the Empathy List: Curious Reads

Read the texts for yourself here

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.

FBI poster from the time, Credit

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

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. ;-))

Curious Reads: Why is Dr. Dobson in the Epstein Files? (TW)

Liz Charlotte Grant — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 17:45:40 GMT

Hello friend, Liz here.

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…

This fantastic illustration is by Aleks7 (and shared on FB), and I hope that some news outlet pays him for it TODAY.

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.”

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.

I’m such a big fan of Heather D. Schulte’s stitching + news artworks. Highly recommend you give her a follow (and buy her art!).

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?

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.

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.

Another by @HeatherDSchulte

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

Just for Fun…

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

Curious Reads: Who is Using Whom?

Liz Charlotte Grant — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 16:45:22 GMT

Hello friend, Liz here.

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

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?

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.

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!

You can follow her on substack here.

Curious Reads: Making Fun of the President

Liz Charlotte Grant — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 19:52:00 GMT

Hello friend, Liz 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

Photo Credit: Unsplash+

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.”

Photo Credit: Unsplash+

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.

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.

Photo Credit: Unsplash+

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.”

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.

More resources from Snyder

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

Just for the Fun of Making Fun…

This nonfactual article brought to you by the Onion. (These writers are doing the Lord’s work.)

Curious Reads: After a school shooting

Liz Charlotte Grant — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 14:00:32 GMT

Hello friend, Liz here.

#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 about gun control policy options...

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.”

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.

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.

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)

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]

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.

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

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)

Actually, a bullet fragment struck the student, lodging itself millimeters from his carotid artery. Surgeons removed the fragment this week, and both he and his friend are recovering well.

the Empathy List #150: I Miss Church Camp

Liz Charlotte Grant — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 14:02:23 GMT

Hello friend, Liz here.

Did you ever go to sleep-away camp?

In the seventh grade, I packed a duffel to the gills and headed into the Rockies for five days of glamping, rappelling, canoeing, ziplining, lake blobbing and sunbathing, foot races, mosquitoes and crushes.

There, at Eagle Lake, I would live out my own Parent Trap adventure.

Curious Reads: Shocked and Not Surprised

Liz Charlotte Grant — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 21:14:39 GMT

Hello friend, Liz here.

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED? This week, we’re discussing the story of Donald Trump’s win. I’ll be reviewing the pundits’ explanations for how and why Trump took the White House (and how the GOP captured the Senate to boot).

Photo by Damon Winter for the New York Times

Like many of you, I’ve been reeling over the past few days. I have kept my voice and feelings mostly to myself, though I’ve been sharing plenty of other smart peoples’ thoughts and opinions. (See threads and my Instagram stories.)

Of course I am angry. (What about the climate?! The economy (tariffs??), the state of capitalism, and the ability for the middle class to earn a living?)

Of course I am mournful. (What will happen to my immigrant neighbors? What does Trump mean exactly when he says “American”? What does this mean for orgs who support these populations?)

Of course I feel like this is a step backward in the march toward a more just society. (“I guess we’ll never elect a woman, especially not a black woman.” *sob*)

Amid these ginormous feelings, I’ve been trying to take my own advice to manage my anxiety. I’ve been going on midday walks and/or sweating on an elliptical. I started a new murder mystery series on Audible. I’ve made nourishing meals for my family because it’s finally cold enough for stew! I have texted near constantly with friends, and I even had the chance to eat cheese alongside others who were shocked by the results with me in real time. (Shocked, but not surprised. We’ll get to that.) I even bought myself a “SAD” light, just for the extra boost.

More Grounding Practices

I am also trying my damndest to believe the best about others, even when their vote feels to me like standing up for misogyny, racism, xenophobia, and homophobia. Because the fact is, how people vote is complicated.

That’s what I’d like to talk about today. Because I know that so many of us are still scratching our heads, wondering how the FJ;WLEKFJ;LKJPD did THAT man win the White house AGAIN?! (And how did the Senate come along for the ride?)

By now, a week after the election, a lot of smart people have weighed in with opinions based on data from exit polls, so rather than just spouting an opinion, I’ve compiled a round-up of very smart theories from other very smart people.

Chime in with your own theory and to commiserate, wouldja?

The Highlights: How did Trump win?

Who voted for Trump and Republicans?

Men: Across the board, men carried the Republican party. Nearly half of Latino men voted for Trump, who gained a 12-point advantage over Harris (as opposed to Biden’s 23-point advantage in 2020!). Gen Z men narrowly leaned to the right as well. Even black men moved toward Trump (though nearly 80% still voted Harris).

White people: Here’s a staggering chart for you.1 In case you were unconvinced before, white people elected Trump.

Parents: Young families, it seems, tend toward conservatism.

Suburbanites: Of those in the suburbs, men were most likely to support Trump.

Late Deciders: “In 2016, those who decided in the final days of the campaign broke disproportionately for Donald Trump, contributing to his victory that year. This year 4% decided in the last few days, and 3% in the last week. Both groups supported Trump.”2

The most religious Americans: Among those who go to church weekly (or even more often), 64% supported Trump. (More on this further down)

Who voted for Harris and Democrats?

The urban educated: The “diploma divide” and “density equals Democrats” demographical adage held up. The higher your degree, the more likelihood that you voted left in this election. Similarly, the closer you live to your neighbors, the more likely you were to vote left.

Black men and minority women: The highest demographic (by percentage) of voters who turned out for Harris were women of color. While support for Democrats declined overall, more black women voted for Harris than for Biden. Latina women also offered Harris a 22 percentage point advantage. While black men’s support dipped (Clinton had a 69-point advantage, Biden a 60-point advantage), Harris still maintained a 56-point advantage.

See the big picture demographics in this chart below from the BBC3:

What issues turned out voters?

Inflation: No surprise, the economy was voters’ biggest issue, according to Pew.

While Twitter pundits are quick to denigrate those worried about the price of a dozen eggs, most voters (especially in swing states) are struggling to pay their bills—really. Even though the inflation rate has dropped, cars are still expensive and interest rates have doubled compared with pandemic rates.

To give you an idea of what that means, I pay a few hundred bucks a month on interest with a 2.875% interest rate on my house, a rate I got because we refinanced during the pandemic. Today, if I sold my home, I’d be paying several thousands more per month on interest payments on my house. My monthly house payment would go up by nearly triple. This is no small economic trouble—myself and others like my family cannot move, probably ever, because we cannot afford to, which exacerbates housing supply issues in the U.S. even further, leading to much higher rent as well.

This is a Fox News chart, btw!

There’s a reason that parents, those in the suburbs, and blue-collar families voted for Trump, and it’s not greed. To them, it’s a question of survival. (Yes, this is nonsensical to trust Trump with the American economy, and I’ll get to that, I promise. But I’m gunna give you an overview first.)

“The state of democracy”

This democratic talking point (and reality, btw) did turn out democrats to the voting booth… but not in big enough numbers, and definitely not in pandemic-era numbers. Ringing the bell of Donald Trump as a urgent threat… is fatiguing. (More on voter turnout below.)

Here’s what the ACLU has to say about Trump’s immigration policy.

Immigration

It’s no secret that Trumps rants about deportation gained him the White House once before, and probably did again. I have much to say on this issue, but I’ll keep it brief. I live in Aurora, Colorado, the town which Trump has unceremoniously sh*t upon many times, including in a visit to the outskirts of town. (He never did go into the “gang infested” center.) He also plans to send the National Guard to my city once he’s inaugurated. So, I can tell you with authority that Aurora, Colorado, a suburb of Denver with 400,000 residents that sits in the shadow of the rocky mountains, has not been overrun by Venezuelan gangs and I love living here.

Fear will do many things, and fear of the outsider will make those who feel like cultural outsiders suddenly feel like insiders again. It’s a cheat to belonging. And Trump plays to the fears of his audience like no other politician can.

Religious Affiliation

Chart per the Washington Post’s exit polling analysis

I know that I’m preaching to the choir here, but if you are Christian, you are still more likely to vote for a Republican. I find the Fox News religion polling more interesting than other sites because I imagine it to gather more information from religious people (just my own bias talking). They found that 70% of White Protestants and 60% of White Catholics voted for Trump. In fact, among my kin, the white American evangelicals, “About 8 in 10 of them supported him nationally, larger than his margin in 2020,” according to the Washington Post.

Not National Abortion Rights

While many women and Democratic voters seemed to care a lot about Roe v. Wade, the concern seems to have skipped Republican women for one important reason: the majority of Trump voters voted to pass amendments in their states to protect a woman’s right to abortion. It seems that abortion is no longer considered a national decision. Even abortion advocates have taken up the mantle in state legislatures instead. So those who voted for Trump who believe in the right to abortion felt no incoherence in their voting because they did vote for abortion rights. And, don’t forget, Trump turned Pro-choice candidate mid-way through his run. So voters who cared about abortion and liked Trump could have it both ways.

How did the polls get it so wrong (again)?

Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t. Pollsters seem to be relying heavily on the margin of error to say, well, actually, we were closer than you think… but then again, they’re also saying, it was simply “too close to call.”4 So not sure we’re going to get a great answer to this question anytime soon. But to me, this question is starting to sound like a 10-year-old demanding to know why his magic eight ball was wrong.

The answer: they just got it wrong. End of story, I guess.

Is Harris’s loss Biden’s fault?

Probably. Democratic strategist James Carville says so. (Others agree.)Dems should’ve had a primary. We should’ve given Harris a chance to run for an entire cycle. We should’ve would’ve could’ve. I know the appeal of blaming, but unfortunately, our magic eight ball is faulty. We just don’t know.

Reflection

On election night, my husband and I shared cheese and wine with two dear friends. We mostly watched the Colorado Avalanche (hockey), but occasionally we checked our phones as vote counts were tallied around the country. By 10:30PM, I knew Harris had lost and that, despite every prediction and despite my own activism and the deep dread that accompanied it, Donald J. Trump would be America’s next president.

I hate this result. So much. It still feels surreal to me, and as I said, I’m still angry and mourning. I was shocked and not surprised. I understood the chance he had to win because I have lovely, smart people in my life who voted differently than me, and even though I vehemently disagree with their vote, I love them anyway. Being connected to white American evangelicalism gives you a unique view into how the other side of the electorate thinks and while I sometimes loathe my former religious ties (SO DEPRESSING), it can be useful. So yes, I was shocked and not surprised.

