“Imagine you’re a parent and you can’t even identify your child.”

This is what Texas congressman Tony Gonzalez said of the DNA tests parents were asked to submit following yesterday’s mass shooting at Robb Elementary School. Nineteen children and two teachers died. Some children were shot up beyond recognition. 

Emotions, to me, are useless without action. I’ll spare you mine and jump straight to it.

Last night, a friend sent me an article by columnist David French called “Pass and Enforce Reg Flag Laws. Now.” He writes:

“The idea is simple—if a person exhibits behavior indicating that they might be a threat to themselves or others (such as suicidal ideation or violent fantasies), a member of his family, a school official, or a police officer can go to court to secure an order that permits police to seize his weapons and prohibit him from purchasing any additional weapons so long as the order lasts.” 

In a New York Times article called “What Are Red Flag Gun Laws, And How to Do They Work?” journalist Timothy Williams writes:

“[Red flag laws] are intended to restrict potentially dangerous people rather than dangerous weapons. That approach is seen as more likely to attract bipartisan support than many other gun control proposals.” 

David French is an Iraq War veteran and a Christian conservative. Timothy Williams, who died earlier this year, was a liberal-leaning Black journalist for The New York Times. Both men advocated for the effectiveness of red-flag laws because, despite their different backgrounds, both men have a shared goal: to reduce gun violence so that fewer parents will ever have to identify their children’s bodies, through DNA means or otherwise.

Nineteen states have red-flag laws already. So far, these laws do seem like a uniquely bipartisan way to address the correlations and conflicts we face in the U.S. over an issue fraught with division, including…

• gun violence and mental health

• public safety and Second Amendment rights

• overdue reform and due process

No reform will be perfect because people will never be perfect. In a country deeply divided over gun ownership, it seems reasonable to strive for win-win policies wherever possible. Red-flag laws show potential to accommodate this. 

Many Americans remain firm supporters of the Second Amendment. Why should those who own guns responsibly for hunting, self-defense, or recreational use have to pay for the crimes of mass murderers?

Many other Americans argue that too many people use guns irresponsibly—evilly—to justify the continued legality of firearms. Why should more innocents die just so some people can have their freedom and fun?

Most Americans—90%—agree that background checks should be a bare minimum requirement for gun ownership. Yet data shows that background checks fail to prevent mass murders. As French points out, “Mass shooters are frequently law-abiding, right up until the moment when they commit mass murder. Mass shootings are often meticulously planned, which means that they can circumvent common gun control laws.” 

This is why red-flag laws, though far from perfect, may be one of our best chances at reducing gun violence in the U.S. Responsible gun owners needn’t have their rights taken away; and those who display signs of irresponsibility, or dangerous intent, are prevented from legal gun ownership.

French points out that every shooter in the top five deadliest school shootings of the past 20 years, “exhibited behavior before shooting that could have triggered a well-drafted red flag law,” from diagnosed mental illness to outright threats of violence.

What are the arguments against red-flag laws?

Conservative-leaning opponents say that red-flag laws violate the Second Amendment, making gun ownership a privilege and not a right. Some point out that existing gun policies have inconclusive evidence to support their effectiveness, so why make more? Red-flag laws without due process could also be abused—what constitutes “significant danger” to justify the court infringing on a person’s civil liberties? The existing language surrounding red-flag laws can be overly vague and rightfully raises concern for misuse.

NRA spokeswoman Catherine Mortensen said that any extreme risk protection orders, such as red-flag laws, “at a minimum must include strong due process protections, require treatment and include penalties against those who make frivolous claims.” 

I find it hard to disagree.

Progressive-leaning opponents of red-flag laws express concern that such laws aren’t strict enough. Objecting to slogans like, “People kill people, not guns,” they point out that if guns are the common denominator in most deadly mass shootings, then isn’t it guns that need to be outlawed—at least semiautomatics and guns with high-capacity magazines? 

This logic is also sound. Those pushing for stricter gun reform argue that existing red-flag laws don’t work. Yet other evidence suggests they do. The discrepancy seems largely due to the fact that most citizens don’t know red-flag laws even exist.

That is why I’m writing this piece. I didn’t know until last night that red-flag laws existed, and I live in California which has had red-flag laws in place for six years. 

Red-flag laws vary from state to state and again, they are far from perfect. But as more people become aware of them and they are implemented effectively, I think red-flag laws show promising compromise in a long-standing debate that continues to cost too many lives.

Many view gun violence, and therefore gun ownership, as a topic there should be no compromise on. I disagree. I think we must find ways to compromise and concede if we are to mitigate mass shootings, gun-assisted suicides, and accidental firearm killings. Yes, mitigate—not prevent. We have no reason to believe we will ever be free of guns, mental illness, or murder. This is America, after all.

Every time a mass shooting happens, gun sales go up in anticipation of their possible illegality. If we shift the discussion away from whether guns should be restricted to the discussion of people who should be restricted, we may have a stronger likelihood of accomplishing our collective American goals: the right of non-threatening citizens to bear arms and the right of the public—of children—to live in greater safety. We must look for ways to accommodate the truth that our country is one with a deep love of guns and seek to ensure they won’t be used irresponsibly. Red-flag laws may be a worthwhile experiment to try and accomplish this.

What do you think—are red-flag laws an experiment worth trying? Why or why not? 

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UPDATE: I’ve told others involved that I completely understand if they need to publicly disavow me. I wholeheartedly support anyone else, especially public figures in the religious deconstruction space, who feel the need to do the same. I hold dear that we must all live in integrity with our own conscience. We must act in accordance with our own truth, however different or unpopular it might be to others.

DISCLAIMER: I will not be naming all names or directly showing the photos referenced in this blog post. This is because many of the women involved have been harassed, bullied, and had their livelihoods threatened over the photo in question. I have no desire to bring more harm their way. 

The reason I am publicly addressing this topic at all is that its criticisms widely being affirmed as valid are too significant for me to ignore. They also touch on broader themes I’ve been meaning to explore here for a while. In many ways, this blog post has been a long time coming. I’m deeply saddened that it was a beautiful experience that finally impelled me to write it.

Lastly, I am not a safe person and do not endeavor to provide a safe space. I am an honest person and endeavor to provide spaces that honor subjectivities of truth, especially my own. You are in my space now. Consider yourself trigger-warned. 

This isn’t the post I thought I’d write about this trip. 

I thought I’d tell you about how much fun I had, how incredible these women are, and how much growth I discovered in myself as I ventured nervously into a women’s group for the first time in years and found myself smiling for days and days afterward. Then one woman posted a photo of us from that trip that sparked an onslaught of backlash essentially accusing us of upholding white supremacy in post-evangelical spaces. Accusations of racism, ableism, colorism, featurism, fatphobia, and more soon followed. 

Some of the women accused think these criticisms are valid. I do not. This blog post is a public response as to why.

The photo. . .

It wasn’t this photo. It was this one. It wasn’t our pajamas, onesies, and sweatpants that made people say, “They’re causing harm.” It was our nakedness, our beauty, and our sex appeal.

The irony is that the photo was a very reclamation of our sex appeal. Brenda’s platform (she gave me permission to use her name and to link the post) primarily focuses on recovering from the harm of evangelical Christian purity culture. She shared the image with this initial caption providing context for our various states of undress: 

“Purity culture parents, be warned: indoctrinating your daughters may cause religious trauma, deconstruction, wild self-acceptance & naked frolicking through the desert.”

Most people loved the photo, expressing that it made them feel encouraged to celebrate their own bodies and eroticism. Yet there were several people who felt harmed and excluded in more ways than one. Here are some of their criticisms:

“It’s really harmful when folks in deconstruction spaces don’t decenter themselves, particularly if they hold multiple privileged identities.”

“If there isn’t a Black woman, a fat person, a disabled person...how did this group come to be and why were others not welcomed in.”

“All I feel is anger looking at this picture and its upholding of the skinny, conventionally attractive, young, white woman.”

“This is why you don’t find many BIPOC people in these deconstruct circles…it’s basically another version of white feminism.”

As I pondered responses like these and discussed them in a private group thread with the other women, not all of whom chose to participate in the photo, it became clearer how and why Brenda’s post caused such an effect. It was intended to be a beautiful picture of friends together in the desert, stripped as they wished to be, some of whom have known each other for years and others who met for the first time. Not everyone who was invited came on our trip, and it would feel cruel to say whether or not they might have made our group photo diverse enough for others’ comfort. Regardless, the consensus seemed to be that the impact of our photo mattered more than our intent.

Does impact matter more than intent? 

Not to me and I’ll address why. But first…

An acknowledgment. . .

Before going further, I would like to acknowledge that I understand why the photo drew criticism. American Christianity has an ugly history of upholding white supremacy. Evangelical purity culture emphasizes the ideal of a beautiful, yet modest, white and able-bodied woman. Most former evangelicals are keenly aware of their need—and desire—to reprogram the bigotries they learned implicitly and explicitly about race, gender, sexuality, and more. Many refer to their crisis of faith and examination of harmful doctrine as deconstruction. 

The women in my group are all public figures working in the online spaces of religious deconstruction—particularly the deconstruction of evangelical purity culture. That we are conventionally attractive, light-skinned, and standing implied to some viewers that our photo sent a silent message: You must still be a beautiful, white, and able-bodied woman to represent an ideal of deconstructed purity culture. In this way, our photo symbolized the continued upholding of white Christian supremacy in post-Christian spaces.

What I’ve gathered from digesting the critical feedback our photo elicited—feedback shared both in public and in private—I have attempted to summarize in three points:

1. The photo communicated signals of being unsafe to some people who saw it. That those of us pictured appear to be white, thin, able-bodied, and conventionally beautiful made some who may not identify with these traits feel less-than. The visual of us together triggered the feelings of erasure they once felt in the church, and feel in society at large. This is understandable.

2. A photo like this was not expected in a post-evangelical deconstruction space. Many people, particularly marginalized people, never felt safe or welcome in the church. Many of them have sought safety and inclusion in post-church spaces. That our picture did not include all colors and body types was an instant symbol of exclusion in a place they’ve hoped to expect inclusivity. This is understandable.

3. The photo appeared to be a promotional image without enough context. It was taken professionally by someone in our group and featured women with larger platforms. This made some people think we were communicating that, just as within purity culture, conventionally idealized bodies are the only ones worthy of holding leadership positions and being presented as beautiful. This is understandable.

There is a difference between understandable and valid.

valid adj. 1 sound; just; well-founded 2 producing the desired result; effective 3 having force, weight, or cogency; authoritative 4 legally sound, effective, or binding; having legal force 5 logic (of an argument) so constructed that if the premises are jointly asserted, the conclusion cannot be denied without contradiction 6 robust; well; healthy

—Dictionary.com

I think feelings are valid, excepting the definitions of the word for legal purposes. No one knows what it’s like to be someone else. No one can presume how or why an emotion may be very well-founded and completely logical to a person’s own life experiences. Criticisms are different than feelings. Were the presumptions and resulting accusations about our photo just and well-founded? Did they produce the desired result? Did they have cogency as well as weight? Were they legally sound, or robust and healthy? Were the criticisms so logical that their conclusions could not be denied without contradiction?

No. 

Blind assumptions, gross inaccuracies, and meritless accusations are not valid. Colloquially, valid is often mistakenly interchanged with understandable. Some of you may be thinking, “You’re getting hung up on semantics, you know what was meant.” 

Words matter, right?

Two of the women in our group held an Instagram live event to welcome the criticism received. The key takeaways were that we should have never posted the photo, that it was inherently harmful because people were hurt regardless of our intentions, and that we should have known better than to publicly share our companionship if it didn’t include all bodies. Some in our group agreed these criticisms were valid.

No. 

I don’t think holding people accountable for moral crimes they didn’t commit is valid. I don’t think demands for an explanation followed by accusations of defensiveness are valid. I don’t think the expectation of a public apology accompanied by a scolding to “do better,” when nothing wrong was done, is valid.

Attempts were made in the Instagram live event to validate the feelings of jealousy some people expressed. These attempts were met with flat-out accusations of white supremacy.

“To say on live that dark-skinned and/or disabled and or/fat folk…raising concerns makes us jealous of you—” which, for the record, is not what was said— “...[is] diminutive, disrespectful and in alignment with white supremacy, fatphobia and ableism.” 

No. 

This misconstrued assertion is not valid.

Now. . . Are you ready to hear the uncensored version of my thoughts?

The women in my group thread are so kind—so very, exquisitely kind. The depth of their compassion allowed them to soothe each other’s hurts with tender reminders that our accusers are hurting people themselves, traumatized by evangelicalism as we too were traumatized. The wells of their wisdom looked inward to see how others’ insecurities might be bringing up our own. Amid tearful voice messages and screenshots of public slander was forgiveness, for the bullies knew not that they were bullying. Even as accusations kept rolling in, their capacity for goodwill extended empathy for the cruelest of commenters. They are angels whose falls from grace have only made them more gracious. I am humbled to learn from their clemency.

But someone needed to point out another side of the truth. 

“We posted a photo celebrating a liberation from the shame of purity culture,” I wrote. “That others have tried to shame us for that in so many ways, basically saying that we’re not dark enough, fat enough, or disabled enough to be beautiful and naked and friends, is in and of itself fucking shameful. And I am not here for it. I will back any of you to my CORE and I’m gonna. This is disgusting, I don’t care how traumatized or wounded or jealous people are. They’re fucking low and I’m fucking DUN. End rant. For now. (Yes I have whiskey in my veins. 🥃 #Cheers.)”

I was relieved to see the laughing emojis affirming some levity was needed.

But I ached. Not for myself, but for my friends. I knew how much courage it took some of them to be in front of a camera, to strip down in front of other women, to bare their beautiful souls and bodies in an act of liberation every one of them felt exhilarated by. Some have struggled for years with body dysmorphia, eating disorders, and crippling sexual shame. Others have suffered chronic ailments invisible to the eye but debilitating nonetheless. Being naked was my idea, thrown out as we discussed what to wear for the group picture. My first nude photoshoot was a powerfully healing experience. The shame of purity culture fell off me like a slip. I’m heartbroken that for some of these women, whose first nude shoot may have been the one we did together, what should have been a safe and beautiful experience turned into a public shaming.

