did not register for me.)

Yet others did (and do!) experience Dobson’s work as abusive. When considering Dobson’s work, adopting a posture of empathy means we make space for those—like the abused kids Dobson acknowledges himself—who will experience spanking as abusive. Many see Dobson’s teaching of spanking as de facto abusive, and I believe them when they say that in their experiences, his teaching led to abuse.

This especially true for those who did not fit into normative cultures, such as those who were neurodivergent, LGBTQ, or simply extra energetic. These kids tended to be targeted by such teachings, and their parents used Dobson’s methods to try to spank them “normal.” It didn’t work.

I’m so deeply grieved for those of you who experienced this, and I hope you now receive the love and grace you need to repair.