I have seen rumors floating around of voter fraud, election interference, etc. from some democratic voters who are casting shade on Trump’s victory. If there is compelling evidence of that—like the time that one Oregonian set fire to hundreds of mail-in ballot drop boxes—then, by all means, please share it. For my part, I doubt these reports, mostly because even if there was interference, the disappearance of millions of votes would be noticed by election officers who have spent the last four years shoring up their systems against unrelenting criticism from the other side of the aisle. State election boards were prepared. Really.

The truth is, Trump won by a LANDSLIDE. His win was no counting error. (Unfortunately!!!!)

Equally, I believe Democrats could have beaten him. Why? Because Democratic voter turnout was terrible. In 2020, 81 MILLION Democrats voted for Biden. In 2024, that number dropped to ~72 million voters for Harris. In contrast, the number of votes for Trump largely remained steady (74 million in 2020, 75 million in 2024).

10 million Democratic voters didn’t show up to the booth. And that is the reason Democrats did not win the 2024 election.

Graphic from GZero

So, the question is: why? Why didn’t those voters show up for Harris?

Maybe it’s racism, maybe sexism. Maybe it’s the fact that she is a former prosecutor, a challenging career for a Democrat to defend to low-income BIPOC voters. Maybe it’s Biden’s unpopularity and his determination not to step down as the nominee until July. It’s likely all of the above.

But if I had to guess why Democrats didn’t come out to vote, I’d say that democrats have lost their voice and confused their story.5 Rather than leaning into their message of freedom and justice for all people, democrats ran ads responding to concerns about immigration, telling constituents that they’d always been tough on crime and believed in deportation. In other words, the democratic message was led by republican concerns. Rather than affirming the positives of being a democrat—taxing the richest 1% to fund social programs for the poor! healthcare despite preconditions! public education for every human! a new start for immigrants! the freedom to read whatever we want because every voice matters!—we ceded too much airtime to the hateful, dehumanizing rhetoric of our opponents.

I do not mean that we cannot be sharp to our opponents; I just wonder if the Democratic our message was weighed down in too many Republican concerns. Dems did not lead with their unique story, unique goals, or unique character as a political party. Rather than assuaging fear with a different, truer story of the American dream, Dems ignored the fears of millions of Americans and spent too much time defending the last administration (“The inflation rate is only two percent! What’s wrong with you?”).

Worse, the tone of Democrats was patronizing and demeaning. Because apparently, Democrats are the bourgeoisie now, the comfortable upper, middle, and educated class, and we believe we know better.

And I’m willing to concede that in some instances, Dems do know better. I’m shocked that voters bought into Trump’s “concept of a plan” to fix inflation and the American economy by imposing tariffs. But apparently, MILLIONS of Americans are afraid and they’re not sure that they and their families can survive this American economy. Some of them aren’t making it. And they blame Biden for their situation—and by proxy, Harris—for the pandemic economy which Trump handed him, however nonsensical that conclusion is.

Whatever else you think of Trump, I think it’s reasonable to say that voters believed that Trump and the GOP listened better and would act on their behalf. Voters believed that Trump and his party took their concerns seriously. They did not feel lectured by GOP leaders, unlike how they felt when hearing from Democratic leaders who were so quick to offer tired and complex explanations of why they shouldn’t feel bad about this economy, but should be happy with what they’ve got because Europe’s inflation rate is worse. We’re better than ever! Really!

Once again, as so many populist (fascist?) leaders have done before him, Trump made himself appear approachable, trustworthy, and relatable in a way that Democrats did not. To them, he’s Uncle Don. He’s been there, and he gets it. They simply like and trust him (I KNOW), and there might not be much more to their decision than that. Sigh.

The Rise of Bonhoeffer Podcast

After compiling this analysis, I admit that I’m still baffled by the decision made by the majority of Americans. Why do they trust him? Why not this smart, kind Black-South Asian woman? In my mind, there’s no contest. She would do it better.

But despite my disagreement, bafflement, anger, and yes, my own fears, I am still called to practice empathy and curiosity—even now.

I hope we can learn to receive the results of this election as a cry for help from our neighbors. They need help, and they are afraid. In fact, that’s true for every one of our neighbors, whatever way they voted. But for those neighbors who did vote for Trump and hang his flag in their front windows, they are soon about to discover that their presidential savior will not be able to fulfill his every promise. He does not care about the people who voted for him, even if they’re convinced he does. And I believe some will come to—or already are—regret their vote.

If/when our neighbors change their minds, let us be ready to embrace them—with truth, justice, and empathy. And if they never do? The same code of ethics apply. Whether you voted for Trump or Harris, I will tell you the truth, I will fight for justice, and I will extend empathy without holding back.

That is the way of Jesus who, for the joy set before him, endured the cross. We keep going, as He did.

Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

P.S. As we enter this moment where world politics seems to be leaning toward fascism (for real), I have found the podcast “The Rise of Bonhoeffer” immensely informative and interesting. (It’s not by Eric Metaxas, thank God. Instead, it’s a podcast that gives voice to EVERY OTHER BONHOEFFER SCHOLAR, thank God again.)

caption...

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2024/politics/2020-2016-exit-polls-2024-dg/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bowmanmarsico/2024/11/12/the-exit-polls-from-a-to-z/

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0lp48ldgyeo

New York Magazine says: “All in all, the Trump-Harris contest was a mixed bag for pollsters and those who slice and dice their data. But nobody should feel misled. It was truly too close to call.” (The “should” really gets me here. “Stop feeling like that, get over it.” *eye roll*)

I suspect that the conflict within the Democratic party around the conflict between Gaza and Israel also played a role in lower voter turnout, and I really hope that someone digs into that element of this election soon.

Curious Reads: In the Wake of Helene

Liz Charlotte Grant — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 19:43:35 GMT

Hello friend, Liz here.

#1 This week’s top of the fold story is a photo essay of Hurricane Helene—that is, the Washington Post asked photojournalists to recall the stories behind some of the most memorable photos they took while covering the natural disaster in the Southeast U.S. this past week.

I urge you to spend some time with these photos and to pray for those affected by this hurricane season—which includes those who will be affected by Hurricane Milton within the next few hours.

“Photographers Recall the Hurricane Helene Scenes They’ll Never Forget” in the Washington Post

Read It

The Highlights

“Helene has become one of the deadliest hurricanes in the United States, since the emergence of modern weather forecasting.”

200 people died, and more people remain unaccounted for. Residents are still without water, food, and electricity. Entire towns were washed away. Appalachia was hit especially hard.

Curious Reads: the Undecided Voters

Liz Charlotte Grant — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 18:42:43 GMT

Hello friend, Liz here.

#1 This week’s top of the fold story is the undecideds—that is, those Americans voters who haven’t yet picked a candidate for the upcoming presidential election.

I know this question is top of mind for those of us who are, ahem, EXTREMELY DECIDED. We’re asking, who are the undecideds, what do they want, and how do we convince them to join our team? ;-) (Or can we? Should we?)

Since I do not believe the reporting from a lone outlet gives us a full enough picture of these voters, I have linked to multiple articles below and written up the combined highlights.

PA Voters Respond to Debate (AP)

BBC interviews swing state voters

Undecided voters respond to debate (NYT)

Issues for Undecided Voters (LA Times)

The Highlights

How many undecideds and independent voters are there? And what kind of influence will they have on the upcoming U.S. elections?

It’s difficult to know how many undecided voters exist at this moment in the campaigns, but pollsters estimate the number of “undecided voters” as 5%-10% of the American electorate. Using 2020’s numbers, 168 million registered to vote and ~160 million Americans actually voted. So, that would mean roughly 8-16 million people currently straddling the fence.

While that number does not seem huge in comparison to the scale of the U.S. election, the way American votes are counted means that many of these voters reside in “swing” or “purple” states that could swing to either the Democratic or Republican candidate (the seven swing states considered shaky, unreliable and up-for-grabs territory for both parties are: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona ).

This November’s election will likely be decided by a few million people in these “swing” states—who, by then, will be sick of hearing from both candidates. (Imagine the unceasing political ads and mailers!!!)

Did the recent presidential debate change any minds?

Perhaps. According to the undecideds, the recent presidential debate was Harris’s audition, not Trump’s. One said, “This was more an audition for Kamala Harris to just kind of see who she is, where she stands on policies and her command of the stage.” Because most undecided voters know the former president too well, his rhetoric and behavior during the debate, though shocking, did not change their minds.

But these voters felt they did not know Harris. As one Democratic pollster, Cornell Belcher, put it, “[Harris is] famous, but she’s unknown.”

They were wanting to see how she planned differentiate herself from Biden; her priorities; and how she would hold up under a constant barrage of, well, Trump. And the debate did sway many toward the Harris camp.

Some leant toward Harris because they liked her or they liked how she performed at the debate. One undecided said, “I like that Kamala Harris does say I am going to be the president for everyone. I don’t think our politicians say that often.”

But for others, they felt moved into the Never Trump camp. One former Trump voter said that his pettiness and facial expressions reminded her of how her teenagers acted… when they were toddlers.

Another admitted that the debate made him afraid of a second Trump presidency: “Every time he spoke, it was frightening to a level that I have not felt from him before. And while I don't love Harris, and I think she's very wishy-washy, she does not pose an existential threat to America like he does.”

Another said of Trump, “I don't trust [Trump]. I don't think he wants to run the country, I think he wants to own the country.”

However, support for Harris among independent and undecided voters is shaky. They’re by no means fans. As one put it, “I don't know if I'll be very enthusiastic about it but I will probably be voting for her.”

To these, Harris’s stage presence felt canned and too rehearsed (a trait other undecideds interpreted as “prepared”). Others felt she avoided tricky questions—on policies like late-term abortion, immigration, the U.S. response to wars abroad, and that she avoided explaining her vice presidential work. One undecided voter said, “She ran off into her talking points and never gave a direct answer.”

Then again, other undecided voters weigh the economy of President Trump’s presidency with Biden’s—a compelling case for returning the former leader to the White House, despite some voters’ dislike of Trump as a person. One undecided said that, though her heart pulls her to Ms. Harris’s potentially history-making candidacy, she finds herself thinking fondly of her old life (and budget) before. “When Trump was in office — not going to lie — I was living way better,” she said.

Why are these voters still undecided? What do they need to know or see from the candidates in order to make up their minds?

This is hard to answer because each person will offer a unique answer when asked by a pollster or reporter. Some haven’t tuned in until now, so they haven’t given themselves a huge runway to make this political decision. Others are “double haters”—meaning, according to Republican pollster White Ayres, “They are people who do pay attention to politics and don’t like what they see.”