Another point worth restating: The American evangelical church is predominantly white. Does it not make sense, then, that the people speaking up about the harm of evangelical purity culture are also predominantly white? This is a sheer observation of numbers to me. While there are plenty of people in the evangelical deconstruction space who meet criteria of diversity outside of the white, able-bodied norm, it would seem obvious to me that the majority would reflect those very norms we left. It is not logical to think that Americans who once participated in our country’s most segregated hour, the hour of a Sunday morning church service, would suddenly desegregate in post-church communities that speak to our uniquely different experiences. It is not reasonable to expect the ratios of these demographics to flip or reflect a different truth.

There is a conscious effort within ex-evangelical spaces to integrate. There is still a long way to go and it is not because white ex-evangelicals are trying to maintain supremacy. The election of Donald Trump in 2016 alone provoked the deconstruction of countless white evangelicals who disagreed with Trump’s racist and sexist rhetoric and were baffled by the evangelical church’s embrace of him. Every white ex-evangelical I know in the deconstruction community goes out of their way to highlight voices more marginalized than theirs. I am honored to work alongside them. 

That one gorgeous group photo brought into question the character of my comrades pictured and not pictured, comrades who have devoted years of their lives to helping others, too often for free, on their own dime and at their own expense; that these comrades have a public record of boosting the stories and platforms of other ex-evangelicals who do not fit the white, straight, able-bodied evangelical norm; that these comrades were publicly blasted as racist, ableist, white feminist supremacists is nothing short of ghastly to me.

How did the photo even come about?

First, I’d like to address the accusers who will say I’m being defensive in the following explanation. Yes, I’m being defensive. You’re being offensive. That’s how this works. 

Let’s start with how the trip to Joshua Tree came about. When Brenda invited me on a girls’ getaway to the desert with other women working in the field of deconstruction, I blinked into my glass of rosé for the splittest of seconds. “My gut says yes,” I blurted to my own shock.

I didn’t know who else Brenda had invited and I still don’t. As the hostess of our vacation, it was her prerogative to invite whomever she wanted. I do know Brenda to be nothing if not inclusive of diversity—diversity of body, background, and belief. Her YouTube podcast God Is Grey is a public testament to her purposeful expansion of these. While I worried I might be the only atheist going (I wasn’t) and that I might feel the need to censor myself out of politeness (I didn’t), I felt excited about my decision to go. 

The group thread of attendees grew and eventually appeared to be finalized. I noticed there weren’t any visibly Black, Middle Eastern, or South Asian women going, and to ask Brenda if any were invited would have felt like a wrongful accusation of who I know her to be. This wasn’t a speaker summit we were selling tickets to. It was a private retreat among friends and acquaintances that we happily paid for. If this was the group Brenda put together, I trusted her, despite my palm-sweating fear of women’s spaces that’s lingered with me since Christianity and unsuccessfully been self-treated by exposure therapy to witchy new moon circles (shudder), empowerment circles (barf!), and body positivity groups (never again!!). I know what it’s like to feel unsafe in certain spaces. Brenda has never made me feel unsafe in hers.

As our getaway neared and ideas for activities were discussed, one of the women who happens to be a professional photographer generously offered us a photoshoot. We could take group pictures, individual pictures, whatever we felt comfortable with. Now, Sophia El’Rae is one helluva photographer. If she was offering, I was taking her up on it. (Yes, she gave me permission to use her name and to link her site.) Empowering women to release shame and reclaim their sexuality is also what drives her passion. I felt there couldn’t be anyone safer to proffer the idea of nude photography with and I was right.

We brought headbands and costumes, rhinestones and feathers. We sparkled in the desert like mirages haloed by twilight. We disrobed, asked for consent, and cheered each other on through emotions of freedom and release and the power every single woman should feel. 

You are wrong. You who accused us of racism, fatphobia, ableism, and other cruelties, you are in the wrong. Not us. You are wrong for the presumptions you made, for the unkind ways you expressed them, and for the conclusions you’ve come to about our character and integrity. I will not kowtow to your egregious blame, or your jealousy disguised as concern, in some self-flagellating display of public apology and doing your idea of better. I don’t exist to do better. I exist to do me. [Click to Tweet]

You don’t like it? Unfollow. It’s the little button on the left.

Why not just take the photo down?

We thought about it. Everyone in the photo told Brenda they supported her choice either way. A woman who did not participate in the photo invited us to consider removing it not because we did anything wrong, but because it would mean a lot to some people. Would it be a kindness to remove it so that others, especially the marginalized, might not feel triggered by its presence? 

I could not in good conscience encourage Brenda to take our photo down. To take it down not only felt like saying our sacred time together was a mistake. To take it down not only felt like saying the choice to share our joy was wrong, implying that everyone who liked it was also wrong. Taking down the photo would have felt like giving into shame. 

We were shamed for being light-skinned. We were shamed for appearing able-bodied. We were shamed for being attractive. We were shamed because I am not curvy, because Brenda is not Black, and because Sophia is not visibly disabled. If we were these, the shame would not have been hurled our way.

Of course, they don’t call it shame. They call it accountability. So did the church.

My experience in Christianity is that shame was always called love. It is loving to point out another’s sins. It is loving to expose their sins to the whole community if they disagree that they sinned. It is loving to treat them with contempt if they still disagree that they did anything wrong. Cancel culture is a secular version of a Christian sin circle. It’s only recently been rebranded as accountability—we don’t cancel people anymore, we hold them accountable. It’s the same thing. I know many will disagree, including some women who went on the trip with me. I have yet to hear an argument convincing me otherwise. When accountability is held in public for subjective moral sins that are not crimes handled in a court of law, this is how I see it. The Woke brigade is no different from the accountability groups of the evangelical church. The Woke brigade is a morality mafia. 

Telling the truth of one’s story is different from demanding the apology of another you hold accountable. Sharing one’s own journey and naming people who were involved is different from insisting on a response that they’ll do better. One approach stands firm on its own, empowered by personal responsibility and credit. The other puts power outside themselves, waiting for an acknowledgment that may never come. This is the difference between the sovereignty of storytelling and the futility of accountability in a morally relative world.

Oh, and a note on race. . .

…since comments about our group’s perceived whiteness were among the most-liked accusations made—excuse me, accountabilities held.

One of the women pictured is half-Chinese. Another woman is of Native American and Mexican descent. I am as Korean as I am French, with so many other ethnicities mingling in my blood that to name them all would be boring. I will write more in the future on the topic of being mixed race and ethnically ambiguous. For now, my personal reckoning with my racial identity is still too fresh to share. Yeah blah yeah, light-skinned privilege and all that, go ahead, school me like I haven’t heard it before. Go ahead and miss my point so you can gain points for virtue signaling. Go ahead and think you’re the one who’s going to give me an aha-moment where I bow down to your idol of anti-racism. Know what I think you really hate us for? 

Beauty privilege.

Yeah, I said it. If the three of us in the photo who are of mixed ethnicity were fat, unkempt, and conventionally unattractive, would the bronze of our skin be more visible to you? Would we have ticked enough of your diversity boxes to spare the other women your whitewashing blame? Would the kink of my coconut rug curls and the almond crescents of another woman’s eyes and the umber undertones of another woman’s décolleté be more apparent if we hadn’t enhanced our natural beauty with hairstyling, makeup, and lotion?

Maybe. Maybe perceived disadvantages would have been enough to qualify us as brown. But we’re light-brown and pretty. Our intersectionality carries multiple privileges, so our races don’t matter. Except that they do when you accuse us of not being racially diverse. 

Your calls for racial diversity are calls for Blackness. Let’s be plain. There is nothing wrong with asking why a Black woman wasn’t present in our photo, even though it’s still problematic to assume a handful of women pictured are representative of every woman invited on our trip, never mind representative of our other friend groups. But. When you don’t specify that Blackness is what you are calling for, you whitewash the diversity already present. You are guilty of the very erasure you think you’re calling out. Yes, it hurts. 

Even so…

I believe intent matters more than impact. 

This is why I forgive you. I forgive you for your misinterpretations, your hurtful accusations, and your damning conclusions. I forgive you for your presumptions, your slander, and your bullying. I forgive your ignorance. I know you truly believed you were doing a good thing and standing up for inclusivity as you saw it. I know you and your loved ones have genuinely been hurt by society’s upholding of white supremacy, ableism, body idealism, and so much more, both in and outside of the evangelical church. I know your motives were to give us pause, to help educate us on what we may not know, and to call out what you saw as privileged oversight at best and malicious messaging at worst. I know you meant well. So I forgive you, even though you may not be sorry, and even though some of you will no doubt come after me for writing this blog piece. I forgive you anyway.

Valuing intent more than impact is how I’ve also been able to forgive my parents, pastors, and others who have inadvertently hurt me. It’s how I’ve been able to heal and want to live. I do not negate the importance of impact, but I find it far more empowering to hold grace for intention over impact because it puts the power of restoration into my own hands and no one else’s. [Click to Tweet] If I wait for justice, I would wait forever. I am here to live, and to live beautifully, richly, and wholly. Not wait in anger. 

Purity culture first taught me that impact mattered more than intent. It taught me that it didn’t matter how unintentional the crossing of my legs was—if it caused the man next to me to look at them with lust, I was the one who needed to be held accountable. Not him. He was harmed by my naïveté. He was caused to sin and it was my responsibility to guard his eyes, and I failed him. I should have known better. So therefore I should do better and anticipate the myriad of ways my body, my laughter, my clothing, my voice, and the expressions of my face would be perceived. 

This was an impossible task.

I was shamed repeatedly for inadvertently causing harm. My intentions never mattered—it was the impact of my actions and lack of actions that mattered more. It would be understandable for you to think it’s unfair of me to compare the “harm” of causing a man to lust to the “harm” of sharing a photo with idealized bodies in it. I am not here for your cherry-picked exceptionalism to my own principles. They are mine, not yours. You conduct your principles as you wish. I don’t need yours to make sense to me, and this is simply me offering to make mine more sensical to you. You don’t need to agree and I don’t need you to understand.

You may accuse me of privilege, defensiveness, and colorblindness for this piece. You will be right. I am privileged. I will defend my loved ones and the integrity of my principles. I do endeavor to look beyond color because if I focus on your color, or on your bodily ability or lack thereof, or on your conventional ugliness or attractiveness, I dehumanize you. That is what happens in my heart. I know calls for doing better are not meant to have that effect, but that is my honest response that I work doubly hard to overcome. And I do work at it, for I believe your intention matters more than your impact. I believe your intention is to be seen, validated, and valued in a society that doesn’t do these. That your impact, on me, reduces yourself to demographics, is my problem. Not yours. Therefore it is within my power to overcome.

The church and the Woke both teach that impact matters more than intent. They both focus on helping the outcast, the marginalized, and the poor. They both turn people into projects and mankind into missions. Without meaning to, they both erase the humanity of individuals in their quest to uphold an ideal of what is humane. Both trade nuance, complexity, and autonomy for broad categorization, demographical socialism, and identity politics. Both are harmful.

This is what I see. 

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with impact mattering more than intent to you. It becomes wrong when you think that yours is the only perspective that is right. 

Lastly, an open letter to those who criticized The Photo.

I’ve already been accused of centering myself in my replies to the criticism of Brenda’s post. To that, I say: You centered yourself in my group photo. You weren’t there. It wasn’t about you. And you’ve gone and made it about you. 

Allow me to share with you the impact of your intent…

The impact of your intent is the re-triggering of body dysmorphia, sexual shame, and self-deprecation. The impact of your intent is the painful reminder that purity culture still exists outside the church—it’s just called accountability culture now and demands unambiguous racial purity (but go ahead and keep calling it “diversity”). The impact of your intent is the lost sleep, ill health, and burdened relationships we have all experienced over this—our loved ones witnessed the aftermath of your self-centered accusations for days on end, resisting the urge to blast you on social media for the hurt you’ve caused and holding back only because we asked them to please not make it worse.

Perhaps the most grievous impact of your intent is the dissolving of what were blossoming friendships among this uniquely beautiful and yes, diverse, group of women. The most painful impact of your intent is the fracturing of sisterhood, the betrayal of trust felt to be violated, and the divides some feel can no longer be bridged. The hurt is too great, the feelings of shame too familiar.

I know these were not your intent. But since you think that impact matters more, I felt I needed to let you know.

Other impacts are not mine to share. They are magnitudinous, career-changing, and relationship-costing. They are unfathomably far-reaching in ways you may never know. I do not blame you. I will not hold you accountable or publicly declare your names and ask you to do better. That would put power into your hands instead of keeping it in our own. We will heal without you.

I would also like to share with you the positive impacts of your intent.

Some of us are stronger than ever. We are closer than ever, wiser than ever, and fiercer than ever. We are clearer than ever in our purpose, integrity, and self. A fire you hoped to dampen was poured on with fuel. You held the match, not me. Not us.

I have never felt more clear or calm about a decision than the one I will share with you now: I am leaving the cult of Wokeness. (And it does indeed meet the criteria of a cult.) I never fully belonged anyway, cowardly skirting around its edges as I earnestly tried to make its dogma make sense to me, questioning whether my resistance was my own social conditioning and examining how my privilege might be blinding me to a greater truth I only had to keep educating myself to understand. I am so very confident that I now understand. I understand completely. I just have the audacity to disagree.

This is the impact of your intent.

I am deregistering as a Democrat and re-registering as a Libertarian. I am going to be more vocal than ever about my disaffiliation from the Left, about the grotesque hypocrisies and harms of the Woke, and about the cycles of harm perpetuated by people bullying in the name of anti-bullying. I always planned to speak more openly about these. Your reactions to my group photo just gave me a clear enough reason.

This is the impact of your intent.

I am more secure than ever in my public disavowing of identity politics, in my sacred rebellion against cancel and accountability culture, and in declaring with calm confidence opinions like how I loved Dave Chappelle’s last Netflix special and that I think freedom of speech must include freedom of art, for art is the multi-faceted soul of humanity.

Art is what changes the world. Not politics. Art is what threatens dogma. Not shame. Art is what tells the ugly and beautiful truth of our history, no matter how morality mafias have tried to destroy and stifle and censor it. Drama, comedy, paintings, photographs, music, literature, inventions, dances, and countless other expressions of creativity are what give our lives meaning. I will advocate for art’s right to exist and for artists’ right to create, however threatening you or I may find it. Art is a human necessity I will fall on a sword for. So art, among many other qualities I consider basic human rights, is what I will defend. It was your reaction to an artistic photo that helped me arrive here.

This is the impact of your intent.