And those registered as independents tend to care more about policy. These voters express the feeling of still not having enough policy information to make their decision yet. As one voter said, “I want to get the full facts before I do anything.”

A major policy concern of these voters is, no surprise, the economy (i.e. inflation). The debate did not clear up this question for these voters because these voters want the fine print about how candidates will accomplish their policy goals—as in, how will a polarized and divided Congress be convinced to act? “[Harris] tried a couple times to say [during the debate],” one voter said, “‘I want to do this and I want to do that,’ and that’s nice promises… [But] I hope she can get them through Congress.”

Other trending policy issues for these independent and undecided voters: immigration reform, abortion reform, and foreign policy. But economics far outweighs these other concerns.

Photo by Richmond Times-Dispatch, Illustration for Politico

So, how do we interact with (and perhaps seek to convince) these undecided and independent voters?

Start by assuming the best about those around you. In a pluralistic country like ours, it’s not surprising, really, that our neighbors do not share our opinions. What we do share, however, is the relative similarity of our daily lives.

We all struggle with the cost of eggs and coffee (wait, how much?). We all want our kids and grandkids to thrive. We want our parents and grandparents to receive good healthcare. We want to be able to worship and pursue our hobbies and walk down safe sidewalks without fearing either our neighbors or our government.

Democracy is built on pluralism. Which does not mean heathenism, by the way (that’s what I grew up believing within white American evangelical spaces, anyway, where the word was muttered like a four-letter curse). In the purest linguistic form, pluralism is about plurality, plural tense. Pluralism allows us to create communities where we do not always agree, yet where our voices matter and we can agree on a few basic, shared values.

So, start a conversation with an undecided by emphasizing what you share. Assume that your neighbor agrees with you on outcomes. Because they, like you, want to live a whole and healthy life, and they want the same for their kids.

Assuming that your neighbor is evil because of who they vote for misses out of on the complexity of voting within a system of binaries. With two political systems at play, no one gets everything. Compromise is inevitable. So, what are we compromising on, and why? How can we explain ourselves to each other without judgment and how can we listen to each other with genuine curiosity?

I understand that such a task is supremely difficult in our current climate of hot takes and hateful words about the other (demonic?) side of the aisle. Yet I remember the words of the apostle Paul when he talks about his ministry amongst the pluralistic Roman society where he lived: he writes, “I have become all things to all people, so that by all means I may save some.” (1 Corinthians 9:22, NET)

What would it mean, in humility and tenderness, for us to seek to understand another person so completely that we might be described as becoming like them on the nonessential issues?1

Convincing anyone of anything begins by listening well, with curiosity and empathy, in order to understand another person. We must, in a way, become like them, inhabiting their mind and experiences and emotions. Only then can we earn the right to speak.

Also: you don’t have to have the conversation at all. Sometimes it’s kinder to keep your mouth shut, my friend.

Sometimes the election rhetoric of both sides activates the same nerve in me as the “evangelism on a plane” guilt did. I remember the feeling of walking onto an airplane, sitting in my seat, and dreading meeting eyes with the person beside me… because if I did, then I had to acknowledge my responsibility to evangelize them over the short three hours we shared space between the East Coast (my family’s home) and Chicago (my college). But I felt like I had to. Because it was urgent and essential. And didn’t I care about their eternal fate? What if they went to hell and it was my fault?Sigh.

If you do plan to speak your views, do not lean into political argumentation you might hear by a pundit; instead, get personal, and tell your own story of how you came to make up your mind.

Please do not expect that their mind will change right then, in an instant. I know the election is urgent, feels urgent, that everything in you might be screaming that we don’t have time for your indecision. But change is not immediate. The best, most permanent and formative change happens slowly and deliberately and unconsciously, often by way of a variety of inputs, so that eventually, you wake up different.

As I reflect on how I have changed my mind about politics—remember how I voted for G. W. Bush twice because of the pro-life movement’s propaganda machine…?—I realize I never set out to vote differently. Instead, change happened through genuine relationship with others who thought (and voted) differently than I did.

In other words, over time as someone I loved gently disagreed with me, offering their perspective kindly and directly, I would seek to be a good friend to them by receiving and welcoming them despite our disagreement. In so doing, my own thinking became less dogmatic, and I began to understand the issues with more nuance, taking my friend’s experiences into account.

For me, that eventually meant swapping political parties. Where I once voted R, I no longer do. My mind changed because of dear friends who had the courage, wisdom, and patience to disagree with me. These friends walked alongside me, showing me love even when we disagreed. Because belonging is the best and only proof we need to feel safe enough to change our minds.

So, what would it look like if we each endeavored to offer that safety to someone else during this election season? How might the church change shape and character if we model the behavior of Jesus even to leaders or lay people who resist changing their minds?

I can say with certainty that even if their minds never do change, we ourselves will grow to look more and more like Jesus. In other words, go for it, friend!

Thanks for reading. Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

Read the Rest at McSweeney's

Just for Fun…

Notes

By mentioning “nonessential issues,” I do not mean to say that politics is meaningless, nonessential, or that we should be uninvolved. (Um, do you read this newsletter? hahaha I’m pretty obsessed with politics and our role in supporting our immediate communities by any means possible… including through political action.) However, I do mean that the most important way we can conduct ourselves during this election cycle is to treat all those involved—not only those on our team!—as beloved children of God.

BTW, I’m happy to hear pushback on any of the above points. Is this a purely privileged white girl perspective? What am I missing and/or miscommunicating? Get thee into the comments!

Curious Reads: Loving Our Fat Neighbors (Or Not)

Liz Charlotte Grant — Tue, 03 Sep 2024 20:22:20 GMT

Hello friend, Liz here.

For the newbies among us: Every other week, I write an essay about how I am seeking to practice curiosity and empathy in my own life (“the empathy list”).

Then, on the off-week, I share a curated list of essays worth reading (“curious reads”). I try to pick essays for you from publications that offer a few free essays per month (as in, ahem, incognito mode will work…).

Out of the 6 or so stories I share, I pick one to explore in greater depth—the “top of the fold” story. This deep dive is meant to challenge you in your practice of authentic, healthy faith in Jesus by offering a practical opportunity to learn about and feel more deeply for those around us—especially those who are different from us. Enjoy!

Top of the Fold

#1 This week’s story is about fatness at church—that is, about the Christian church and American culture’s assumption that God hates fatness, like they do.

But—PRAISE GOD—our biases are not God’s biases. Remember, when there’s no daylight between who we hate and who God hates, we likely have confused our own biases with God’s.

Rev. Anastasia E.B. Kidd, author of Fat Church: Claiming a Gospel of Fat Liberation, drives this point home in an interview everyone should read. (From her, I learned a new word: Orthorexia)

Read “God Loves Fat People As They Are. Can We?” by Greta Lapp Klassen at Sojourners

The Highlights

Greta Lapp Klassen, Sojourners: “You and other fat activists use the word “fat” as a neutral description of human bodies, just like short or tall. Why is reclaiming the word important to fat activists?”

Rev. Kidd: “Fat people are not failed thin people — they’re fat people. Claiming fatness as a permanent, immutable, and positive identity — just as one would claim any other sort of human identity marker — means that I can no more change the size of my body than I can the color of my skin.”

Sojo: “One of the things that makes your book so unique is that it outlines the history of anti-fatness in the church. What are some of the most interesting and important intersections between the church and anti-fatness?”

Rev. Kidd: “My first experience with the conflation of “righteous Christian [living]” with weight loss culture was Gwen Shamblin’s Weigh Down workshops in the 1990s. I was in high school. Shamblin had an empire based on the idea that to be fat was to be unfaithful, to be fat was to ruin your body’s temple. She made millions on this. And that was just assumed to be true in the culture of Christianity in which I grew up in.

“To lots of people throughout church history, [being] a pious and controlled person [meant denying] ourselves pleasure in whatever form it took. So, if the assumption of fatness is that overeating is what makes us fat, then being thin has a moral righteousness, even if that’s just the body structure your genetics gave you.

“Early American diet culture was very concerned with pure and holy living, defined through diet and exercise, because disease was thought of as a response to sin; anything that was unhealthy in your body was your fault or the fault of your ancestors, and God was punishing you for that. That led to terrible things being done to anybody who had a non-normative body and continues to inform the rampant individualism that is behind the idea that we can bootstrap ourselves into a whole other body size or shape.”

“Repentance is the backbone of diet culture. Food moralism, the idea that there are good or bad foods, and that we’re righteous if we eat an apple and we have to repent for eating a hamburger, either through shame or actually doing something to ‘work off’ the ’sin’ of whatever we’ve done.”

Sojo: “You offer up a different version of Christianity: fat church. What does that mean to you and to the people who are part of your community?”

Rev. Kidd: “To me, [fat church] is …true body liberation would be the end of discrimination against anybody, for any reason. True body liberation would be the end of discrimination against anybody, for any reason. So body liberation in full would necessitate the end of white supremacy, the end of policing, the end of patriarchy, of usury, capitalism, structural class hierarchies, and all these other systems of violence that we have in society. Body liberation… means accommodation [of different body sizes and abilities], which means collective care, which means believing in the diversity of God’s creation as a good thing.”

Reflection: Christians Believe Thin = Godly

I recently experienced anti-fat bias at the pediatrician. I took my kids for their once-yearly physical, and during the assessment, their doctor (note: their doctor, not my doctor) asked me whether I’d received any new diagnoses lately—such as obesity? she asked. Her question took me off guard, and later, I confronted her about it. Why did you ask me that? Because I’m fat? What does that have to do with my string-bean, middle-of-the-road healthy children?

The doctor hedged—no, of course, she hadn’t asked because of how I look. She has to ask. She asks everyone that question. (Need I tell you that I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes when she said that? Of COURSE she doesn’t ask everyone that question, that’s absurd.) Even if your kids are obviously active, she claimed, even if they are and always have been in a healthy weight/height range for their entire lives (and the 9 years we’d been receiving check-ups at this doctor’s office), even if she had no reason whatsoever to believe that my kids would necessarily have their own weight issues based on the data… she still needed to ask me, their caregiver, about my diagnoses.

(Please read the entire thread about my fatphobic experience with my kids’ pediatrician before commenting about it. It’s a doozy of a thread.)