I know you didn’t mean for this to happen. I invite you, as you’re so fond of inviting others, to sit with that.

Thank you for your impact.

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Sometimes silence is the sound of someone learning. The sound of someone refraining from speaking impulsively and under pressure. The sound of someone observing, listening, watching. 

You cannot listen if you are speaking.

This seems to be lost in the world of social media. On social media, you are expected to post, share, retweet, regram, like, and comment on every issue that crosses our feeds. Especially if it falls under the category of social justice. Climate change, animal rights, and humanitarian crises have their fair amount of pressure for people to “be an advocate” for. But to my observation, nothing puts more pressure on us than issues we are demanded to “be an ally” of. 

Allyship does not always mean sharing in public. It does not always mean voicing our own under-informed opinions. It does not always mean emotionally vomiting for likes and story shares to prove that we are on the right side of history. The rightness of history will be judged in retrospect by generations to come, who, evidence more than suggests, will have very different values and ideas of right-ness than we hold today.

We forget this. We bulldoze ourselves and each other into taking meme-worthy stances on issues of literal life and death, often prematurely and often from fear. If I don’t post, my morality is in question, we may think. If I don’t share the hashtag, people will make assumptions. If I dare to disagree, or even just ask for more information, I might get canceled. 

We are canceling ourselves when we succumb to peer pressure by posting under- and misinformed ignorance. We cancel ourselves when we do not post from places of personal truth, but from places of threat and impulse. 

Now feels like an appropriate time to acknowledge that, of course, not everyone is posting about social justice issues from places of fear and ignorance. Many are sharing from their personal experiences. I respect this. I deeply admire the courage it takes to tell a story that risks misunderstanding and vilification. I hold in the greatest admiration those who tell their truths with bravery and actionable suggestions others can take if they feel so inclined. 

What I object to is the assumption of complicity in those who do not appear to be taking a stand or choosing a side. I reject, vehemently, the assumption that if issues of social justice are not posted about or commented on, that it means either one doesn’t care or, worse, is on the side of the perceived oppressor. I have the audacity to disagree with anti-apartheid activist Desmond Tutu who said that, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” 

Silence is not always neutrality. Inaction is not always choosing a side. Observation is not always abetment. [Click to Tweet]

Do you want informed peers or bullied minions? Reactive rebels or measured thinkers? Loud detractors or silent supporters? Do not assume that those you urge to speak will say what you want them to. Do not rush education. True growth takes time. So stop vilifying the silent.

You may think this blog post is about #BlackLivesMatter. Maybe you think I’m referring to the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, or the bombing of Palestine and Israel, or the 7.2 earthquake in Haiti, or the COVID-19 pandemic and the responses it’s provoked. Maybe you think this blog post is referencing issues more personal or niche, such as the current debate in the ex-evangelical community over a certain discontinued course, and the web of reactions and reactions to reactions surrounding it. Perhaps you assume I’m talking about you. Your posts, your comments, your Instagram stories. 

All of the above assumptions would likely be correct. Your possible assumptions about my silence or lack of commentary—or too much commentary—may even be correct. But what would be grossly incorrect is to presume that I either a) do not care about these issues and many more; or b) that I am not on your side. Maybe I’m not. Maybe I am. Maybe I’m somewhere in the middle. Maybe I’m still learning, still reading, watching, listening, and pondering.

This is what silence sounds like.

Maybe I’ve made peace with what was in my heart all along: To avoid giving my opinion, support, or condemnation of topics I actually know so very little about. Topics I cannot help but view through the lens of my own life. Topics so weighty, so cruel, so unjust, so grave, that I feel I cannot learn enough about them to take an informed position within my own conscience, never mind share these opinions in a public sphere.

This is what silence sounds like.

I’ve spoken out of line and from places of fear and ignorance. I will do so again. You may think I’m doing so now. Truthfully, though, I don’t think I care. The paradox is that I care deeply, both about what you think and about these very issues I’m defending my silence for. It is because of this care that I am giving myself permission to no longer “be an ally.” I am giving myself permission to define what this means for me, and my own motivations, through my own choices, words, and actions, and lack thereof. I am giving myself permission to feel guiltless over participating not enough, too much, and not at all. 

I always knew this permission was mine to take. I waited to take it because, like everything else I’m addressing, I wanted it to be clear in the murkiest corners of my conscience. I wanted it to be well-thought-over, deeply evaluated, and overly considered. This is how I treat myself and other things I care about. 

If you’re wondering whether or not I’ll continue sharing my writing—for what is writing if not speaking publicly about something, anything—I am preparing to write even more. As I have always endeavored, I will write from a place as informed as I know how to be, and I will only share what I think will be helpful. Not helpful to everyone, or even most people. Probably not helpful to you a lot of the time. But helpful to someone, because for every controversial perspective I share, I get responses of feeling seen tenfold. For every opinion I’ve thought out enough to voice, I hear from multitudes that they share the same opinion, and have either felt too inarticulate or too afraid to voice it. I know my work makes a difference to some and not all. I am more than okay with that. I am fucking honored.

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Bodily autonomy is perhaps the dearest value I hold. It is our most intimate freedom, one that I consider a most sacred and basic right. No one should have anything or anyone put into their body against their will. Whether it’s my choice to have an abortion, my choice to sleep with a new partner, or my choice of what foods I ingest, if it involves my body, it is my choice to make.

It is from this perspective that I feel compelled to share an argument against vaccine mandates. 

What? Did you seriously just compare the violation of one’s body to a life-saving vaccine? 

Yes. 

Welcome to Alice’s Mind, where I have debates with myself about almost everything. Especially subjects as grave as life, death, and personal freedom. 

Ssh, Alice. They’re going to think we’re crazy. This topic is loaded. Why say anything about vaccine mandates at all? Why not just keep your mouth shut and let the experts do the talking?

Great questions. Why can’t everyone? Because few of us are experts, yet we will all be affected by the decisions being made today and in the future about this topic. I haven’t seen many other pro-vaccine folks advocating for the right of the unvaccinated to stay that way and without penalty. So, maybe I am shooting us in the foot here, but I think bodily autonomy and personal freedom are worth it. I also hope that maybe if we share our thoughts, we might help facilitate a bit more empathy from both sides.

Empathy? What good is empathy?

Call me an idealist, but I observe that empathy is the most effective way to change a mind.

You really think minds will change about this issue? At this point?

Nope. Everyone has had more than enough time to do their research and make their own decisions. The most I hope for is a little less vitriol, which I see pushing middle-of-the-fencers in the opposite desired direction. Compassion and respect may be slow coaxers, but at least they’re less likely to aggravate the doubling-down of a stance. 

[Snorts cynically] Well, I’m not changing my mind. I’m in favor of vaccine mandates, checkpoints, passports, whatever we want to call them. This issue is bigger than ourselves. It’s not a matter of bodily autonomy, it’s a matter of public health. What’s best for us all. A matter of the greater good.

I knew you were gonna say that. I argue that having something injected into your body—something with known side effects, something that cannot be removed—is nothing short of a matter of bodily autonomy. We’re okay talking about bodily autonomy when it comes to things like abortion.

Abortion? Really, you’re bringing abortion into this debate?

Look, we’re talking about having your body invaded by something you don’t want. We’re talking about having a medical procedure done that carries risk—risk if you get it, risk if you don’t. We’re talking about something being inserted into your body that perhaps you’re not ready for, for whatever your personal reasons are. Maybe your reasons are health-related. Maybe it’s a timing issue for you. Maybe you simply don’t want it and you shouldn’t have to explain your reasons why. The issue here is the same: Bodily autonomy. Personal choice. Sense of agency. 

But it’s not just about you and your freedom of choice. It’s about my right to live as well as yours.

100%. That’s the same argument used by the pro-life. It’s not just about you and your freedom of choice, it’s about someone else’s right to live. 

Wait, are you saying you’re pro-life?

No! I am adamantly pro-choice and I find it dazzlingly hypocritical how many others are as well until it comes to the vaccine. 

Omg, are you serious?! These issues are so different, I don’t know if we can have this conversation. 

I understand. They are different issues, and I’m not trying to say that abortion and vaccines are comparing apples to apples. I’m saying the principles behind the arguments for each are the same: your right to bodily autonomy and others’ right to live. 

And it’s the anti-vaccine folx who are being hypocritical! Now they’re all, “My body, my choice!” but they’re still against abortion?

I completely agree. The folks against vaccine mandates who are also against the pro-choice stance are definitely being hypocritical. I’m suggesting we are just as hypocritical if we say that others’ lives matter more than personal freedom, but only when it comes to vaccines. They’re making the same argument. 

But my decision to have an abortion or not affects nobody but myself—and the fetus, if we’re going to say that it’s someone else, but at least it’s just one (not counting multiples) and it’s inside me. COVID, on the other hand, goes outside every time we breathe, affecting everybody!

Totally hear you. That makes all the rational sense in the world. I wish more people would see it that way and get vaccinated, because I agree with you. I am pro-vaccine. It clearly saves lives. States with higher counts of vaccinated people are having far fewer deaths than states where the majority are unvaccinated. I got Moderna myself, both shots, and I’ve encouraged my loved ones to please get vaccinated, too. I’ve shared articles about the regret of the unvaccinated who are dying in hospitals begging for the vaccine too late. I don’t want it to be too late for the people I love, or anyone. 

Then how can you be against vaccine mandates? People are dumb. They don’t know what’s good for them, and it’s science. Fucking science. Sometimes we need to put our personal beliefs aside to do what’s good for everyone, not just ourselves.

Oh, you don’t need to tell me. “God is my vaccine,” ha! I guess God wants a lot of his faith-vaccinated followers up in heaven with him.

Okay, now you’re being rude and risk alienating the other side. Talk about empathy.

Yes, you’re right. Sorry, I’ll pull it back. 

Okay, so why are you against vaccine mandates?

Because bodily autonomy simply matters more. Personal freedom matters more. The greater good fallacy has been used by nearly every villainous dictator in history. If more cities enact a vaccine mandate, and if it ever gets to a statewide or federal level, it establishes a dangerous precedent.

But my life shouldn’t be endangered because other people don’t want to get the vaccine.

If you’re vaccinated, why are you so worried?

Because you can still get COVID even if you’re vaccinated!

[Raises eyebrows pointedly]

Are you seriously trying to tell me—?! Surely you know your odds of dying go way, way down if you happen to be one of those vaccinated people with a breakthrough case.

I know. Again, I am pro-vaccine. I am also pro-bodily autonomy—pro-choice, if you will. I’m just saying that I understand the other side. This is the common argument they’re making and I understand their logic. I’ve seen the news they’re watching—

 Fake news! FOX news! Facebook news!

 —and I can understand their reasoning. Many aren’t incentivized to dig deeper or learn from our news sources. They think ours is fake news. We all think our news sources are the credible ones. Do you trust The New York Times? They don’t. Do you trust FOX news? No, you don’t. Both parties think the other is obscuring or twisting the truth.

But SCIENCE.

I know, I love science. But when you weaponize that word to make the unvaccinated feel stupid, you’re not winning people over. You’re doing the opposite. Do you really want more people to be in increasing opposition to science? 

No.

Also, part of science is experimentation. I can understand why some people don’t want to participate in the experiment that is the vaccine. It’s not yet FDA-approved. Getting the vaccine makes people like us feel safer. So far, that tracks, but for others, the idea of getting a brand-new vaccine makes them feel unsafe, and I think that’s understandable. Everybody is striving for safety.

I don’t think it’s about safety to them—it’s about belligerence. 

Well, that’s a personal judgment call. For some, yes, it’s probably about belligerence. Rebellion to the Woke. But for many, it’s about caution. Science, in fact. Whether we like it or not, some people have had adverse reactions to the vaccine, even death. It’s rare, but it happens. I can understand why people might be fearful of it, can’t you?

Yeah. But the odds of death are just so much higher with COVID. I don’t understand how people would rather risk being the one-in-a-million who dies of a vaccine rather than the one-in-WAY-less to die of COVID.

I know. But I think that risk should be a personal choice.

But again, what about my choice? What about my right to live? The unvaccinated are endangering me and everybody else—the immunocompromised! 

The vaccinated are spreading COVID, too. As you pointed out.

But at least the vaccinated are doing their part to try and protect strangers and loved ones. If you refuse the vaccine—which is free—it’s like you’re not even trying. 

I hear ya. There are many reasons people don’t want to get vaccinated. Some can’t. Speaking of the immunocompromised, some people, like Pete Parada, the drummer from The Offspring, can’t get the vaccine because of an autoimmune disorder. Others can’t get it because of severe allergic reactions like anaphylactic shock—there’s a reason for that 30 minute wait period after each dose. Should these people be banned from restaurants and their workplaces because of a health condition they cannot help?

Maybe not them, like if you have a legitimate medical reason. But then you should have a doctor’s note saying so.

What about patient privacy? Humans have an ugly history of discriminating against who they deem healthy and contagious, however irrational. We also have an ugly history of forcing medical procedures on those we deem unfit to make decisions for themselves.

What, like the forced sterilization of Black people?

Yes. Other minorities, too, as well as people with disabilities, those labeled mentally deficient or promiscuous, people who were poor—

Omigod, I can’t believe you’re going there! That’s so different!

Is it? You’re arguing that anti-vaxxers are too dumb to know what’s good for them, so they should be forced to be vaccinated if they want to participate in society—vaccinated with something that only time will be able to tell the long-term side-effects of.

Yeah, that’s totally different than eugenics. And besides, no one is being forced. It’s not like you go to jail for refusing the vaccine.

If you’re barred from parts of society that facilitate your survival, like your job or a restaurant if you don’t have a full kitchen to cook groceries in, that is arguably a use of force. Vaccinations aren’t available to everybody and to ban people from their places of employment and sustenance because they cannot or choose not to get an experimental vaccine violates their right to personal autonomy. It is a privilege to be vaccinated.

Um, it’s a privilege not to be vaccinated. No one wants to be part of some experimental vaccine, but it’s our duty. Again, because this is bigger than just us. It’s for the greater good of all. 

You wanna talk about the greater good? Watch how vaccine mandates unravel that notion real fast. 

What do you mean?

Backlash. We saw what happened with mask mandates. When we coerced and shamed people into wearing masks, what happened? There was a rise of anti-maskers protesting in public spaces. 

Then the police need to enforce it.

You want to abolish them.

Defund, not abolish.

And since we’re now talking about crime and police, here’s another aspect of the backlash: a black market boom. I personally know people who have paid doctors for fake vaccination cards and I bet you do, too. Forgeries are likely to make headlines soon as more places of business require “proof” of vaccination, regardless of whether one has already had COVID or not. These requirements aren’t likely to incentivize more people to get vaccinated. They’re more likely to push people to other businesses, aggravate outrage over feeling controlled by Big Brother, and cause people to dig in their heels and commit crimes.

Sure, some people are going to lie and commit forgery. But we still need to make vaccines mandatory. Eventually, the criminals will be caught.

Maybe. But by whom? 57% of Denver police officers have not been vaccinated and 72% say they don’t plan to either, even upon condition of employment. Other police departments are sure to feel similarly. If our law enforcement so disagrees with the law that they’re willing to quit over it, who will enforce the law? And not just this law, but laws against theft, rape, murder?

Well, like I said, I’m for defunding the police anyway.

Okay. Then how do you plan on enforcing these vaccine mandates?

It should be up to the businesses to decide and enforce.

You know, I actually agree with you. I think that every privately owned company has the right to conduct their business as they wish. This means I support their right to refuse service. 

Well, I’m glad we agree on that.

So you also agree that, say, a bakery has the right to refuse service to clients ordering cake for a gay wedding?

Omg, that is so different!

We’re talking about the right of individual businesses to refuse service according to their own codes of conduct, which they get to independently enforce. Correct?

Yes, but—

I think refusing to bake cakes for a gay wedding is outrageous discrimination, so I understand why people think refusing service to non-vaccinated customers is also outrageous discrimination. 

They’re different issues, this is public health! 

I know. Again, I’m trying for empathy of principle here, not exactitude of circumstance. We both think private businesses should have the right to do what they feel is best for their employees and customers. I’m just saying that I want my right to bodily autonomy respected, too. This means I respect someone’s right not to get vaccinated and I also respect the right of a private business not to serve them.

Okay, so you do agree with vaccine mandates?

No. I agree with an individual business’s right to refuse service, based on vaccination status or otherwise. It’s douchey, but I respect it. A city-wide mandate, on the other hand, like what New York is doing and LA officials are debating, I am very much against.

Okay, well, I hear your points and I’ll think about them. My gut still says it’s better to require vaccines in most public spaces rather than not. I hear you on bodily autonomy and hypocrisy and all that, but I’m just not sure I agree that it’s more important than the greater good.

I respect that. Can I leave you with one more thing to ponder? Actually, I lied, two things. Sorry.

Okay… I’m a little on brain overload, but okay.

I know, me too, we’ve wasted nearly an entire day on a contentious debate that probably no one will even read, especially this far.

Yep. We are in agreement about that.

Okay, one: Another demographic that shouldn’t be forced to get vaccinated besides those with health risks are those who have already survived COVID.

But it’s proven, survivors can get COVID again.

But it’s proven: so can the vaccinated. Both unvaccinated survivors and vaccinated people who never had COVID can contract it and spread it. The odds of both parties’ survival are just way better with natural antibodies and/or vaccination, and their symptoms way less if they do get COVID.

But the CDC says that survivors should still be vaccinated.

Yes, the data shows they’ll benefit abundantly. After just one dose of an mRNA vaccine, survivors’ immunity equaled or exceeded the level in uninfected people after two doses. Without any doses, people who have had COVID still have immunity.

Okay. What’s your second point? I’m sick of talking about this.

Meeeee, too. My second point is that mandating vaccines or requiring them for participation in public life sets a fucking dangerous precedent. 

Yeah, you mentioned that. How so?

Right now, you think the COVID vaccine should be mandatory. We have a Democratic president in office whose views you align with and whose team of scientists you trust. So when Democratic leaders advocate for vaccine mandates, you tend to be in agreement with them. What happens when it’s a Republican leader mandating a vaccine or other health procedure you don’t trust? Hate to go here again, but what happens if Roe v Wade is overturned? You’ll be crying, “My body, my choice!” 

But that’s a medical procedure you opt for, not against.

Either way, how can you not see that the principle is the same? Bodily agency. Freedom of choice. Personal autonomy. Once the precedent is established, it could be used for mandates way scarier than the COVID vaccine. 

But it’s not like mandated vaccines are even anything new! You have to show proof of vaccination for travel, for certain jobs, to go to school… 

You’re absolutely right. Vaccine requirements for certain diseases under certain circumstances is nothing new. But let’s break that nothing-new argument down. Only 11% of Americans traveled overseas from 2009-2019. (And most of them went to Europe, not places with vaccine requirements like parts of Africa, Asia, and South America.) International travel is a privilege. Few of us have jobs requiring international travel, so for the vast majority of Americans, such travel is optional. You’re wanting unoptional vaccine mandates to apply to everyday necessities. 

I’d hardly call going to the gym or a concert a necessity. By your logic, those are privileges as well.

I agree. But what about restaurants and cafes? Workplaces? Will grocery stores be next?

A grocery store is an essential service. I don’t think mandates will apply to essential services.

What about people too poor to afford a home with a full kitchen? Like people who live in bachelor-style studio apartments without stoves or ovens and rely on eating out at restaurants?

That’s gotta be a minority of people. 

They exist.

Okay, so maybe mandates shouldn’t apply to essential services, of which restaurants I guess are one. But I think mandates should apply to places like indoor stadiums, festivals, and the like. Not essentials, because everyone has to eat, go to the DMV, the hospital, etc.

Aren’t those places where COVID might spread the most? Are you saying vaccine mandates should not apply to essential service places, only places of privilege?

[Rolls eyes] Omigod.

And to your point about vaccine requirements for schools? I think we can both agree that public education is an essential and not a privilege, at least in the U.S. All 50 states allow medical exemptions to school vaccination requirements, and 44 states and Washington, D.C. offer religious and/or philosophical exemptions. The very same should apply to the COVID vaccine, at the very least.

But this is a worldwide pandemic. Surely drastic occurrences like this require drastic measures.  

This is a coronavirus we’re talking about. Not smallpox. Have you heard of case fatality rate? 

What, is that like how many people die out of how many cases?

Exactly. The case fatality rate (CFR) is the proportion of people who die among the total who contract the disease. For example, the CFR of smallpox is 30%. 30% of people who get smallpox will die. The CFR of Ebola is around 50%. Know what the global case fatality rate of COVID-19 is? 2.12%.

Wait… That’s it? I thought it was way higher.

Look at it this way—over 50 million people died of the Spanish Flu and only—

I think it’s more PC now to call it the 1918 Influenza Pandemic.

If we’re being picky, it lasted beyond 1918. Anyway. Over 50 million people died of the Spanish Flu over a two-year period. We’re over a year and a half into COVID and you know how many people have died? 4.3 million. 

But that doesn’t change that people are dying! So what if it’s only 2.12% or 4.3 million? If we can save more people from dying of COVID, we should encourage vaccination!

I agree. Truly, I do. Again, I am pro-vaccine. I just don’t think they should be mandated. I think mandates will backfire and establish precedents I shudder to imagine the ramifications of. I also think they’re an overreaction to the actual proportion of danger.

Okay, we’re going in circles here. Neither one of us is going to change our mind. I—

Actually, I am quite open to changing my mind. You know what would change my mind about vaccine mandates? Numbers. 

What do you mean?

If COVID-19 had the case fatality rates of smallpox or Ebola—30% and 50%, respectively—I’d be a lot more open to a temporary vaccine mandate. 

Well maybe the CFR of COVID is so low because of the vaccine.

Maybe you should look at the CFR of COVID before the vaccine was available. It was 2.9-3%.

So you’re saying if it was higher, you’d be pro-mandate? Even though vaccine mandates would still violate your precious bodily autonomy?

Yes, because the numbers would be high enough to justify such a drastic measure—again, on a temporary basis and with certain exceptions made for medical reasons. 

What about religious or philosophical reasons?

Only if there are equally drastic measures such as enforced home lockdowns and compulsory tests to participate in outside life until everyone who wanted the vaccine had the chance to have it.

Talk about a violation of personal freedom!

If 50% of Americans were dying, I think few would argue against it. Those that would deserve the natural culling they’d get. Everyone has the right to die.

DAMN!

I know, that’s harsh. My point is that drastic circumstances may sometimes call for drastic measures, but right now, COVID-19 with its 2.12% case fatality rate just isn’t drastic enough to be worth establishing a precedent that will very likely be abused by future governments. 

You’re a stone-cold b*tch, Alice, you know that?

Yep. 

And my mind is not changed.

I know. Mine, neither. But I really appreciate you hearing me out. I’ve shared what would change my mind, is there anything that might change yours?

… I mean, you make a good point about establishing a precedent. And yeah, I can see how hypocrisy might not be the best way to win friends and influence people. I hadn’t thought about how this issue parallels the principles of abortion and discrimination. They are SO not the same thing, but I see your points. But no. I’m not sure there’s anything that can change my mind. Vaccine mandates are a good idea because vaccines work. The sooner everyone gets vaccinated, the sooner we can all stop wearing masks and fearing lockdowns. The sooner we can all get back to normal life.

Cheers to that.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I’ll try to be a little less condescending and pissed off at people who are vaccine-hesitant. I still think most are just being belligerent, but maybe some are just scared. I’ll try to keep that in mind.

Then our work here is done.

Good. I can’t even tell you how sick I am of talking about this. Just get vaccinated, people!

I mean, it really would help if done of their own free will, because gawddamn, I’m sick of talking about this, too!

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“Life’s not fair.” 

It’s the oldest adage I grew up with as a ’90s lower-class kid. Did it make me feel better about having knock-off Doc Martins from Payless instead of the name-brand fisherman sandals I wanted? No. But that didn’t refute the truth in my mother’s words. At least I had shoes.

Life’s not fair and I think a lot of folks forgot. I’m not talking about marriage equality here, or about the gender pay gap or the disproportionate number of Black Americans in prison. Those transcend unfair into the realms of unjust and unconscionable. (Although surely every issue is subject to the relativity of an individual’s moral threshold.) I’m talking about wealth. Great wealth. Calculator-breaking wealth.

My Instagram feed is shouting at me today with reasons to hate on billionaires who go to space, the latest of whom is Sir Richard Branson. Elon Musk has been working to send rockets into space since 2002 and Jeff Bezos is set for his own personal space launch this Monday, July 20th. Why don’t they invest that money into building communities for the unhoused? Insta-activists assert. Why aren’t they solving the increasing problems of climate change? How dare these rich white men compete to see who gets to space first while the rest of us wave at them from a burning, freezing earth?  

Fair questions. Except, like life, they’re not fair. 

Sir Richard Branson and charity fundraiser Omaze partnered with Space for Humanity, a nonprofit seeking to send citizen astronauts of diverse racial and economic backgrounds into space, to give away two seats on a Virgin Galactic commercial flight. Branson’s extensive list of donations supporting LGBTQ rights, climate conservation, and countless other causes ought to put any critic of his to shame. 

Elon Musk is giving away $100 million to entrepreneurs who can come up with a way to capture carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and lock it away permanently. This is on top of the nearly $150 million Musk has donated directly to charities this year alone supporting schools, coronavirus research, and food banks.

Jeff Bezos, perhaps today’s most-hated billionaire, donated $10 billion to combat climate change when he stepped down as Amazon’s CEO and launched Bezos Earth Fund. $100 million of that has already been donated to The Nature Conservancy where it will be used to fund reforestation in partnership with local Indigenous and Tribal communities. This is on top of the $100 million Bezos donated to Feeding America during the height of spring 2020’s pandemic and the $100 million he gave to independent charities combating homelessness.

I found these stats with a five-minute Google search. Are Insta-activists just not looking to see if the billionaires they critique have already donated to the causes they say would be better alternatives to give to than space? Or are they willfully ignoring such donations with dismissals like, “Well, it’s through their own charity, so they’re still benefiting from it,” which, um, the donation receivers are, too?

But sharing the charity work of space-bound billionaires isn’t actually why I started writing this article. What I really want to tell you about is this…

We all benefit from rich people going to space. 

Critique the 1% and talk about wealth redistribution all you want, but please don’t overlook the countless benefits space exploration has given humanity. Many articles have been written about the everyday items that we have space exploration to thank for. I’m going to share with you ten of my personal favorites. 

10 Reasons to Thank Space-Explorers & Billionaires 

1. Do you have a smartphone?
Odds are you’re reading this from your iPhone or Android, and odds are, you take selfies and videos with its built-in cameras. Odds are you have a social media account where you share your photos and vids, and odds are, said social media accounts wouldn’t exist without the plethora of photos enabled by camera phones. None of this would be possible without the space invention of Dr. Eric Fossum. In 1992, Dr. Fossum worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and invented the CMOS active pixel sensor (APS) camera-on-a-chip technology. He did this to make space photography more lightweight. Its development led to the smartphones, backup cameras, Go Pros, HD televisions, medical imaging machines, and more that we have today, forever changing industries far beyond space travel.

2. Are you or is anyone you love augmented by technology?
Is there anyone in your life with a prosthetic limb? NASA’s artificial muscle systems that were originally designed for space vehicles led to today’s artificial limbs that are far more comfortable and utilitarian than their predecessors. Know a diabetic? If they use an insulin pump, it’s because it was developed for astronauts first. If you’ve ever used Invisalign braces, it’s because NASA needed a material to protect heat-seeking missile trackers, leading to the translucent polycrystalline alumina that eventually allowed invisible braces to be manufactured. Cochlear implants, cardiac implants, CT and MRI scans, LASIK eye laser surgery, and drugs and devices helping conditions from osteoporosis to heart transplants are all made possible thanks to space-first engineering.

3. Do you use Apple or Google Maps to navigate?
It is because of—gasp!—an ego battle between rich white men that we have GPS navigation. When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 into space on October 4th, 1957, it lit a fire under the United States’s ass to track it utilizing Doppler effect technology. By 1960, TRANSIT was developed as the first satellite navigation system. Its objective? To launch nuclear missiles more precisely. But by 1996, this technology became operational for civilian use and now we don’t have to use paper maps from AAA anymore. We can simply say, “Hey Siri, take me home.”

4. Do you drink filtered water?
As space flights became longer in the 1970s, astronauts needed a way to have safe drinking water. NASA partnered with family-owned business Umpqua Research Company to develop the microbial check valve cartridge, which used iodine to purify the water supply on space shuttles instead of chlorine. That space technology now purifies municipal water systems in developing nations, bringing safe drinking water to thousands of people.