On the surface, this story of anti-fat bias I experienced is unrelated to Christianity, per se. Yet it reveals the codependency most Americans feel toward “fixing” fat bodies. Medical practitioners often provide particularly egregious examples of this compulsion, but the American Christian church is not far behind.

For example: did you know that the International Board of Missions for the SBC considers candidates with a BMI over 33 to be unfit for missions work? And this is a CURRENT standard, by the way.1 Meaning that if a person with a higher BMI applies to be a missionary abroad, they will be denied out of hand because of this one number.

And the SBC isn’t the only prominent Christian organization or person to be suspicious of fat people.

On twitter recently, Dave Ramsey compared individual financial problems to fatness: “We live on the junk food of finance, and we’re financially obese as a culture.” (I won’t link to it, but his team posted the clip on 9:54AM on August 1, 2024.) The implication is that obesity = broke = immoral, out of control, bad.

Famously, Mark Driscoll “refused to promote an overweight elder because Driscoll said his ‘fat ass’ would tarnish Mars Hill’s image,” as reported by the Seattle Times).

And if you Google any combination of “obesity” + “Christians,” the algorithm helpfully suggests the related search question, “Is obesity a sin?”

The volume of Christian diet books confirms our cultural obsession: there’s The Holy Diet, The Maker’s Diet, The Eden Diet, The Diet Bible, The Daniel Fast, Eating As in Heaven, Kingdom Fit Moms, What Would Jesus Eat?, Grace-Filled Plates, Take Back Your Temple, Weigh Down (see above), and the classic “Help Lord—the Devil Wants Me Fat!”

If the devil wants Christians to be fat, then what does that say about fatness?

Christians who buy into this anti-fat bias equate gluttony, a lack of self control, and a love of something other than Jesus (food/body idolatry) with fatness. Fatness is an addiction, a sin, and reveals in our bodies the depths of our own depravity. (Oof, to be clear, these are bullshit.)

Generally, these beliefs come with no nuance because they’re often not explicitly stated at church. Many Christians will not vocally condemn fatness, so their disdain can be seen in unspoken biases revealed in the unconscious treatment of fat people. (For example, are church leaders willing to provide seating without armrests so that fat people can come to church without worrying about not fitting within the provided seats? Are there any fat people in leadership at your church? How do preachers talk about differently-sized bodies from the podium, and what metaphors do they use to describe sin?)

Online, when Christians have spoken their anti-fat biases out loud, they have referred to Jesus’s body, as if his is the model body for humanity as a whole—after all, Jesus is God in a body. Since Jesus was a carpenter (physically capable and perhaps even ripped), and he ate a mediterranean diet, he was probably slim. According to these Christians, the godliest body, then, is male, strong and able enough to do a physical trade, and fed by a fish and vegetable-heavy diet (See What Would Jesus Eat?). Then again, if Jesus is the perfect version of a human body, then female bodies, once again, fall outside of the norms of godliness. And so do sick and disabled/differently-abled/neurodivergent bodies. Is that the side we want to stand on? Is that the side Jesus stands on?

Another verse thrown into the faces of fat people comes in Paul’s letters when the apostle compares the journey of faith to running a marathon—which, because the Bible mentioned it, means we should all be able to run marathons or we’re doing faith wrong. *rolls eyes*

A couple of things worth noting, in response to the anti-fat bias of American Christianity:

1) So much of the discourse around bodies and diets assumes that bodies are static—or at least, that they should be. But as any female, sick, or person over the age of 40 will tell you, that’s just not true, nor is that assumption reasonable.

Bodies change constantly throughout our lives. Jesus’s body changed, too. Jesus was scarred in his resurrected, perfected body because of his gruesome death by crucifixion, a fact that leads disability theologian Nancy Eisland to assume that our after-death bodies will not necessarily be “healthy and whole” in the way we might assume, and that Jesus, in fact, is our disabled God. (Buy this book. It’s a keeper.)

Aside from the ideal of unchanging bodies being exceptionally ableist and ageist, anti-fat bias in our faith communities means we’re also disregarding God’s frequent and clear words throughout the Scriptures about God’s view of our bodies: first, all humans are created in God’s own likeness (no exclusions); second, bodily appearance is by no means the measure God uses to judge God’s own followers; third, a hot and healthy bod does not equal God’s favor, according to God, because Jesus did not look so great.

Compared to the squishy verses that Christian diet leaders take out of context to build entire ministries, it’s hard to escape a word like, “Don’t be impressed by… appearance. God does not view things as people do. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7, NET)

Or this one, a prophecy that describes Jesus’s body:

“He had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by others;
…and as one from whom others hide their faces [or one who hides his face from others,]
he was despised, and we held him of no account.” (Isaiah 53:2-3, NRSVUE)

Because this principle of God’s indiscriminate love—regardless of appearance or ability—is repeated over and over throughout the Bible, including its application to Jesus Himself, it is reasonable to generalize this idea to us, too.

That said, EVEN IF fatness were a sin—let’s play that game for a second—it would never disqualify anyone from ministry because those who God called to ministry WERE NEVER QUALIFIED (take, for example, Moses, David, Paul, and EVERY ONE of Jesus’s 12 disciples…). It would never ever count a person out from receiving the grace, love, favor, and welcome of God because the imago dei is applied indiscriminately to humankind, meaning we all image God (EVEN THOSE OF US IN NON-NORMATIVE BODS, CHAD).

And EVEN IF fatness were a sin, it would never justify the shaming, bullying, condescension, dehumanization, and discrimination that fat people so often experience within the walls of the church (or on Christian twitter). The cruelty so often inflicted upon fat bodies demonstrates the same lack of self-control that fat people are so often accused of, which I believe is the very definition of seeing a speck in your neighbor’s eye while missing the log hanging out of your own eye socket.

Pictured: Chad and his many splinters.

I admit, I feel fiery about this issue because I myself have experienced cruel judgment about my body from those who claim to belong to Christ. And it’s straight horseshit to pretend their comments come from a place of care. Nope, it originates from a desire to control. That, and a delusional, hypocritical sense of superiority. Which is another way of saying pride.

Yet so often, those with the harshest judgments toward others extend the same cruel judgments to themselves, believing God to be a harsh master. What comes out of Chad’s mouth reveals more about his view of his own body than it reveals his thoughts about mine. So, even Chad deserves the abundant grace and mercy of God.

All this is a long walk to a simple message: let’s watch ourselves, lest we stumble as we point out the extra weight on our sister’s hips. Let us walk carefully, humbly, and graciously toward each body we meet because each body has been tenderly crafted by our Creator. We are all dust, and we are also the mirror of Divinity. So, whenever you and I care for a body other than our own, Jesus says you are caring for Him, Him in them, because they are the mirror image of Him.

Thanks for reading. Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

Discussion: How have reckoned with your own changing body and/or the changing bodies of those around you? How could you show more tenderness to your own body this week? How can you celebrate the imago dei in other bodies you encounter this week?

For the joy…

A comic that celebrates the joy and freedom of swimming while fat. —NYT

Note that the SBC mission’s board does not explain why they’ve instituted this qualification about BMI. Because they do not explain, I can only surmise that the IMB believes the reasons for adding this qualification to their list is self-evident, and that their assumptions match those of American culture generally about fat bodies. (Also you better believe that I emailed the IMB when I found this out because I have to find out everything about this. I have yet to hear back…)

Curious Reads: Parents, Stop Oversharing About Your Kids Online

Liz Charlotte Grant — Fri, 31 May 2024 18:44:47 GMT

Hello friend, Liz here.

#1 Today’s top of the fold story is a debate about privacy—that is, the first kids of social media influencers are all grown up. And now they’re lobbying for states to provide protections from their parents’ oversharing.

This story made me uncomfortable and sad and doubtful of my own past history with social media (what will my kids make of what I’ve shared about them?). And that’s why it’s a perfect read to provoke deep thinking this afternoon!

Read “The first social media babies are adults now. Some are pushing for laws to protect kids from their parents’ oversharing” by Faith Karimi at CNN

Illustration by Nathalie Cruz for Yahoo! News

The Highlights

How would it feel to have your parents splash news of your first menstrual cycle across Facebook? Cam Barrett found out first-hand.

“I was in fourth grade. I was 9 years old. The date was September 9, 2009. And my mom posted … something like, ‘Oh my God, my baby girl’s a woman today. She got her first period,’” Barrett said. “A lot of my friends and their parents had social media, so it was super embarrassing.”

Her mother was a popular influencer on MySpace (remember when?) and Facebook, and earned celebrity perks. But her no-holds-barred posting meant that her daughter did not feel safe at home—tantrums, medical diagnoses, and the fact of her adoption all ended up on the internet as fodder for middle school bullies.

“Sometimes, she hid in her room to avoid appearing on camera. She didn’t confide in adults during her teenage years because she feared her secrets would end up on social media, she said.”

Her mental health declined, and she no longer goes by her legal name in order to obscure her digital footprint.

Barrett is not the only kid to have their private life on public view. Child actors have long experienced a similar phenomenon. Yet social media does not allow work-life boundaries, meaning that the kids of influencers feel as if they’re constantly performing, even at home. No space or event is truly private, leading them to feel as if they are constantly on display. And, really, they are.

“Some children of family vloggers are living in homes that feel like sets and with parents who double as their bosses…” writes Karimi. “‘It’s like living in a movie set all day, every day,’” says Chris McCarty.

McCarty continues:

“A lot of people who follow family channels and kid accounts have never zoomed out and asked themselves why they have such intimate access to a kid they’ve never met,” Easom said. “I want people to remember the curated videos (that) family channels are putting out do not necessarily represent what happens when the cameras are off.

“Imagine a family vlog where instead of antics, intimate details such as mental health issues, grades and personal things like potty training and first periods get shared online, where they live forever. Parents then use this clip as clickbait to generate intrigue and revenue for a monetized family channel.

Illustration by Alex Zabusik for the Atlantic Monthly

Now, kids like Cam Barrett, Caroline Easom, and Chris McCarty are asking lawmakers to pass laws to protect kids like them. And, they want to be paid for their work, asking for both financial compensation for children whose private lives go online without their consent, and a right to delete unwanted content that exists on their parents’ accounts when they become adults. They want to control their digital footprint, to take back their privacy, and to fight for the rights of other children subjected to the same.

Currently, legislatures in New York, New Jersey, Washington State, Maryland, California, Georgia, Missouri, Ohio, Minnesota, and Arizona are considering new child labor laws designed to safeguard child influencers based on a European standard called “In some states, proposed legislation would include a clause that borrows from a European legal doctrine known as the “right to be forgotten.” The first law to pass, in Illinois, goes into effect this July due in part to Barrett’s advocacy.