5. Do you sleep on memory foam?
If, like me, you’ve gotten some of the best sleep ever on a memory foam mattress, pillow, or Tempur-Pedic topper, we have aeronautical engineer Charles Yost to thank for it. In the mid-1960s, NASA contracted Yost to create a seat padding that would increase astronauts’ odds of survival during landings and crashes. Yost invented what he called “temper foam,” an open-cell, polymeric memory foam that was energy-absorbing, pressure-contouring, and extremely pliable. It made its way from space shuttles to wheelchairs and into our bedrooms.

6. Do you wear sneakers?
The spacesuits made in the Apollo Era were designed to cushion the soles of astronauts with shock-absorbing air hollows known as “blow rubber molding.” The insoles were so effective that a former NASA engineer named Frank Rudy pitched the idea for similar shock absorption in everyday athletic gear to a corporation called Nike. In 1978, the Nike Tailwind runners were born, which evolved into Nike Air, and tennis shoes have never been the same since.

7. Do you prefer your vacuum—and other tools—cordless?
My cordless Dyson is all I use—seriously, worth all the money—and I have Black and Decker’s collaboration with NASA to thank for it. Although cordless tools predate space travel, it wasn’t until NASA told Black and Decker they needed a self-powered drill for moon exploration that wireless technology took a giant leap forward. The DustBuster vacuum followed the cordless drill and soon households everywhere had wire-free appliances and tools as a matter of course.

8. Do you remember the Super Soaker?
Of course you do. Any American kid who grew up in the ’90s does, and if you didn’t grow up in the ’90s, there is much to feel sorry for, but your loss that is the Super Soaker is in the top three. NASA engineer Dr. Lonnie Johnson came up with the idea of a hand-pumped, air-pressured water gun when he was experimenting with ideas for refrigeration systems. He hooked a nozzle to his bathroom sink and, “I accidentally shot a stream of water across the bathroom,” he told Popular Mechanics, “and thought to myself, ‘this would make a great gun.’”

9. Do you wear glasses?
Whether they’re sunglasses or prescription, did you know they’re 10 times more scratch-resistant than they’d be before 1983? This is because NASA developed scratch-resistant plastics to make the visors of astronauts’ helmets clearer. In 1983, NASA awarded Foster-Grant a license to replicate their scratch-resistance technology on everyday eyewear and other plastics that help keep us safe today.

10. Do you know a baby who was formula-fed?
Maybe their mother died or was herself starving of hunger. Maybe the baby struggled with latching issues, or was adopted by non-nursing parents. Maybe you were this baby. There is no telling how many lives have been saved because of baby formula, which we have NASA to thank for. In the 1980s, NASA explored the potential for algae to be used as a recycling agent for long-duration space travel. This led to the creation of algae-based vegetable oil which led to Formulade in 1994. Today, over 90% of baby formulas contain nutritional enrichment as the result of NASA-sponsored research.

All of these transpired because humans with big egos wanted to go to space and were funded by billions of dollars.

I know you can retort that these benefits to humanity were perhaps unwitting gifts, accidental byproducts of capitalism that shouldn’t be lauded as selfless acts of charity. Go for it, I’ll wait for your mentions to roll in telling me that donations from the uber-rich are tax write-offs and therefore self-benefiting. I’ll read your arguments about why billionaires should be taxed into non-billionaire-hood because of socio-democratic visions of economic equality (but let’s not call it Communism). I anticipate your comments about why no one should have a billion dollars when there are so many people, animals, and climates literally dying out there that wouldn’t be if fractions of said billions were given to help. 

But surely you know that it takes more than money to solve the horrors of the world. You know that people aren’t starving in Yemen because Bezos didn’t feel like donating money to feed them—you know Yemenis are being starved because Houthi rebels are obstructing aid in their conflict with Saudi Arabia, which is being armed by the United States with the steady sale of guns, aircraft, and bombs. You know that the lack of safe drinking water in rural communities and the extinction of forests and animals worldwide are due to problems far greater than money can solve, right? Problems like cultural differences, religious differences, and political differences, all of which have historical domino effects that will likely take centuries to reroute or reverse? 

Because you’re informed.

You want to talk about unfairness and inequality? Blaming today’s wealthy for the millennia of conflict that have led to our world’s suffering isn’t fair. Demanding wealth redistribution won’t bring racial equality because belief is stronger than evidence. Ideas are mightier than dollars. Culture cannot be bought. Time, innovation, and individual responsibility are what lead societal shifts. Money and other resources are among the help facilitating the changes we so wish to see implemented, but ignoring the other factors at play by conveniently blaming billionaires and capitalism isn’t helpful. It’s short-sighted and ignorant.

But what do I know? I’m just another 30-something, big city-dwelling, privilege-wielding American with access to Google in her pocket.

So call me Ayn Rand, but I observe that the pursuit of selfishness often has benefits for all. Kind of like how loving yourself first helps you love others, or how taking care of your needs allows you to better care for someone else’s. Why shouldn’t this philosophy apply to wants, too? So what if some rich people want to go to space? Why shouldn’t they? History shows their pursuit of happiness will lead to improved lives for us all. That, in my awed observation, is to be celebrated.

So thank you for Virgin Galactic, Sir Richard Branson. Thank you for Space X, Elon Musk. Thank you for Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos. I can’t wait to see what new prosthetics, household items, safety improvements, and fun gadgets come our way because of your pursuits of wealth, innovation, and personal delight. My hat is off to you all and I am honored to be alive at the same time you are.

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My first book is coming out in less than a month. And now feels like a really shitty time to be promoting it. 

Like many authors, artists, filmmakers, musicians, and others who have been excited to share the hard-earned fruits of their labor over the last year, I find myself struggling to find the balance between being culturally sensitive and wanting to celebrate a personal milestone. More than a personal milestone, my art is also my job. It’s how I earn a living. It’s a part of my job to promote my work.

But yesterday my country experienced an attempted coup. Trump supporters, aided by the baffling yet not-so-mysterious support of certain police officers, invaded the Capitol Building in an insurrection that President-elect Joe Biden said, “...borders on sedition.” Is now the time to be sharing pictures of my book? Flattering quotes from people who have read it? Tweets about promotional giveaways?

I’ve come to the conclusion that there will likely never be a good time to promote one’s work, for there will likely never be a time the world is at peace. I especially don’t see the United States entering a phase of relative peace anytime soon. Biden may be sworn into presidency on the twentieth, but that doesn’t change that nearly half of my country voted for Trump. Many genuinely believe the election was stolen from them. The ones that stormed the Capitol yesterday have promised to come back, armed and less “peaceful.” Trump himself said this is only the beginning. So while it feels insensitive to share my book, which is self-promotion, through and through—I wrote a memoir, forgodsake—I’m going to do it anyway. Not only because there may never be a sensitive time to promote it, but because its content is actually not as insensitive to current events as I thought. (Yes, I’m justifying. Yes, my points are still valid.)

What we saw on Wednesday was, among other things, an act of Christian Right nationalism. My book is relevant because it addresses the spiritual warfare embedded in Christian Right nationalism. I can’t type that with a straight face any more than you can likely read it with one. As my friend Blake Chastain said today in his Twitter thread sharing resources for understanding this American movement, “I know there’s a lot to comment on after the coup, but these are my lanes.” 

What is Christian nationalism? What is spiritual warfare? What do these have to do with Trump supporters attempting to overthrow our democracy and make an unprecedented invasion of the United States Capitol Building? (How am I even writing this?) Lastly, what do these have to do with my book? I’ll attempt to break these down.

Christian Nationalism

Christian nationalism is a political ideology that primarily focuses on “...internal politics, such as passing laws that reflect their view of Christianity and its role in political and social life,” as simply put by Wikipedia. Or, according to minister Jeremie Beller of the Wilshire Church of Christ in Oklahoma City, “Christian nationalism is the intertwining of the Kingdom of God with the kingdoms of men.” 

I was a Christian nationalist. I voted for George Bush in my first eligible voting year because I genuinely believed the conservative Christian candidate would help “bring America back to God,” as my high school youth group had prayed for when we marched with thousands of others across the National Mall of Washington, D.C. I prayed for—and eventually voted for candidates in favor of—the banning of gay marriage, the overturning of Roe v Wade, and the unleashing of God’s smite on sinners who supported these. It was my sincerest belief that these “liberal agendas” were being led by the dark forces of Satan and his army of demons, which leads me to… 

Spiritual warfare

“Spiritual warfare is the Christian concept of fighting against the work of preternatural evil forces,” says Wikipedia, “...based on the biblical belief in evil spirits, or demons, that are said to intervene in human affairs in various ways.” Or, according to Christianity.com, “There is a spiritual war ongoing for the hearts of man, as the forces of evil want to turn us away from God and separate us from Him.” 

As a teenager, I waged spiritual war when I prayed for a Republican president who would support policies that aligned with Biblical values. These values included homophobia, racism, colonialism, sexism, and interfaith intolerance, to name a few. Of course, I didn’t call them these. I called them love, for God was love and this was what God wanted for his children. I’ve stressed the following point before in my post addressing spiritual warfare and how it relates to the Christian Right stance on abortion: The intentions of those protesting, rioting, and terrorizing on behalf of President Trump are, in their eyes, likely based in love. For if God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son to be brutally crucified, how can some worldly violence on behalf of the Christian cause be considered anything less than godly?

Christianity’s Role In the Capitol Riots

Did you not see them? The Christian flags carried alongside Confederate flags among nooses, swastikas, and American flag capes? Did you not see the crosses or the stickers, banners, and posters saying, “Jesus Saves,” “Jesus 2020,” or “In God We Trust”? Liberal Christians did.

Prominent Christian leaders across denominations were quick to denounce the insurrectionists.

“To those who see this as a Christian endeavor, or something to be blessed in the name of Jesus, there is nothing Christian about what we are witnessing today,” said Washington, D.C., Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde in a video address shared on the Washington National Cathedral’s Facebook page. “Nothing.”

And yet Christianity is deeply interwoven with many of the ideologies that brought Trump supporters out to the National Mall and into the halls of Congress.

— “They Invaded the Capitol Saying, ‘Jesus is My Savior. Trump is My President’” by Gina Ciliberto and Staphanie Russell-Kraft

I can see the pushback now. #NotAllChristians! No one is saying all Christians. Not every Christian is a Trump supporter and not every Trump supporter is a Christian. I know some non-Christian Trump voters personally. But pretending Christianity plays no role in the events we saw unfold yesterday serves no one. The intertwining of Christianity, pro-Trumpism, and the Capitol riots is foolish to ignore. Maybe it’s because the left-wing media doesn’t understand radical Christianity that they don’t bring more attention to this correlation, or maybe it’s because they don’t wish to alienate their liberal Christian allies by focusing on it.

To ignore the relationship between Christianity and Trumpism is to ignore what may be the very fuel behind this insurrection, and any insurrections to come. [Click to Tweet]

The Goal of Christian Nationalism

What do these Christian Right insurrectionists hope to gain? A theocracy. They believe they have a God-given duty to ensure their nation reflects their spiritual worldview. Again, I know because I was one of them. Were I still a Christian, I would have voted for Donald Trump. I would have pulled the Saul-card to explain away his deviances as an example of how God can reform even the greatest of sinners and use them to accomplish his will. (Saul was a raging bad guy who converted to Christianity and became Paul the Apostle, allegedly, authoring half of the New Testament.) God’s will, the Bible tells us, is for all nations to adhere to his word. “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,” says Psalms 33:12, and Psalms 9:17 warns that all nations that forget God will be turned into hell. 

As a Christian Right nationalist, I believed we needed national policies reflecting Christianity in order to save America from being turned into hell. I don’t think it’s far-fetched to assume yesterday’s Christian rioters think much differently. “Jesus is My Savior, Trump is My President,” read one banner. “Make America Godly Again,” read another. Perhaps the most memorable rioter photographed yesterday was the shirtless tattooed man wearing horns and face paint. He rocked what seems to be his signature style at another pro-Trump rally two months ago, that time holding a sign that said, “Hold the Line Patriots God Wins.” 

But what about Biden? He’s Catholic and God-fearing, right? I don’t know the veracity of Biden’s proclaimed religious beliefs any more than I know the validity of Trump’s. Our nation has never had an openly non-theist president. Regardless, Biden won as a Democratic candidate and, to me and many, is representative of liberal Christianity, also called progressive Christianity. These Christians often endeavor to keep up with the times, if you will, and focus more on present-day social justice and compassion rather than End Times theology. Liberal Christians like Biden are more likely to believe that God is LGBTQ+ affirming and that abortion isn’t a Biblical matter. Christian Right nationalists, on the other hand, often take a more literal and fundamentalist approach to interpreting scripture. Selectively, of course—I’ve seen their women in pants and wearing makeup, both Biblical taboos. 

Back to My Book...

It is with a continued feeling of inner conflict that I return to the subject that prompted this blog post today: my book. I’ll be the first to call myself out on using what might rightly be called a political tragedy to promote my own personal gain. I have no excuse other than the two I listed above: I don’t see our nation’s political unrest ending anytime soon, leaving no “sensitive” time to promote my work; and it so happens that I think my work is, in fact, relevant to what is happening in my country: a continued attempt to establish a Christian theocracy. How can this be happening? I see people posting on social media. They’re fucking idiots, they’re brainwashed by QAnon, #NotMyJesus. How can they do this in the name of God? WTF are they drinking?

Well, my book offers some answers. Wayward: A Memoir of Spiritual Warfare & Sexual Purity is one small contribution to the growing number of stories exposing the harmful indoctrination of evangelical Christianity. This includes political indoctrination. My book is a deeply personal account showing my indoctrination, how it influenced my life, and how I broke free from it only to want to die after. Christianity was my ethos, my very identity. Without it, I felt like no one. I didn’t want to exist. If you’re curious as to how a Christian Right evangelical’s mind might be changed; if you’re curious to know more about what they are being taught that allows them to riot and vote for what may rightfully be called hate-filled stances; if you’d like to better understand your political opponent, to know the values that shaped them, the education they received, and the implicit and explicit messages they were taught; if you hope to have productive interactions with them that might mitigate their hold on U.S. politics, read Wayward.