Reflection: Is the family vlog dead?

As an adult who came of age as social media took off, I can very much relate to the parents in these stories. Remember the tumblr “Reasons My Son is Crying”? Where the mom of a toddler stuck her phone in her kid’s face while he was tantruming and documented the reason for his tantrum?

…what could go wrong? ;-)

See a few favorites at Huff Post

But also, have you seen these photos? They’re genuinely HILARIOUS. If you’re a parent of a toddler, tracking the speech or even fits of your kid is second-nature. Snapping a photo and writing a snarky caption is a way to maintain sanity, to connect with the adult world that feels so, so distant when you’re in the midst of the vortex of Big Toddler Feelings.™

Read The Sharenting Reckoning

I had my own children in 2012 and 2014 and began snapping photos that I posted to an instagram account, sharing mostly with out-of-state family and friends. (No one else cared, frankly, and I never made a cent off of my Gerber babies’ pinch-able cheeks.)

What I mean is, the rise of family vlogging felt natural and fun—at the time.

Illustration by Khadija Horton for Cosmo

But there was another side to the industry, as this Cosmo essay about “sharenting” (sharing + parenting) reveals:

Vanessa1, [one child participating in the family vlog business], says, “There was this idea that you have to look perfect and pretty and like nothing is wrong all the time in front of the camera, and if it seemed like I wasn’t trying hard enough to maintain that image, like my smile wasn’t as bright as it should be or I didn’t say a line with enough enthusiasm…that would usually devolve into accusing me of not caring about our family. I was told by my mom, ‘Do you want us to starve? Do you want us to not be able to make our payment next month on the mortgage?’”

And, apparently, corporations seem to prefer sponsoring these family vloggers only when they engage their kids in the content—Grant Khanbalinov, 33, says his family vlog used to attract lucrative brand deals until he decided to take his kids offline. Without the kids, deals dried up.

Because, let’s be honest, the economics of a cute kid holding a roll of paper towels does not equal a middle-aged dad doing the same, no matter how close the resemblance to a JCrew model.

By the way, Cosmopolitan’s series on Sharenting is fantastic. Read if you want to go deeper into the world of oversharing family vloggers.

Americans, in general, support the right to be forgotten online, according to a 2020 Pew survey. We want our private information to stay private.

But parents do not always consider the consequences of sharing our kids’ images online though—and not because we’re malevolent, necessarily, but because we’re naive and ignorant, and because we ourselves have made peace with a level of oversharing past generations did not indulge.

Yet with the scary advances in AI and the recent backlash of kids against their influencer parents, I suddenly find myself concerned on behalf of Gen Z and Gen Alpha, the generation my kids belong to. For the first time, I’m considering deleting what I have for years considered the family album of my early Instagram posts. Their safety and wellbeing is simply more important than maintaining a winsome record.

I’ve already stopped using my kids’ names online because I don’t want them associated with me or any of the writing I do. I also use online privacy software to try to keep trolls from doxing me and my family members (which happens when you write about controversial topics, as I do).

But I’ve started considering scrubbing my accounts of any photos of my kids and severely limiting any photos I post of them. Like mom Hannah Nwoko in the UK, I’ve found myself asking:

“Why am I sharing? Who are these photos for? And more importantly, who could they be reaching?”

It’s humbling, as parents, to realize we have messed up. But it’s inevitable that we will harm our kids. It’s worth examining our online habits to determine the reasons we have brought our kids into our internet spaces. Regular introspection—and possible behavior change—is necessary and good.

Of course, I realize that every family is different. Posting cute quotes or family photos is distinctly different than sharing intimate body details about your kids. And some kids may tell you their parents that they enjoy a version of online exposure. (My daughter has asked repeatedly for us to help her start a YouTube channel… and that’s an easy no for these parents. ;-) We tell her that the internet is like a neighborhood and she’s not ready to walk around on her own without us yet.)

The real question is, how will we parents respond once we realize we’ve harmed our kids (even unintentionally)? Will we take responsibility and action to repair? Or will we pretend everything’s okay, despite evidence to the contrary? Will we believe our children when they tell us they’re not okay?

For myself, as a memoirist, the question is even stickier. What level of exposure will I allow within my writing? And how will I temper the instinct to tell stories about my life while keeping the privacy of my children in mind?

You can see how this is a tricky question.

For myself, I’ve drawn a line: I will not reveal anything about my kids that could expose them to outside harm. I will honor and protect them. That’s my job and privilege as their mom. They matter more than any platform-building or book deal. They matter more than success in my work or even than paying my bills. Put simply, they matter the most. And I want them to grow-up believing it.

Thanks for reading. Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

Tell Me: How do you resolve this question as a parent? Do your kids show up in your online spaces? Why or why not? What conversations are you having with your own kids about being on the internet? What boundaries have you drawn?

Who needs child labor laws? 🥶

One of the advocates against “sharenting” makes behind-the-scenes satires… and they’re chilling/funny-ish?

Her name was changed for the article.

Curious Reads: The Trans Catholic Monk

Liz Charlotte Grant — Fri, 24 May 2024 21:04:50 GMT

Hello friend, Liz here.

#1 Today’s top of the fold story is a testimony—that is, a transgender Catholic hermit recently asked the Vatican to reconsider its relationship to gender by telling his story of religious vocation.

Brother Christian Matson is thought to be the first openly transgender person in his position in the Catholic Church, and I found his story deeply moving.

Read “Catholic diocesan hermit approved by Kentucky bishop comes out as transgender“ by Jack Jenkins at Religion News Service

“Ingrid Bergman, The Nun” by Andy Warhol

The Highlights

Raised in the PCA (Presbyterian Church of America), Christian Matson transitioned during college, “a step he refers to as a part of his ‘medical history’ rather than a ‘central part of my personal identity.’”

He converted to Catholicism four years after his transition and felt a desire to join the ministry of the Catholic Church—even though he understood that he’d run into obstacles fulfilling his calling due to a 2000 Vatican document that said that those who’d undergone “sex change,” in the words of the pronouncement, would be “ineligible ‘to marry, be ordained to the priesthood or enter religious life.”

Over ten years, he continued his religious education, eventually completing an PhD in theology as he sought a way to serve the church.

“People who knew me said, ‘You clearly have a religious vocation,’ and these were all people who knew my medical history,” Matson said. “But when they would go to the people in the community in charge of making that decision, they … would often just refuse to even meet with me.” Despite the fact that Mason had taken vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and his clear desire to pursue the life of a hermit, communities would not accept him.

Finally, after years of Matson seeking and “crushing” rejection, he encountered Bishop John Stowe of Lexington, Kentucky who expressed openness to accepting the novitiate as a hermit.

“It was an enormous relief,” Matson said. “I was in tears. I felt my hope revive.”

He moved to Kentucky, enrolled as a novitiate in a Benedictine community, and August 2022, Matson took his first vows to spend the year as a diocesan hermit.

Over that year, Matson “lived a life of basically spending half the day in prayer and half the day doing some form of work,” often supporting a local theater.

Yet Matson remains concerned about the debate and misinformation the Vatican has released about transgender individuals within the Catholic church, especially because many who would join the church are turned away. Meanwhile, a contingent of support and tolerance toward the entire LGBTQ+ community is growing within the Catholic church. Matson has now added his voice to the chorus.

“I can’t stand by and let this false and, at times, culpably ignorant understanding of what it means to be transgender continue to hurt people,” he said. “If I don’t say anything and allow the church to continue to make decisions based on incorrect information, then I’m not serving the church.”

“The Last Supper (Pink),” 1987, Andy Warhol

BTW, did you know that Andy Warhol was Catholic? And, no surprise, he had a complex relationship with the Catholic church.

Read: Catholic Warhol

Reflection

I’m amazed and humbled by the tenacity of Brother Matson as he’s pursued a place in the Catholic Church. Whatever beliefs you hold about gender, sexuality, and transgender politics in particular, a fundamental Christian doctrine is the fact that every single human is made in the image of God and, therefore, is loved by God as a child. This true whether they share our politics, ethnicity, economic status, geography, and/or our sexual and gender identities. (Yes, even the Trump voter is made in the image of God. Even Trump himself.)

Christians tend to overlook this doctrine when it’s convenient for us. But the fact is stark: Christ calls even those we hate our neighbors, just as he calls his enemies his friends. (See: the story of the prodigal sons, the one lost sheep, or the good Samaritan.)

…No one said this faith journey was easy, my friends. ;-)

And, generally speaking, what church people have offered to LGBTQ folks is the very opposite treatment that Jesus models. Of course, we’re familiar with the most hateful and homophobic displays of Christians rejecting those with minority identities, but what about purposeful ignorance? Not only have we refused love and care, but too often, we have stuck our heads in the sand, refusing even to see these souls among us.

“The Last Supper, Pink,” 1987, Andy Warhol

I was particularly moved by this quote from Matson:

“You’ve got to deal with us, because God has called us into this church,” he said. “It’s not your church to kick us out of — this is God’s church, and God has called us and engrafted us into it.”

This brother is a man who understands the story of God more deeply than most of us ever will—because he’s understood the radical, undiscerning welcome of God. He is the rejected outsider, the one who loves much because he has been loved much by God. After all, what is the point of church? None of us earns a place in these pews by being good or right or normative. We are only here because of God’s great love for us.

Matson also describes an encounter he had at the local theater, as journalist Jack Jenkins describes:

Attending a friend’s play in his religious habit, [Matson] was approached by a student who identified as trans and nonbinary. After asking if Matson was a monk, the student said they were raised Catholic, but that their parents had rejected their identity, and the student felt like they “don’t have a place in the church anymore.”

Matson responded by saying there were people in the church who would support the student, and Matson prayed with them, asking God to show the student how they are “wonderful the way you’ve made them.” The student, Matson said, grew emotional, thanking the hermit profusely and saying, “No one from the church has ever affirmed me for who I am.”

Note that the rejection felt by this student is not felt in connection to their actions or beliefs, but to their personhood. Transgender folks inside the church often feel denigrated, demeaned, and dehumanized. However, when we reject them in ways that harm their sense of self, we are also harming Christ himself, their Maker.

I feel deeply grateful that this Kentucky bishop extended welcome to Matson amongst a very divided Catholic church. I also fear how the wider church will receive to Matson’s advocacy in this article. And, at the same time, I admire Matson’s courage in telling his story and his trust that telling the truth will serve the wider big C Church more than his silence. I believed it already has.

Thanks for reading. Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

Just for Fun

It’s official. Tacos = mexican sandwiches.

…at least according to a judge’s recent decision in Fort Wayne, Indiana which clarified that tacos really are in fact mexican-style sandwiches. (Yes, the judge is a white non-Mexican American who’s fully qualified to decide culinary disputes, duh.) Hopefully, the judge will turn his attention to hot dogs next (sandwich or no?). —AP News

…But for real, are tacos sandwiches? Weigh in.

Curious Reads: When the word "mother" no longer fits

Liz Charlotte Grant — Fri, 10 May 2024 17:59:56 GMT

Hello friend, Liz here.

#1 Today’s top of the fold story is Mother’s day—specifically, an essay I wrote for the Christian Century reflecting on my work as a birth doula and on child loss.

“We need a word for mothers whose children have died” by Liz Charlotte Grant

Painting by Alice Neel, “Mother and Child,” 1982

I am a mother who is estranged from her mother. So, I have a zillion confusing feelings about Mother’s Day. The expectations of the day can feel crushing when you grow up in a dysfunctional household. After having my own two children, I felt the tug familiar many moms feel of wanting to be celebrated, to have the day be about ME MYSELF AND I, to make the day into the one day of the year when I would be adequately “recognized.”

But that doesn’t work either, does it? Laying on thick expectations for our children (or partners!) leads nowhere good, whatever generation you come from.

Instead, Mother’s day has become a time in which I’ve chosen to reflect on my experience of motherhood…

Curious Reads: God's Hot Earth & the Climate Backsliders

Liz Charlotte Grant — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 19:06:58 GMT

Hello friend, Liz here.

#1 Today’s top of the fold story is the backsliders—that is, the big banking institutions who are retracting their pledges to lower emissions, setting the entire planet back by decades in the effort to reverse global warming.

I know, it sucks to read bad news. And it’s tempting for me to down on evangelicalism in every newsletter (‘cause it’s popular 😜). But I hardly ever see news about the climate… and if, news junkie that I am, I never see climate news, I’m guessing you don’t either.

And this spring has been the hottest on record here in Colorado! Actually, since last June, every single month everywhere has been the hottest on record. 🥵

So, I think we may need to have a family discussion, don’t you?

Curious Reads: A Short-Term Mission Trip Goes Wrong

Liz Charlotte Grant — Sat, 23 Mar 2024 16:01:30 GMT

Hello friends, Liz here.

In the eleventh grade, I climbed a volcano—sort of.

This is not a story about volcanic eruptions, but

My church had taken a group of its youth to El Salvador on mission, joining the movement evangelical churches sending their youth on short-term missions in the early 2000s who believed that reaching the capital N nations with the capital g gospel would probably encourage Jesus to rapture us American evangelical conservatives more quickly, thereby saving the world from the liberal left, whose agenda was to destroy us. Not to mention that mobilizing their teenagers as missionaries exonerated their parents from pursuing the great commission outside of the cozy suburbs. Regardless, my relatives who donated to my trip abroad could be assured that we would erect a poorly constructed building for our impoverished, third-world neighbors, which surely meant a positive balance in our heavenly bank accounts, right?

However, I had my own reasons for joining a mission trip to El Salvador. I had already been on two trips to Mexico with my youth group, each time collecting donations from family and friends for my life-changing vacation, each time hoping that I’d receive a mystical call to the missions field while overseas, like one of my heroes, Elisabeth Elliot, had, or maybe that I’d meet my missionary husband while abroad. But for some reason, I could never clearly hear God’s voice amidst the flirting and card games and rowdy worship songs with hand motions.

So when pastor Dave announced the mission trip to El Salvador, it sounded exotic, intense, and perhaps a more promising way to hear the elusive Call of God, and perhaps even meet the man of God’s dreams.

Curious Reads: Baby Voice

Liz Charlotte Grant — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 19:16:56 GMT

Hello friend, Liz here.

#1 Today’s top of the fold story is “fundie woman baby speak”—that is, Republican Senator Katie Britt’s State of the Union response revealed a troubling evangelical trend of women changing their voices to seem less threatening to (politically and theologically) conservative men.

I’m much less interested in the voice modulation of women within conservative spaces on its own; what fascinates me are the ways that women seek to conceal their power from men. And Katie Britt and other evangelical MAGA women provide a case study.

Read “'Fundie Baby Voice' Is The Chilling Vocal Trend You Need To Know About” by Caroline Bologna at the Huffington Post

Above: A mash-up of Senator Katie Britt’s actual rebuttal to the “State of the Union” and Scarlett Johansson’s mock imitation that weekend on Saturday Night Live. (Here’s Britt’s entire rebuttal and the imitation in full.)

The Highlights:

After Pres. Biden’s, “State of the Union,” Republicans responded with a speech by Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama, the state’s first-ever female senator. Supposedly, Britt has political acumen—not that you would have know it from her over-dramatized speech, which was riddled with factual errors and fear-mongering.

And much has been made of her delivery. Breathy, full of awkward pauses and discordant smiles, no matter the political leaning, folks had a field day mocking her.

She’s not the only conservative woman to adopt this style of speaking either. The Shiny Happy People documentary featured Michelle Duggar’s “high-pitched baby voice,” and House Speaker Mike Johnson’s wife Kelly repeated the performance during a Fox News interview. Voice expert Rebecca Kleinberger says Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s voice registers the same discordant feature as Britt’s.

@jesspipermo I had so many people tagging me on Twitter last night because they remembered me talking about the fundie baby voice.

Vocologist Kathryn Cunningham described the trend: “While the average woman’s voice is higher-pitched than the average man’s due to a combination of anatomical and social factors, some women who speak this way seem to be intentionally placing their voices higher than their natural pitch range in order to convey submission to male authority and [to convey] childlike innocence.” In other words, this voice can be manipulative on multiple levels.

Personally, I find the mocking about Sen. Britt’s voice sounds like plain old female voice-shaming. Yes, her voice sounded strange. But I could easily imagine my own voice modulating strangely while filming myself at home in my kitchen. (Ugh, the setting.) She was weird, the whole speech was weird, yes, that’s true, but more importantly, the speech was false.

However, women are perpetually being called out for the weirdness of our voices—think “vocal fry.”

As in this article above, some have identified this as “Fundie Baby Voice,” a noticeable falsetto affect that conservative Christian women sometimes use to lean into a Marilyn Monroe sexy, ditzy innocence. , talking to Huff Post, described this voice as “that childlike, sweet, submissive, honey sound that just pours from the mouths of Sunday school teachers and pastors’ wives.” And she’s not wrong.

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But what interests me most about this affect is why women adopt it.

Women modulate our speech patterns as a way to adapt to diverse settings, and often we’re changing our tone and pitch based on how we perceive men’s reactions to us.

Having grown up within evangelicalism, I have actually worked toward the opposite of the “baby voice.” I wanted to be taken seriously so, being a natural alto, I intentionally sought to lower my speaking range further. In a group of women singing at church, I would often consciously try to sing the lowest harmony, disliking the wispy upper registers of my gender group.

Now, I understand that when women adapt their voices to be higher within conservative evangelicalism to intentionally to hide our power. We orally infantilize ourselves. We defer to the fragile egos of important men in the room.

This does not necessarily mean we give up our power—as in the case of Senator Katie Britt, one of our governing law-makers—but it does mean we seek to make ourselves seem nonthreatening. Hence, Senator Britt listed her main and most important credentials for a conservative audience as “proud wife and mom.” She’s signaling, “See? I’m in the kitchen, not the Capitol building. I’m not a threat. I can still be controlled, if you want to control me. In fact, you can use me to control other women.”

This whole debacle reminds me of the most revealing sections of Beth Moore's autobiography, All My Knotted Up Life.

(By the way, you can see all my highlights at Goodreads)

She writes, “Ours was a patriarchal world. To be anything different wouldn’t have been Southern Baptist. Here were the verses. If we didn’t like it, we could take it up with God. ‘He wrote it.’ That was that. Women like me played by the rules or we were off the court.”

Beth taught patriarchal gender norms. She taught women to submit to men at church and at home. And she herself obsessed over her “male covering,” by which she meant, her protection that allowed her to teach the Bible while being “covered” by the authority of male authority figures in her life—her head pastor, her elders, and her husband. (Especially her husband.) She understood—and heard explicitly—that the “legitimacy of her ministry” was conflated with the health of her marriage.

In her memoir, she describes the lengths to which she went to honor and submit to the men of higher rank in her denomination, twisting herself to fit gender norms found nowhere within the pages of the Scriptures. Her aim was to do her SBC work “without making trouble or posing any threat” to the men who might not like God’s calling on her life.

She wore flats (shoes with no heel) if she knew she’d be standing on stage with a man shorter than her, and she would also bow her head and hunch so as not to appear taller than him. In casual conversations with men, she would use their full titles, offering deference even to those men younger than her. She was constantly apologizing for being in the room, for teaching men, even to men who’d arrived to hear her speak.

She notes that “the biggest offense I brought into these environments was my gender, but my personality and lack of academic training were also factors.” And remember, these were the 90s and 2000s, not ancient history. And her gender was still a problem.

Illustration by Tyler Spangler for Fashion Revolution

She writes a list of deferential phrases she’d most commonly say as compulsive apology for her presence to higher ranking men of her denomination:

"I could learn so much from you, and goodness knows I need to.”
“You’re so much better at message delivery. I mostly blurt stuff out.”
“You know better than I that… [insert anything at all about theology, the Bible, the church, or Christian spirituality in general.]”
“I’m anxious to study under you.”
“I’m just a lay person.”

Can you imagine a man with the influence of Beth Moore uttering these phrases ever, let alone in a room of very important church people?

Me neither.

If you’re reading this newsletter, you know the end of Beth’s story. Though Beth genuinely sought to follow the rules, Beth Moore still found herself unwelcome anyway. At mixed-company SBC conferences in which she was often “the only woman on the program,” the men of her denomination would make it clear that they owned the court.

These SBC male leaders would ignore her backstage (or in the car on the way to the venue, or while standing next to her in the elevator) and then they would stand up on stage and caricature her. Their ridicule of Beth Moore was often the introduction to their messages, before they stood up to teach the Bible to a room of men and women. They would say something like, “We’re just glad we get to be on the same platform as Beth Moore. Sure hope we get some of that anointing,” and then they’d prance around the stage waving their arms and hollering in a thick drawl, “GLO-REE TO GAWD!”