Yes, I know I sound super-sales-y right now. I care, but not more than I care about what I perceive to be a genuine threat to our democracy. If just one person reads my book and comes away with a better understanding of what is helping to motivate the Christian nationalist resurgence in America, and if it inspires them to persecute less and love more, which ironically may change more minds as mine was changed, Wayward will have done its job. So, at the risk of sounding self-excusing, I am going to promote my book just as I would have had the Capitol riots not happened.

I made the decision to publish my book because I know there are many who share my journey and may find healing in my openness. I know many more do not share my journey and I wrote Wayward for them, too, in hopes it might shed some perspective on the influence and strength of the Christian Right, which I still feel is underestimated. My book, as writer and political commentator Chrissy Stroop says in her generous endorsement of it, contains episodes that, “...may be shocking to readers unfamiliar with evangelical subculture. If so, I hope they will take what they learn and demand that the American public sphere at long last take the voices of ex-evangelicals and other former fundamentalists seriously.” 

Wayward: A Memoir of Spiritual Warfare & Sexual Purity is being released by River Grove Books on February 2, 2021. You can sign up to read two free chapters here and be notified as soon as the book is available for online purchase.

It started off as a normal September afternoon. I was standing at my kitchen stove, one of those janky ones with coils for burners, and my friend Luke was sitting at the table next to me while I made us dinner. I was telling him about a recent hike I went on with a new guy friend of mine when, suddenly, Luke’s whole demeanor shifted. His shoulders tensed and his usually gentle voice took a sharp edge. He started interrogating me, asking who was this guy? Did he like me? Did I like him?

I struggled to answer Luke’s questions without showing my nervousness. I had never seen him that upset before, and I’d known him for a couple of years. His questions also confused me. Luke knew I didn’t date. He knew I was saving myself for my future husband, and that I had never even kissed or held hands with a guy. I figured Luke was just being overprotective—I was only 17, and since he was 20 and like an older brother to me, I told myself that he was just looking out for my safety. But his questions wouldn’t stop. He seemed suspicious. Angry, even. Finally, I called him out on it.

“It seems like you’re acting jealous,” I said. “Why?”
“Because,” Luke said, staring straight into my eyes. “God told me you’re my future wife.”

Everything slowed. The light seemed to tunnel out of the kitchen. All I could hear was the whirring of a fan, and only my hand resting on the stove kept me upright. It didn’t occur to me to ask Luke how he heard God. I never knew how God told anyone anything.

Something inside me wanted to cry out in protest, to tell Luke that he couldn’t be my future husband, because I didn’t love him, not in that way. But I silenced that cry out of sheer terror. I believed Luke’s revelation was God’s revelation, and I couldn’t go against God. I didn’t have time to think, and so I made the split-second decision to go along with it. I felt I had to go along with it, because to do otherwise would be to defy God, and to defy God would allow Satan to drag me to hell.

Luke was smiling at me. I smiled back, desperately hoping to cover up the betrayal I felt. I felt like Luke had betrayed me. God had betrayed me. And one week later, I felt like my father betrayed me.

I was sitting on my couch in numb silence when Luke called my dad to formally ask for my hand in marriage. I didn’t realize how much I was hoping my father would say no until Luke’s face broke into a smile. My heart felt like someone dropped it. Luke passed me the phone, and I heard my dad tell me that God had shown him a while ago Luke was the man I would marry—he’d been wondering when he’d get this call. Luke called his mother next; and as though God wanted to make extra sure that I was convinced marrying Luke was his will, Luke’s mom said that she, too, had heard from God that I was going to marry her son. God’s will couldn’t have been clearer.

When the calls were finished, I turned to Luke, forcing another smile I didn’t feel.
“So are we engaged now?” I asked.
He grinned at me. “Yeah, I guess we are.”

It didn’t seem possible. I’d never had a boyfriend. Now I had a fiancé. I blinked back tears, not knowing why I was so shocked. I had been groomed for that arrangement my whole life.

Purity Culture

I grew up in what is now called purity culture. Purity culture taught me that my love life would unfold in three ways: (a) I would remain a virgin until my wedding night, and I wouldn’t so much as hold hands with a guy until I was engaged to him; (b) As a girl, I would dress modestly and be faithful to my husband all the days of my life, including before I knew him; and (c) I would never date, but I would know who my future husband was because God would confirm it through my spiritual elders, and especially through my dad. This is exactly how my story unfolded.

Purity culture is based on the belief that sex should be had only within heterosexual marriage, and that all lustful thoughts before marriage are sinful. In the Christian churches of my upbringing, merely having a crush on somebody was not only a sin, but also an act of betrayal toward my future spouse. One youth pastor said that we girls were like white porcelain dishes, and when we gave ourselves away, we let people spit all over our dish. What man would ever want to marry us and eat off a dirty dish?

The Bible says that, among God’s holy people, there must be not even a hint of sexual impurity. This teaching played out in my youth groups, with girls being handed oversized, baggy T-shirts if they showed up in a tank top that bared their arms. Not even a hint meant boys were urged to publicly repent if they watched pornography, so that the rest of us could hold them accountable for their sin. Not even a hint meant that, when I was accused of flirting with all the guys on a youth-group mission trip, I had to go to each one of them personally, with a pastor, and apologize to him for being a distraction. My crime was wearing baggy cargo shorts, and treating the guys too much like actual brothers instead of brothers-in-Christ, as evidenced by my comfortability around them. That was the first time I was made aware that the lust of men was my fault.

The shame that imprinted itself in me left long-lasting scars. By the time I was betrothed to Luke, I was instilled with a fear of my womanhood and resigned to the fact that my life would be ruled by the men God placed in it.

Patriarchy

Patriarchy is an important aspect of purity culture. Although boys are also indoctrinated with the belief that they need to keep themselves pure until marriage, there is an inherent double standard in Judeo-Christianity that girls and women bear the brunt of. For instance, there is no biblically mandated test for a male’s virginity, such as there is for females. In the Bible, girls are tested for their virginity by being sent to their wedding-night chambers with a white sheet. If there is no blood on the sheet after the groom is done having sex with her, the girl is then dragged to the front of her father’s house and stoned to death for not being a virgin.

Today, there are still cultures that punish girls and women for not bleeding on their wedding-night sheets. From Judaism to Hinduism, Mormonism to Islam, most girls are expected to be virgins when they marry. The consequences for one not being a virgin bride can range from social shunning to strangulation. Because of this, some women, from Utah to Pakistan, will buy an artificial hymen to insert in herself on her wedding night. The packet of fake blood will burst with intercourse, mimicking the alleged proof of her virginity and sparing her shame, and in some instances, saving her life.

Today in evangelical America, we have things such as purity balls, at which girls in white dresses make vows of celibacy to God and to their fathers, who in turn vow to protect their daughters’ chastity until they give them away in marriage. In the Midwest, fundamentalist parents plan matchmaking retreats where they can arrange marriages for their teenagers. The girls are reported to be between the ages of 13 and 20, so they can be fruitful and multiply, and parents of a chosen groom might pay the girl’s parents a bride price. Some call this sex trafficking, and child marriage is currently banned in only two of our 50 US states. [Update: Child marriage is now banned in four of our 50 US states.]

I never went to a purity ball; but when my dad gave Luke permission to marry me, it absolutely felt like an arranged marriage. I was betrothed to a man not of my choosing, but of his, our parents’, and God’s. I use the word betrothed because that’s what it felt like. That’s the word the Bible uses to describe the giving away of a girl from one man to another. Women in the Bible don’t marry for love. They are simply traded, like cattle. A girl in the Bible does not get engaged. There is no proposal. She is never asked. She is betrothed.

Breaking Away

It was my mom who gave me the courage to end my betrothal to Luke. She hadn’t heard from God that I was supposed to marry Luke, but the reason I didn’t trust her right away was because my mom had stopped going to church by the time I was 17. This meant she was a backslider, and I couldn’t trust that she wasn’t being used by Satan to lure me off the path of God’s very clear will. Even so, my mom’s words gave voice to my own inner truth. My inner truth was screaming at me that I shouldn’t marry Luke, that I shouldn’t marry a man I didn’t love. My inner truth told me that men hid their desires behind God all the time, and this could be one of those times. My inner truth told me God might not even be real.

Two months passed. I wavered back and forth until, one day, I finally called Luke. I felt sick with fear as we made plans to meet in a public park, and I was so scared when I saw him that I would never be able to remember what I said. My mind went completely blank, the way I would later learn the minds of trauma victims sometimes did. In that moment, I wasn’t only ending my betrothal to Luke. I was overtly going against God’s will for the first time—and not just his will for my life, but his will for Luke’s life. I knew what happened to those who went against God’s will. God let Satan destroy them, because when they disobeyed God, they stepped outside the umbrella of his protection.

What I do recall from that day is that I was shaking. I remember hearing myself at one point, telling Luke never to call me, never to text me, and never to contact me in any way again, ever. I was terrified to hear the words coming out of my mouth. It was the voice of my inner truth.

The Repercussions

I wish I could tell you that I always spoke from my inner truth after that day. I wish I could tell you that, after ending my betrothal, I went on to have a healthy love life as a young adult. But that wouldn’t be sharing my truth with you now.

Programming

A few years after ending my betrothal, I lost my faith altogether. With the loss of my faith came the freedom to finally have sex. After so many years of keeping myself pure and saving myself for one man and one man only, I was free to sleep with anyone I wanted. I tried. But the teachings of purity culture were deeply ingrained in me. I began having anxiety attacks after sex. These anxiety attacks left me crying and hyperventilating in my bed as I desperately tried to remind myself that there was no devil to fear, and that I had nothing wrong to be ashamed of. But two decades of programming is hard to undo.

Purity culture had programmed me, the way it has programmed so many others, to fuse shame and fear with sex. I learned that, just because our minds accept that something is no longer true, our neurological wiring is not able to simply undo itself. My wires of fear, shame, and sex were closely wound together.

Purity culture taught me that my worth was in my virginity. On a subconscious level, losing my virginity meant losing my worth.

I know I’m one of the lucky ones. I may have found myself facing an arranged marriage at 17, and I may have suffered anxiety attacks after sex as a young adult; but I know my struggles, though valid, pale in comparison to some of the sexual traumas others go through. The reason I am choosing to share my experiences is because I also know I’m not alone. If you grew up like me, with every aspect of your sexual purity being controlled, and if, like me, you have downplayed the aftereffects of purity culture because you worry no one will take you seriously, I hope it might validate you, as it validated me, to know that symptoms of religious trauma and sexual trauma can often go hand in hand.

Religion is not always benign. Abuse is not always invasive. [Click to Tweet]

Effects of Abuse

What purity culture and sexual abuse have in common is the violation of your sexual agency. Both teach you that your body belongs to someone else, that your needs and wants don’t matter, and that the consequences of resistance could be high, even death. Is it any wonder, then, to learn that the side effects of purity culture and the side effects of sexual abuse can be so similar?

In the early 2000s, therapy offices across the United States saw a sudden spike of young adults seeking treatment for what has since been described as an “epidemic of shame.” One of the first therapists to notice this epidemic was Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers. I first learned of Dr. Tina in a book by Linda Kay Klein called Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free. Dr. Tina told Klein that the symptoms she was seeing were exactly the same symptoms she might see in someone who had been sexually abused. What made it so puzzling to her was that many of these young people said they had never been sexually abused.

The timing of this surge of people seeking help for sexual trauma, sometimes with no sexual experience at all, pointed Dr. Tina to the boom of purity culture in the mid to late ’90s. This was the era of promise rings and purity retreats, of abstinence-only sex ed, and books such as Joshua Harris’s I Kissed Dating Goodbye. This was the era of my youth. Klein describes in Pure... how my generation was bombarded at home, at church, and at school with the message that sex was wrong and our bodies were sinful. We became adults in the early and mid-2000s, and it was then that therapists such as Dr. Tina began to see the repercussions of what is now called purity culture.

Some of these repercussions resemble post-traumatic stress disorder: Panic attacks. Paranoia. Nightmares. Dissociative states. Depression. Eating disorders. Self-harm. Many of these symptoms remain dormant until they’re triggered by something—sometimes something as light as kissing, or even just talking about sex. One of the most devastating repercussions is a condition some women get called vaginismus. Vaginismus causes an involuntary tightening of the muscles around the vagina, making sex extremely painful and often impossible. Sometimes vaginismus is a symptom of sexual assault. Other times it’s a symptom of purity culture.

I know the story of one virgin bride who discovered she had vaginismus. She was very much looking forward to having sex with her husband, but every time they tried in the months following their wedding, her body shut down in pain, blocking him from entering her. She had unwittingly trained her body to shut down this way through years of shutting down any sexual thoughts or sensations whatsoever. Sex was so painful that she ended up having to have surgery.

Then there’s the story of a girl who had surgery because she wanted sex with her husband to be painful. She’d lost her virginity in college, and when she became engaged, she opted to have hymen reconstruction surgery. She wanted to be a born-again virgin on her wedding night and have the blood from a newly torn hymen to prove it.

Religion often teaches girls that purity means pain, one way or another.

Of course, women aren’t the only ones affected by the more harmful teachings of purity culture. In Pure..., Klein shares an observation from one of her interviewees, who pointed out that, if women are told their bodies are evil, men are taught that their minds are. The Bible teaches that simply looking at a woman lustfully is the same as committing adultery with her. The punishment Jesus advises? Gouging out your eyes if they cause you to lust, and chopping off your hand if it causes you to sin. Though these verses are often interpreted as metaphors in the modern-day church, their construal as dictates against lust and masturbation are valid. When boys and men fail to suppress their natural urges, many believe themselves worthy of punishment, including checking themselves into months’-long rehabilitation centers, convinced they have sex addictions. Others struggle for years with what one guy I know simply describes as “crippling shame.” After being kicked out of his religious university for having sex with his girlfriend, another man I know of committed suicide. Shame can be deadly.

The psychological and physical effects of purity culture are still being brought to light. Certainly not everyone raised in an environment that promotes sexual abstinence feels harmed by it; and psychological observations suggest that people sharing the same experience may be affected in vastly different ways— one may feel unscathed while another feels traumatized. Trauma is not an event itself, but the subjective experience of an event or series of events. The trauma response of the brain, or lack thereof, is unique to each individual; and where some perceive a threat, others may see protection. The intentions of those advocating some of the teachings of purity culture may be good in many cases. But for those of us who do internalize these teachings with intense fear and shame, the lack of understanding or discussion about their darker effects can leave many feeling isolated and alone. Furthermore, many doctors and therapists are afraid of being seen as antireligious if they connect a patient’s sexual-trauma symptoms to their spiritual beliefs; and because of the taboos surrounding sex in most religious communities, many individuals continue suffering in mystification and silence, going untreated.