In fact, Beth frequently saw or heard that men—her colleagues—would wonder aloud about her, asking each other, “Can you imagine what it would be like to be her husband?” The disdain and disapproval was tangible and overwhelming.

And then Beth refused to play by the rules any longer. She publicly announced her disgust with Donald Trump’s sexual abuse scandals (such as the Access Hollywood tapes) in 2016. And in seconds flat, the denominational leaders discarded her. She was thrown out of the institution that she had served and loved for decades.

She writes, “For a stunning number of people, that one set of comments rendered years of ministry null and void.”

The senior Alabama Senator said of Katie Britt that one of the reasons she was chosen to speak for the GOP because she was “a housewife.” That’s the role that qualified her to rebut Pres. Biden’s State of the Union.

This qualification is also an indication that Britt can be replaced if she refuses to comply with the demands of the male Republican patriarchal agenda. She’s nonessential to the mission, though she’s allowed a role if only she plays by their rules.

For now, she’s playing along. But she might not always. And on that day, I wonder if her voice will change again.

And Senator Katie Britt’s vocal fry would be welcome.

Thanks for reading. Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

Just for Fun…

Read the whole letter at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

Curious Reads: A Pro-Life Vote Isn't Pro-Life Enough

Liz Charlotte Grant — Fri, 23 Feb 2024 17:50:10 GMT

Hello friend, Liz here.

#1 Today’s top of the fold story is a year in the life of a family denied an abortion—that is, journalists followed a family in Tennessee for a year as they dealt with the aftermath of a life-threatening pregnancy that nearly killed mother and daughter.

“Tennessee law prohibits women from having abortions in nearly all circumstances. But once the babies are here, the state provides little help. We followed one family as they struggled it make it.”

I am pro-life. And I found this story incredibly heartbreaking and enraging. If you want to develop your empathy by spending a few minutes in another person’s life, I recommend you sit with this story.

Read “The Year After a Denied Abortion” at ProPublica by Stacy Kranitz and Kavintha Surana

The Highlights:

Mayron Hollis was three years sober, alongside her husband Chris, also in recovery, when they got the news of the pregnancy.

Her past addiction had led child protective service to remove three of her children from her care, and she was currently fighting to keep her infant daughter, Zooey. She and her husband worked demanding jobs. He installed vinyl house siding, while she installed fiberglass insulation. They’d been working to restore order in their home since gaining control of their addictions, but it had been a slow road.

Amid this, the Supreme Court overturned the Rowe v. Wade ruling and Mayron discovered that, not only was her pregnancy high risk, but that it was life threatening. Her fetus had implanted in uterine scar tissue from a past caesarean birth, which meant that as the baby grew, her scar could rupture, killing her and her baby at any time. Having an abortion in Tennessee was not an option and would result in Mayron being charged with a felony. The family was stuck.

Support the Family's Go Fund Me

Finally, at 26 weeks and 2 days, Mayron entered the hospital, bleeding. Mayron had been bleeding so much, in fact, that “her husband slipped in her blood,” and their daughter, Elayna, was delivered three months early by cesarean section. She weighed 1 pound 12 ounces. For months, Elayna remained in the neonatal intensive care unit at a hospital an hour’s drive from her parents and toddler sister before she was strong enough to go home.

Meanwhile, Mayron’s health had been dire; on the operating table, doctors had removed her uterus in order to prevent any future life-threatening pregnancies like the one she’d just endured. Yet she had to return to working 10-hour shifts soon after surgery since neither she nor her husband had paid parental leave.

The state’s Medicaid program did cover their extensive medical bills. But the family still had legal bills with which to contend. And once daughter Elayna arrived home, her complex medical needs meant that mom Mayron needed to quit working to care for her, limiting the family’s income further.

At this point, the state of Tennessee should have made social services available to the family, but the processes for receiving such services and emergency funding remained opaque to the parents. Sometimes, help from state agencies arrived too late; but mostly, help never came at all.

The family found themselves deeply in debt because “the new financial needs were crushing.”

The story continues from here, becoming more dire with every paragraph. (Not surprising, just heartbreaking.)

The gist: the family is unable to receive the care they need, the extra social services they depend upon, or to make any progress toward financial stability. This puts strain on their marriage and both parents’ sobriety.

As of the publication of this story, just after Elayna’s first birthday, the family is still struggling.

By the way, you can help this family right now! Donate to the family’s Go Fund Me:

Of course, this story is so hard to read. Over and over, you watch these church-going, recovering parents trying and trying and trying to make their lives work. Yet they’re thwarted at every turn. They live in a state that claims Christian values, that declares itself so pro-life that they’ve banned abortion almost entirely. But this family cannot navigate a system of funding that they would qualify for to make their lives bearable. Even their food stamps eventually run out. And they find themselves backed into a corner, their backs against the wall.

(Have I mentioned that I yearn for the writings of Dr. Howard Thurman to inform our politics more directly? Is anyone listening?)

I wonder, how would Jesus treat this family? What would genuine, Christlike love look like?

Pro-life policy means nothing if it’s only legislation, only rule-making. Holding the line is insufficient. Pro-life must mean more.

It must include paid parental leave, especially for those on the edge of the poverty line. It must include childcare for working families who have no choice but to work multiple jobs to pay their bills. It must include programs that support those parents in recovery and those whose children have special needs, and these programs must be free and easily accessible.

As church people and as a society, we must help these families to make it through some of the most tender seasons of their lives. These postpartum months are the most fragile in a family’s lifespan.

Politics aside, these parents and children are dearly loved by God. As Christians, to ignore their suffering is to ignore Godself.

Remember Jesus’s words in Matthew 25? Those who clothe the impoverished, feed the hungry, and adopt the orphan understand the nature of God. Those who ignore the sick, imprisoned, and thirsty? God never knew them, and they never knew God (Matthew 25:31-46).

In fact, God calls the ones among us who are needy, guilty, and desperate “these brothers and sisters of mine” (Matt. 25:40). There are no qualifications. Are you down and out? Then you’re in the family. Jesus calls you sister and brother. No exceptions.

Strike that—the one exception I see from the mouth of Jesus is the man or woman who walks by and does nothing to help. These are the first to pass by before the Samaritan bends toward the beaten up man.

So which one will we be?

Thanks for reading. Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

Cringeworthy…

Thanks to for pointing out that a certain newspaper unpublished this cartoon this week. Oof, this world.

Curious Reads: Dethroning the Queen of Purity Culture?

Liz Charlotte Grant — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 18:58:33 GMT

Hello friend, Liz here.

#1 Today’s top of the fold story is Elisabeth Elliot—that is, I wrote an essay that caught fire about the queen of purity culture and her disturbing third marriage.

I’ve never featured my own writing as a conversation topic before… but I want to give you the backstory of the review of two recent Elliot biographies that I published in the Revealer this week.

Read “Elisabeth Elliot, Flawed Queen of Purity Culture, and Her Disturbing Third Marriage” at the Revealer by Liz Charlotte Grant

Elisabeth Elliot and her daughter Valerie in Ecuador

The Highlights:

Elisabeth Elliot became famous in the 1950s after her husband, Jim, died in his twenties trying to share Christianity with an unreached indigenous tribe in the jungles of Ecuador. She and the stories of her husband and other missionaries killed made headlines everywhere, including Time Magazine.

The widows of the other missionaries killed in Ecuador made Elliot their spokesperson to the press. That launched Elliot into the world of writing and speaking, both in the church and beyond it. (She shared a literary agent with Robert Frost and Madeleine L’Engle for years.)

In fact, the essay I wrote wrestles with the person she became—Jim’s widow—particularly her single years before remarrying compared to the person she became after her second marriage to Addison Leitch (and then her third marriage to Lars Gren).

Because, to my surprise, she and I (progressive feminist egalitarian Christian) would have gotten along swimmingly if she had remained the woman she was in her thirties throughout the rest of her life. In her 30s, she moved amongst the New York City literati. She conversed curiously with Christian feminists. She supported a nuanced position on Israel and Gaza, defying the conservatives of her day who were, as now, staunch supporters of Israel and not Palestinians. She even authored a controversial novel, No Graven Image, that skewered American evangelicalism’s romanticized view of missionaries.1

Yet over the course of two more marriages and a 5-decade-long career in Christian publishing, she became an icon of traditionalist marriage roles and evangelical purity culture.

So, how did she become the queen of purity culture? And why? What changed her mind?

Jim and Elisabeth Elliot

TLDR: her 2nd and 3rd marriages made Elisabeth Elliot into that woman.

In particular, her last marriage shaped her profoundly; her third marriage is the reason I wrote this essay at all. When I first read about it in Austen’s biography, I was so disturbed that I picked up the only other Elliot biography. Both offered the same picture and confirmed the authoritarianism of Elliot’s third marriage.

By the way, the two biographies I consulted about Elliot’s later life are Lucy S. R. Austen’s Elisabeth Elliot: A Life and Ellen Vaughn’s Being Elisabeth Elliot (part two of a series of Vaughn biographies). These are the only histories of Elliot’s later life.

However, I prefer to let you read the details of Elliot’s third marriage for yourself rather than tell you what to think. You can decide for yourself whether my conclusion about her theology and lived experience is a reasonable one. In fact, you can weigh whether you’d like to live in a marriage like hers, and how the reality of her third marriage might change how we interpret her teachings today.

However, I want to address one additional question—that is, why did I write this?

Was I trying to soil the memory of a beloved evangelical matriarch? Did I have some other nefarious end? Am I just a “grifter” using a rumor to gain readers for myself?

Ummm, no to all. ;-)

Actually, grief and anger compelled me to write this essay.

I wept for myself and my own stories of family dysfunction. I wept for the other women I know whose lives have been crushed by the weight of male expectation and abuse (like my dear grandmother). And I wept for Elliot, a unique and original soul whose light seemed to extinguish the older she got.

I also felt angry because Elliot’s story illustrated the way that women have habitually been undermined, dismissed, denigrated, and used throughout the history of Christianity in order to bolster the power and egos of men.

I do not mean this specifically. What I mean is that the system we call Christianity has, through the centuries, made a habit of using women and discarding them. Why? Because male Christian leaders have decided that the image of God manifests most purely through men. The female form is a derivation, a deformation of the ideal, a faulted representation. And white American evangelicalism is the current greatest offender of this misogyny in my experience.

This line I wrote continues to make me feel something when I return to it:

White American evangelicalism needed a symbol, a meek female voice seated at the patriarch’s table — and Elliot complied.

I have heard pushback on that word “meek.” I understand why, as Elliot was not one to hold her punches. Yet I believe that’s a characteristic Elliot would have aspired to. “The meek inherit the Earth,” after all. She was deeply private and barely mentioned her own marriage to those closest to her. And her express aim was submissiveness above all else.

Elisabeth Elliot, four years before her death in 2015, with her third husband, Lars Gren. Photo: PresentlyEngaged.com

I’d like us to consider Elliot’s story closely. Because her story in evangelicalism closely mirrors the story of so many strong evangelical women.

How many of us women have received the same false invitation to pull up a seat at the table?

Some of us have refused to sit outright and we have been bullied for it simply because the males who’d extended the invitation are unused to such rejections. Other women have sat only to have the chair yanked away the second we ventured to speak our minds. (And then we were ostracized.) The women who were allowed to stay at the table necessarily gave up part of themselves, censoring their own voices. In so doing, they agreed with the groupthink that told them they mattered less and that they’d only be valued by parroting the party line.

Of course, this is utterly false. If God can love the one who hates God, the one who considers God her enemy (i.e., the gospel), then God can equally love the woman who is seeking to love and honor God—even if she gets it wrong. But it doesn’t always feel that God’s love is unconditional, especially not when the people who claim to most closely represent God pile on the conditions for acceptance and belonging.

So, in this way, I believe that the story of Elliot and other evangelical women leaders are not so different; I see that her story is our story.

And I also see Elliot singly, uniquely. Her loneliness in later life was palpable in the pages of both biographies. You can feel viscerally how her voice was stolen from her, minute by minute, by a man who was supposed to love, honor, and cherish her.

I guarantee that every single woman knows that betrayal because we have lived it—maybe not in marriage, but certainly in other fractured relationships.

So, in writing this essay, I wanted to do my very small part in restoring Elisabeth Elliot’s voice. I believe she deserved that.

And now I’ll leave you with the voice of someone who knew both Elisabeth and Lars (with the writer’s permission). Her take on Elliot’s later life moved me deeply:

Right now, I believe that Elliot is in heaven with Jesus. In heaven, no truth remains hidden, and no sin remains threatening. We are forgiven in full, known in full, restored in full. So, I believe that Elliot has already made peace with the complexity of her own story. Her failures, griefs, and pains can no longer hurt her. She is free.

The truth has a way of setting us free. I hope that the truth can set the dead free, too. After all, truth does not play by linear timelines. The truth is eternal, and so is the grace of God.

Thanks for reading. Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

Did you experience Elliot in person or through her writings and radio show? How did her life and teachings influence you? How does the story of her personal life change or bolster what she taught you?

An Early Spring?

Punxsutawney Phil didn’t see his shadow so the people of Pennsylvania tell me that spring will come early this year. I’m holding you to that, Phil!

Kirkus Reviews called No Graven Image “an unusual first novel,” and “a curiously sombre and moving book,” while Christianity Today strangely expressed doubt about the author’s own faith in God, concluding that she’d put the “right” religious truths in her protagonist’s mouth at the end of her novel, but that whether she believed what she’d written was up for debate. In other words, Christians have never known how to read fiction… (Remember The Shack controversy?)

Curious Reads: Grandpa Donald J. Trump

Liz Charlotte Grant — Fri, 26 Jan 2024 20:48:03 GMT

Hello friend, Liz here.

#1 Today’s top of the fold story is a meme—that is, someone created a set of AI images that depict Biden and Trump as the best of friends. And the implications are compelling.

Read the story, “As we face the grind of a Trump-Biden clash, imagine them buddies for a moment” by Karen Swallow Prior at Religion News Service

The Highlights:

An unknown creator made a series of AI scenes featuring Biden and Trump as BFFs: Trump, with an arm around Biden, on a hiking trail, huge smiles on both mens’ faces. Trump and Biden, giggling, leaning against a tree, picnicking. Trump and Biden in aprons, a Martha Stewart-style spread of baked goods and bowls of fruit, the two of them laughing open-mouthed, presumably at a joke one just told the other.

The last is the best: Trump and Biden in wool-patterned sweaters, knitting needles in hand, a pile of yard spread on a table before them, eyes determinedly on their projects. Okay, there is something wrong with the hands and the balls of yarn (the size of tennis balls?), dead giveaways that this is the work of an AI. But the sweaters! (Swallow Prior calls these “Cliff Huxtable” sweaters.)

Before we go further, I want to ask you: How do these images make you feel?

It’s worth asking ourselves why these photos are so interesting.

Because they were interesting enough that they went viral on both Swallow Prior’s social media accounts and another friend’s:

“One of my friends commented that he found the picture strangely affecting. Others made similar observations. If we didn’t know who these two people were, we’d think this image was simply one more bad, sentimental example of unsophisticated AI art (there are clues — check out the hands and the yarn in that last scene!) depicting a Hallmark-worthy scene of two old men passing their days in a lovely retirement home.”

Personally, staring at two old men in sweaters, bathed in soft lighting, practically giggling in each others’ company, reminds me of home.

A Huxtable sweater.

Of course, AI is ridiculous. We expect 2024 to be a mish-mash of strange political dramas, including “deep fakes” galore. But these images challenge our assumptions, expanding our imaginations.

Because, I believe that these photos make both men human, in fact, more human than politicians normally seem—especially these politicians.

Amid a week of bad (to me) political news, I find these images comforting. (Caucuses! Winners and losers! Endorsements! What is happening!!)

Remember, our politicians are human. They are not gods, are not all-powerful, are not our salvation.

Antique anatomical illustration

I don’t mean to minimize the strange and disconcerting déjà vu of this political moment. I feel all the dread, denial, and rage that you do.

But even so, I want to remind you that even our political enemies are human beings.

They wear sweaters. They eat pie. They enjoy the feel of a ball of yarn in the palm, just like the next gal. ;-)

This thought first occurred to me—former President Trump is human—when I heard his grandchild address him as “grandpa” on the Daily Podcast, just a few months into his term in 2017.

Two reporters are interviewing him in the Oval Office, asking about James Comey and the FBI. The mood is tense:

“SCHMIDT: Did you actually have a one-on-one with Comey then?

TRUMP: Not much. Not even that I remember. He was sitting, and I don’t remember even talking to him about any of this stuff. He said I asked people to go. Look, you look at his testimony. His testimony is loaded up with lies, O.K.? But people didn’t — we had a couple people that said —”

And then he’s interrupted: “TRUMP: Hi baby, how are you?

ARABELLA KUSHNER: [enters room] Hi, Grandpa.

TRUMP: My granddaughter Arabella, who speaks — say hello to them in Chinese.

KUSHNER: Ni hao.

[laughter]

…

TRUMP: She’s great. She speaks fluent Chinese. She’s amazing.

BAKER: That’s very impressive.

TRUMP: She spoke with President Xi [Jinping of China]. Honey? Can you say a few words in Chinese? Say, like, “I love you, Grandpa” —

KUSHNER: Wo ai ni, Grandpa.

BAKER: That’s great.

TRUMP: She’s unbelievable, huh?

[crosstalk]

TRUMP: Good, smart genes.

[laughter]”

Read the Transcript

Listen to the Interview

This scene stunned me. The president of the United States—that president—lets himself be interrupted by his granddaughter. Then he brags on her. Then he gets on with a contentious interview.

Hearing his granddaughter call him grandpa softened me. Even though I do not want this man to be president again, even though I disagree fervently with his politics, even though I distrust him, he’s somebody’s grandpa. Which means that he’s human. Which means he’s got a spark of divinity in him.

Donald J. Trump bears the image of God. So does President Joe Biden. Which means it matters how I treat them, how I talk about them, how I think about them. God, help me.

When we forget that each human was made by God—even our political opponents— we become less human ourselves. Worse, we lose sight of Jesus’s most fundamental and impossible command: to love our enemies.

After all, that’s how Christ loves us.

Thanks for reading. Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

YOUR TURN: Can you share any practices you use to remind yourself of our politicians’ humanity?

Just for Fun…

January is the cruellest month. So, enjoy this advent calendar, for funsies!

Cartoon by Roz Chast for the New Yorker

Curious Reads: Best Ofs

Liz Charlotte Grant — Fri, 12 Jan 2024 22:53:08 GMT

Hello friend, Liz here.

Today’s my “best of” 2023 edition of the Empathy List—for arty weirdos like myself.

I enjoy looking back at the past year. (I’m a classic Enneagram 4.) I consult my family’s calendar and make lists of things we did, people we saw, work we accomplished. Personally, I’m attached to the *free* Year Compass for that self-examination, BTW, and I recommend it highly!

But more fun? Sorting the year by what I watched, read, looked at, and learned. For today, you’re getting my alternative picks in entertainment, art, and science. (I’ll give you a Christian culture news run-down for 2023 in an upcoming newsletter.)

Enjoy! And chime in with your favorites/bests from the year!

Thanks for reading! Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

TV & Movies

Design by Scott Laven for Indie Wire

The best movies of the year.—Indie Wire

(BTW, did you see any of these? I only saw a few! Need to get watching!)

The best podcasts of the year, according to people who make podcasts.—Vulture (Or you may enjoy this list of more obscure podcasts if you’re on the hunt for a new favorite. —The New Yorker)

The best TV of the year.—Rolling Stone

(This list, in my humble opinion, misses some gems, such as: The Big Nailed it! Baking Challenge, Jury Duty, the Wes Anderson shorts, Our Flag Means Death, Deadloch, and moooostly loved Murder at the End of the World.)

Art

‘Five roommates. One fridge. Much drama.’ by artist Jose Soto for the Washington Post.

The best editorial illustrations of 2023 from both the Washington Post and the New York Times (above: video by Sean Dong at the New York Times.)

The best photographs of 2023.—National Geographic

For the art world, the year’s trend was protest. —Art News

Ten interior design trends to retire in 2024. —Architectural Digest

Science

The most beautiful scientific discoveries of 2023. —Nautilus

Here’s how scientists graded our nation’s response to climate change in 2023. —Grist

Books

Illustration by Emily Lankiewicz for Smithsonian Magazine

The best books of the year in every genre imaginable.—Smithsonian Magazine

The best indie books of the year. —Kirkus Reviews

Readers picked their favorite Christian books of the year (congrats to

!!!). —Englewood Review