The good news is that symptoms of sexual trauma resulting from purity culture often can be treated.

The Healing

Everyone’s path to healing is unique. Recent years have seen an uptick in counselors and therapists familiar with the repercussions of being raised in purity culture, and many have been there themselves. Some approaches to recovery from this brand of sexual shame involve traditional psychotherapy, while other methods take a less conventional approach. I found healing through a combination of the two.

I was in therapy for nearly three years following my departure from faith. Therapy helped me work through a lot of the anxiety I had around dating and sex, encouraging me to explore and maintain healthy boundaries as I did so. Another way I found healing was far less expected. Through an unlikely string of events, I started working as an actress and model when I was 17. When I was 18, and still reeling from ending my betrothal to Luke, I accepted the offer of a topless modeling job. I was fully aware that I was in no small way rebelling against purity culture. Rebellion, I learned, can sometimes be good medicine.

During the photoshoot, something happened to me. Something good. While I stood under black and blue lights, almost completely naked, and while the male photographer was shooting me and making me feel safe, I made a conscious decision: that I would let my inhibitions go as I had never let them go before. And there in that dark, safe space, staring straight into the camera lens, I felt something come over me that I had never felt before. I felt power. And what is power if not an opposite of shame?

The first thing many women do when they leave religious purity culture is rebel against it. Amish girls on Rumspringa might have boudoir photos taken. Women who leave the FLDS church might cut their hair and wear makeup. Ex-Muslim women might trade their burqas for bikinis. Reclaiming power takes many forms, and some may dismiss these actions as juvenile, as an understandable yet overreactive bucking of authority. I think the motive behind many such rebellions is far deeper, far more profound, and sacredly beautiful. These actions are often not only symbols of defiance. They also are symbols of deliverance, of liberation, and the fierce proclamation of self-ownership. We are more than rebels. We are healers, finding wholeness through the uninhibited embrace of our sensuality.

That day, I let my body move however I wanted to. I was fully in my senses, aware of my hair, my goosebumps, my breath, my beauty. My power. I know this story might be a little unconventional to share; but finding healing through the power of my sensuality is my truth, and it was modeling that first introduced me to this. I left my photoshoot feeling like a significant transformation had taken place. I didn’t know what to call it. I didn’t have a name for the freedom that I felt unleash within my body, accompanied by an unspoken and resounding vow that my body and I were never going back. We were never going back to shame. We never going back to suppression. We were never going back to powerlessness. I would later think of that photoshoot as a mystical experience, as a profound moment of healing where, for the first time, I forgave myself for being a woman.

What I know now is that I was experiencing a glimmer of what therapists and coaches might call embodiment: getting out of my head and connecting to the wisdom of my body. Because of that experience modeling, I started taking dance classes—pole-dance classes. I danced for no one but myself, and letting myself move without fear of condemnation or consequence allowed my body to release years of stored shame.

Follow Your Truth

I’m not saying everyone needs to do a topless photoshoot or learn to pole dance to release themselves from shame. But I hope what you might take away from my sharing my truth is the encouragement to find and live in your own. Diverse journeys have brought us to where we are today. These ongoing diverse journeys will help us continue to heal into the people we’ll be tomorrow. I don’t think there is a right or wrong way to heal. I think we all must determine for ourselves what is true for us and what is not.

Purity culture was real to me, but it was never true. Although I still can recognize some of the scars of shame it has left me with, I feel so grateful to myself for having the courage to listen to my inner truth and learn how to follow it.

If you also find yourself struggling with sexual or romantic difficulties that you suspect might be the result of purity culture, this is your permission to consider it. Consider exploring with a knowledgeable therapist or a trauma-informed embodiment coach any connections that come up. I used to belittle my experiences because I felt they weren’t severe enough to merit the label of trauma or abuse. Others, I thought, had it far worse. But that doesn’t mean I don’t deserve healing from what I experienced. That doesn’t mean you don’t deserve healing from what you experienced. It means we can acknowledge the ways purity culture may have affected us so we can finally begin to heal. It means we get to walk in our own truth, whatever that means to each of us. It means we get to be free.

~

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I would like to acknowledge that this article does not address the painful ways purity culture has affected the LGBTQ+ community. This was a conscious omission for two reasons: (a) religious purity culture is often implicitly heterosexual, with expressions of nonheterosexuality and nonbinary gender identification so deeply condemned that they are often ignored altogether in abstinence and courtship teachings; and (b) as a heterosexual ciswoman, I cannot speak to any experience within purity culture but my own. And for the sake of brevity, I decided to keep the focus of this piece on what I can personally attest to, knowing those who identify as LGBTQ+ can speak to their experiences far better than I can extrapolate. I sincerely apologize for any offense this omission has caused.

This article was originally published in ICSA Today, Vol. 11 No. 02, 2020. The International Cultic Studies Association, featured on our Cults page, exists to support survivors of cultic groups. Please become a member or consider donating to this nonprofit organization helping people recover from psychological and spiritual abuse.

The above quote is from my eighth-grade history book called America: Land I Love.

I remember studying its cover, a painting of George Washington at the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention, and feeling stirred by the righteous spirit of the founding fathers. I took to heart whatever my Christian curriculum said. A Beka Book, now called Abeka, has provided millions of Christian schools with textbooks since 1972. Over 1 million students learned from their curriculum in 2017 alone. They are one of many Christian curriculums infusing racism into the education of American schoolchildren, helping to shape the evangelicals making up more than 25% of our voting block. A Beka Book shaped me. 

Right now, my country is blazing with protests in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. People are marching peacefully and being brutalized by the police. Others are rioting and looting. Most of the people I know are sharing social media memes asking us to educate ourselves and each other, beseeching one another to have difficult conversations and to look inward at the ways our racial biases have consciously and unconsciously contributed to Black injustice in America. People also say to write what you know. I know how Christian education is fueling racism in the United States.

The Curriculum

Last week, I was part of a group text where one of the members, who didn’t go to school in the U.S., asked what we Americans learned about anti-racism in our education.

“We didn’t have any anti-racism or racist awareness classes at all,” one woman responded.
“I mostly had race courses in college,” another replied.
“Same here,” wrote someone else.

Do I do it? I thought. Do I say what I learned in my school books? Will I be discounted because I was homeschooled? Do I even have a place in this conversation?

Yes, I did.

“I was homeschooled,” I wrote, “like many U.S. evangelicals, with a Christian curriculum. Was taught about Black history from the narrow perspective of how Christianity ‘freed’ the slaves. Many conservative right-wingers went to Christian schools and were taught from the same books I was. We were essentially taught good Blacks turned to Christianity and white assimilation (MLK Jr) and to associate black anger and violence with non-Christianity/Black power (Malcolm X).”

Before going further, I’d like to be clear about something: My parents did not teach me this. My mom went through several different curriculums when I was growing up trying to find one that was not religiously dogmatic. In the mid-90s, it was far more difficult to find secular homeschooling resources than it is today. My parents are also both college-educated—they graduated from UC Berkeley, a police officer and a history-major concert pianist, and I share this to dispel the notion that Christian homeschool parents are all uneducated and paranoid. Mine were flawed as any are, but their decision to homeschool their children primarily stemmed from my mother’s genuine love of teaching.

Back to what my Christian curriculum had to say about Black people. The impression I retained was one of white savior superiority that demonized non-Christian, non-assimilating Blacks through the lens of spiritual warfare. (For the unfamiliar, I explain spiritual warfare in my post about the Christian Right’s opposition to abortion. The same spiritual logic applies here.) Out of curiosity, I decided to look up exactly what my 1990s and 2000s schoolbooks said. What I found floods my ears with blood to reread today. (Emphasis mine.)

A few slave owners were undeniably cruel. Examples of slaves beaten to death were not common, neither were they unknown. The majority of slaveholders treated their slaves well. — United States History for Christian Schools, A Beka Book

Although the slaves faced great difficulties, many found faith in Christ and learned to look to God for strength. By 1860, most slaveholders provided Christian instruction on their plantations. — America: Land I Love, A Beka Book

To help His children endure the difficulties of slavery, God gave the Christian slaves the ability to spiritually combine the African heritage of song with the dignity and power of Christian praise. Through the Negro spiritual, the slaves developed the patience to wait on the Lord and discovered that the truest freedom is freedom from the bondage of sin. — America: Land I Love, A Beka Book

Only 6000 families in the entire South had over 50 slaves in 1850. — America: Land I Love, A Beka Book

The story of slavery in America is an excellent example of the far-reaching consequences of sin. The sin in this case was greed—greed on the part of African tribal leaders, on the part of slave traders, and on the part of slave owners, all of whom allowed their love for profit to outweigh their love for their fellow man. The consequences of such greed and racism extended across society and far into the future. It resulted in untold suffering—most obviously for the black race but for the white race as well. — United States History for Christian Schools, Bob Jones University Press

These excerpts are from two of the most popular Christian school and homeschool curriculums in America: A Beka Book (now Abeka), who published several of my math, history, and civics textbooks; and Bob Jones University Press (BJU), whose curriculum my mother didn’t use, although many of her peers did. Only in November of 2008 did Bob Jones University issue an apology for their racism, which included a ban on interracial dating until the year 2000. 2000. It took a Black man winning the Presidency of the United States before BJU would publicly admit they were wrong. Abeka has yet to issue any formal apology that I can find. In fact, its founders say, “We present free-enterprise economics without apology and point out the dangers of Communism, socialism, and liberalism to the well-being of people across the globe.”

Many former Christians have been revealing the racism taught in their education. Activist, writer, and ex-evangelical Chrissy Stroop coined the hashtag #ExposeChristianSchools on Twitter in January of 2019. It went viral and made headlines with stories of curriculum-sanctioned racism, homophobia, sexism, corporal punishment, science denial, and more. All Biblically-based, of course. Contributions from ex-Catholics, ex-Mormons, and ex-Amish poured in alongside evangelicals and non-denominationals.

To say Christianity has nothing to do with American racism would be white privilege on privilege. That wasn’t my Christianity, you might be thinking. That’s not my Jesus. I can already see the hashtags. You want to talk about #NotAllChristians? Not all Christians were privileged with a secular education. Not all Christians were privileged to grow up in a coastal, liberal state. Not all Christians were privileged to learn the Bible from a non-literal, cherry-picked point of view. We were taught to take the entire Bible as God’s truth.

Christian school curriculums have been under scrutiny since Donald Trump appointed Betsy DeVos as the U.S. Secretary of Education. DeVos is on a mission to “advance God’s kingdom” through education, and for over 30 years, she has pushed to give families taxpayer money in the form of vouchers to enroll their children in private and overwhelmingly Christian schools. Just last month, DeVos used the $2 trillion coronavirus stabilization law to redirect “...millions of federal dollars intended primarily for public schools and colleges to private and religious schools.”

In 2018, the Orlando Sentinel reported what these religious schools are teaching students from three of the most popular curriculums in Florida, which also happen to be three of the most popular nationwide: Abeka, Bob Jones University Press (BJU), and Accelerated Christian Education (ACE). (Emphasis mine.)

The Abeka book said in a section on “evangelizing black Americans” that “the slave who knew Christ had more freedom than a free person who did not know the Savior.”

The BJU text said “God provided” North America as a place for the Protestant church to flourish, keeping Catholics to Central America and South America.

The ACE curriculum supports the values the school believes are important, CEO Bill Keith said. Other schools teach “revisionist” history, he added, promoting Malcolm X and communism.

These three Christian curriculums are being used in countless tax-funded schools. Nearly 6 million students attend private schools in the United States and about three-quarters of those are Christian schools. Additionally, around 1.7 million American children are homeschooled. Below are snapshots of what these students are learning from Christian school and homeschool curriculums. You’ll see it wasn’t just bigotry against Black people.

Here are other excerpts from Christian schoolbooks about race:

Africa is a continent with many needs. It is still in need of the gospel… Only about ten percent of Africans can read and write. — Old World History and Geography in Christian Perspective, A Beka Book

[The Ku Klux] Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross. Klan targets were bootleggers, wife-beaters, and immoral movies. In some communities it achieved a certain respectability as it worked with politicians. — United States History for Christian Schools, Bob Jones University Press

While the end was a noble one—ending discrimination in schools—the means were troublesome. Liberals were not willing to wait for a political solution. — Teacher’s Resource Guide to Current Events for Christian Schools, Bob Jones University Press

This is what millions of children and teenagers are being taught. This is the programming they carry with them into adulthood. This is what has shaped the minds of evangelical politicians and untold numbers of others in power.

Does this seem like the kind of education that would be an ally of a movement called #BlackLivesMatter?

Denying History

I posted a graphic on Instagram a week ago quoting Jeremiah Camara, a Black American filmmaker.

The backlash was swift. 

“Dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.” 
“Not all Christians are racist.”
“This post is in itself racist against whites.”
“Why are you trying to divide people even more?”
“The Gospel message has nothing to do with white supremacy.”
“Most of the early, and most vehement, abolitionists were Christians.”
“You’ve been traumatized for your evangelical upbringing.”

That post was not about me. It wasn’t my quote I shared, it was a Black man’s. It wasn’t me talking about the psychological damage of white religious iconography or linking white supremacy to racism. It was Jeremiah Camara. And you bet I backed him up. Because I know it’s true. I will not apologize for boosting the voices of Black non-believers* in the discussion we’re having about racism. I will not be sorry for sharing their perspectives—especially when they make Christian-raised, non-Black people like myself uncomfortable. 

Black non-believers are a minority-within-a-minority. The faith-filled Black community has many allies. The Black faithless, not so much. So if anyone was hoping I’d learn my lesson and not speak of religion and racism again, I am not sorry to disappoint you. If anything, I am even more compelled to speak up about this inconvenient correlation.

Christianity is a part of the system we’re talking about when we say we need to change systemic racism in America. [Click to Tweet]

Most can agree that racism existed well before Christianity. That doesn’t change Christianity’s role in the trafficking of Africans and their enslavement in the American continents. Many would prefer to believe Christianity has nothing to do with white supremacy. They’re wrong. Only 11% of Americans have read the Bible and it shows. I understand the urge people have to jump to the parts of the Bible that talk about love and equality. I don’t deny these verses are there. But denying the racial prejudice and hatred that is also in the Bible is to deny God’s word. Even as a Christian, I understood that.

Someone commented on my post, “To me you are saying God is a racist.”

The God of the Bible is a racist. There are a plethora of stories displaying God’s racial favoritism and genocidal hatred of entire nations. For now, let’s focus on the Bible stories used to justify the abduction, bondage, and oppression of Black people. Let’s start with the Curse of the Canaanites.

The Canaanites were descendants of Noah’s son, Ham. In the book of Genesis, Ham finds his father passed out drunk and naked. When Noah wakes up and realizes Ham saw him in his uncovered state, he proclaims the curse that will be used to justify African American slavery centuries later. “Cursed be Canaan!” Noah cries. “The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.”

Somewhere in Abrahamic storytelling, Ham came to be widely portrayed as Black. In Black and Slave: the Origins and History of the Curse of Ham, author David M. Goldenberg writes (emphasis mine):

The introduction of black skin color into Noah’s curse has a long history… In 1848, the American anti-slavery minister John G. Fee wrote that Ham was made black “by the curse of the Almighty,” and he succinctly described that effect, which was commonly believed in his time: “God designed the Negroes to be slaves.”

It didn’t matter whether one supported the institution of black slavery or not, or whether one was black or not; everyone seemed to believe in the truth of Ham’s blackness.

Only in 2017 did the Southern Baptist Convention acknowledge that the roots of Christian white supremacy were based on the Curse of Ham, providing a theological justification for slavery and segregation.

Progressive Christians can’t be blamed for trying to detach themselves from Christianity’s association with racism. Many are quick to point out that the Old Testament, where the story of Ham and the curse of the Canaanites is found, was made irrelevant with the arrival of Christ. Yet even if a version of Christianity is narrowed to the New Testament—even stripped down to only the red-lettered words of Christ—Jesus himself showed racism to a Canaanite woman who begged him to heal her daughter. He called her a dog. “I was only sent to the lost sheep of Israel,” Jesus said. “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to dogs.” She wore him down until he deigned to reward her faith. 

Many liberal Christians pardon the Bible’s more heinous contents by claiming “historical context,” metaphorical impunity, or choosing to focus primarily on the New Testament. Yet all throughout the Bible, New Testament included, infamous verses backing up slavery can be found. The apostle Paul returns a runaway slave to his master. He instructs masters to treat their slaves kindly, but also commands slaves to obey their earthly masters with fear and trembling. One verse from the Old Testament and two verses from the New deserve to be printed in full. (Emphasis mine.)

Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property. — Exodus 21:20-21

Slaves, in reverent fear of God submit yourselves to your masters, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. For it is commendable if someone bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because they are conscious of God. But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. — 1 Peter 2:18-21

Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive. — Titus 2:9-10

Is it any wonder how Christian slaveholders justified their treatment of Black people? 

Black Christianity

I broach this section with careful consideration. Nearly eight-in-ten Black Americans identify as Christian. It is not lost on me that George Floyd, whose murder we collectively witnessed in viral video, was a devout believer. His family is turning to God in their unimaginable grief. It is not my intention to mock the personal beliefs bringing them comfort, or the beliefs of anyone finding solace in faith or a lack thereof. Again, I reiterate: I am not here to criticize people. I am here to help explain Christian ideology’s historic role in Black oppression, so that we may address its lasting ramifications as we move forward with sincere efforts to change the perpetuating of systemic racism. 

Many Black Christians in America today are painfully aware of their religion’s past. The Washington Post published an article last year titled, “The Bible was used to justify slavery. Then Africans made it their path to freedom. (Emphasis mine.)

It is not lost on [Alabama pastor Reverend Jaymes Robert Mooney] that the Gospel he preaches, the Gospel so many African Americans embraced to sustain them through the horrors of beatings and rapes, separations and lynchings, separate and unequal, is the same Gospel used to enslave them.

Rev. Mooney addressed the murder of George Floyd in his sermon last week titled When You Feel Like You Can’t Breathe. “What do you do,” he asked his congregation, “in a world that every now and then reminds you that you do not have any value to them? ...When we say, ‘I can’t breathe,’ we are reminded that ‘I can’t breathe’ is because our breath has been taken away by the transatlantic slave trade.”

Yolanda Pierce, the dean of the divinity school at Howard University, was also quoted in The Washington Post article, saying:

“Christianity was proslavery. So much of early American Christian identity is predicated on a proslavery theology. From the naming of the slave ships, to who sponsored some of these journeys including some churches, to the fact that so much of early American religious rhetoric is deeply intertwined . . . with slaveholding: It is proslavery.”

And about those abolitionists?

Abolitionists tried to make arguments against using the Bible to justify slavery, but they were in the minority. “They were considered to be radical,” [historian of American Christianity Mark] Noll said. “And often they were considered to be infidels, because how could they say God was opposed to slavery if it was so obvious in the Bible that he was not?”

“[Slaves] very quickly learned that the only way we can be heard is to speak the language of our slaveholders, to speak to them about the text that they love, that they believe in,” Pierce said.

When you cannot reason with your oppressor, embrace his language. When you cannot escape the ideology that justified your abduction, embrace the ideology. This sounds eerily similar to Jeremiah Camara’s likening of Black Christianity to Stockholm syndrome.

After I quoted Jeremiah Camara in my Instagram post, I received several messages from people wondering how Black Christians might feel if they saw it. I understand where their concern is coming from. Again, it is not my goal to critique people, but to ask us to examine the ways Christian ideology is contributing to systemic racism. I hope sharing my Christian curriculum made that point clear.

Another point I dare to bring up is that of segregation in the Christian church.

American Christian churches have been racially segregated since before our country’s founding. Obviously, this stems from white racism against Blacks. Today, 90% of white American Christians worship in all-white churches and 90% of Black American Christians worship in all-Black churches. Although some church communities are making efforts to racially integrate, one of the reasons many Blacks want to worship separately from whites is because the Black church acts as a shelter from injustice and discrimination. Black pastor Isaac Adams wrote an article called “Why White Churches Are Hard for Black People” describing additional reasons Black Christians may be reluctant to have fellowship with whites, including:

• Many white brothers and sisters don’t work against, much less acknowledge, racism, whether subtle or blatant. …Some white folk in the church act as if, according to one writer, “any mention of ‘racism’ is a racial slur directed at them.”

 • It feels like the majority doesn’t want to hear what it feels like to be black. All it takes is to be told once by a white brother or sister to just “get over” the issues of race to feel like those in the majority are opposed to understanding you, to loving you.

• Sometimes blacks feel like projects instead of peers. Some white churches do not think of blacks as those who can minister to others; we’re only to be ministered to by others. In other words, we feel like objects of ministry, not those encouraged to initiate it.

A rising number of Black Americans are rejecting church altogether. In 2007, 12% of Black Americans identified as religiously unaffiliated—atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular.” In 2014, that number grew to 18%, and it is likely to be higher now. These Black non-believers are often stigmatized as traitors in their communities. One of those Black atheists is Tiana Afrika, co-host of a podcast called Speak No Pseudo. In the episode released this February titled “Racism in Religion,” Tiana and her co-host Kuante Afrika discussed Christianity’s role in American slavery.

“A lot of people, believers in particular—the theists—do not like what I have to say,” Tiana said. “Religion and racism go hand-in-hand. We can’t say that atheism and racism go hand-in-hand.”
“Let’s be honest,” added Kuante. His next words deserve their own paragraph.

“There are religious people who are not racist. There are racist people who are not religious. What we’re saying is that religion is one of the blueprints for racism. That’s the point we’re making here.” [Click to Tweet]

If you won’t hear it from me, please hear it from Black people themselves. Follow Black Nonbelievers on Twitter. Listen to the Speak No Pseudo podcast. Subscribe to atheist artist Greydon Square’s YouTube channel. Read ex-evangelical Tori William Douglass’s blog White Homework and start with “The Day I Learned White Christians Hate Me.” And please, if nothing else, watch Jeremiah Camara’s Amazon Prime documentary Holy Hierarchy: The Religious Roots of Racism in America. So many people are saying to donate to Black nonprofits, patronize Black businesses, and amplify Black voices. Please, continue to do so. I only ask that you also consider donating to, patronizing, and amplifying the voices of Black non-believers. Their Black lives matter, too.

In Closing

First of all, thank you for hearing me out. If you’ve read this blog in its entirety, seriously, thank you for just being open to considering another point of view. I know how difficult and scary it can feel, especially if you believe entertaining non-Christian ideas are spiritually dangerous. I appreciate your willingness.

White and non-Black Christians, I challenge you to ask yourself five things:

1. How many Black people regularly attend your church?

2. How many times have you been to a historically Black church?

3. What did you learn about the transatlantic slave trade? Did you learn about Christian white supremacy and the Slave Bible? Do you think of Africa as a continent that needs “saving”?

4. If a Bible verse is no longer true because it was for that time and place, and if we are not to take some verses literally, why are any of the other verses true or literal?

5. If you do not consider yourself a racist, and if you do not condone slavery, are you willing to rebrand Christianity by publicly declaring that the Bible is not the inerrant word of God? Are you willing to say that Jesus was imperfect, and that your Jesus, not the Biblical Jesus, does not stand for racism and bigotry? Are you willing to say you are Christ-inspired and let go of a label that carries a 400+ year history of Black American trauma?

Black Christians, you are not my people to challenge. You have my sincerest allyship in your fight to matter, and I wholeheartedly support your movement while criticizing what I see to be part of its obstruction. I do apologize for the hurt this post may cause.

White and non-Black non-believers, I ask you to watch, read and boost the work of your Black fellow atheists, agnostics, and spiritual-but-not-religious comrades. Don’t be afraid to “go there.” There will never be a good time to link racism with religion.

Lastly, Black non-believers… Thank you. Thank you for helping to educate me. Thank you for your unique lens, your unique bravery, and your unique voices that you bring to our community table. Thank you for your anger, your grace, and your courage.

I’ll let the words of Tiana and Kuante from Speak No Pseudo close us out.

“If we can get people to leave religion alone,” says Tiana. “It would help a whole lot. You know what I mean? It doesn’t mean it’s the end-all. But it will help.”
“It’s a start,” adds Kuante.
“It’s a HUGE start… I think it is a form of deflection when people say, ‘Well what about this,’ or, ‘Well, we’ll get to that.’ But right now we’re talking about religion. Don’t try to take the spotlight off of religion and pretend like it’s not there. Because then it doesn’t get solved.”

Systemic racism in America may never be solved. But if we refuse to look at the role Christianity plays in the oppression of Black people, we refuse to fight oppression. [Click to Tweet]

You don’t have to like it or agree, but I hope that I have persuaded you to at least consider it with honest reflection. Because Black lives matter.

*AUTHOR’S NOTE: When I refer to Black non-believers, I am primarily referring to Black atheists and agnostics, although Black people who identify as spiritual-but-not-religious may certainly share their perspectives. I apologize to any Black people who might be offended by the term “Black non-believers.” Also, because this piece is about Christianity’s contribution to Black oppression, I did not address other demographics such as Black Muslims and ex-Muslims. Lastly, for those wondering if a Black person read and approved this, yes they did. Special thanks to my friend Charley, a Black agnostic and talented recording artist, for graciously offering to do me the honor of a sensitivity read.

One is called Kel and three go by Al. How long does it take for all four to lose their inhibitions and have way too much fun taking photos by the pool?

Answer: Three Strawberry Gin Fizzes, two Desert Rose Margaritas, and one Watermelon Splash. And a whole lotta sisterly confidence-boosting, ’cause that’s what baes are for. 

It’s been raining in LA and I’m on Day 25 of quarantine. My September escape to the desert with three of my best gals seems ages ago, and I yearn for the days of shared straws, overlapped limbs, and fresh guacamole. One of the perks of being forced to stay indoors is having the time to post blogs I always meant to finish. Now is as good a time as any to reminisce about the days Before, and inspire daydreams of your next SoCal vacay when we finally reach the days After.

Day One: Mid-Century Chic

When Allie said her friend Jason wanted to hook us up with a two-night stay at the V Palm Springs, the rest of us YAAAAASSS-ed in the group thread with fantasies of playing influencer for a weekend. Actresses we may be—Allie, Alex, and I met on The Lying Game, and you might know Kelen from Big Little Lies (just realized that’s a lot of liars)—but none of us have an Instagram full of hotel views with #ad in our captions. Although we’re all totally game. 

We arrived at the V on a late Sunday afternoon, greeted in the Mid-Century lobby with retro hotel keys and...stipends! For free food and drink! If you’re wondering if this blog is about four bougie in-and-out-of-work actress friends who somehow got a free vacation without enough Instagram followers to quite justify why, let me assure you, yes, that’s exactly what this post is about. Back to our shameless excitement over free food and drinks.

Two bottles of chilled rosé awaited us in our minimalist pool view rooms, eliciting merry cheers as we swung on the macrame-style patio swings. Alex and Allie claimed one of the double-queen bedrooms and Kelen and I discovered we’re both neat freaks in the other, hanging our sundresses in the closet and organizing our beauty products on the glossy white bathroom countertop. Who cares if we’re only there two nights? Influencers prettily arrange their cleansers and deodorant for just one night’s stay.

Yelp told us Las Casuelas Terraza was the go-to place for al fresco Latin fare. The 1920s casita serving “the best Mexican food in the Coachella Valley” is family-owned and happily accommodated our mixed dietary requests, including gluten-free, dairy-free, and meat-free options. Yours truly ordered cheese enchiladas with rice and beans. Classic and delicious. On our evening stroll back to the V, we stopped at El Mirasol Cocina for a nightcap of THE BEST strawberry margaritas I’ve ever had. Seriously, it was like drinking the squished-out slush of a pink Otter Pop, but with a decidedly adult kick. That these margaritas are only a stone’s throw from the V makes drinks at El Mirasol a must if you stay at the charming motel-turned-hotel. And you really should, because the beds at the V are comfortable, the bathrooms sparkling, and the ambiance upbeat, but off the beaten strip. Perfect for those times when you don’t want to party, but you still want to feel included. 

Day Two: Poolside Shenanigans

Monday morning found us eating breakfast at Cheeky’s, home of the Bacon Flight. Yes, the Bacon Flight: a sampling of bacon strips boasting flavors from apple cinnamon to Korean BBQ. I think the blackberry jam one was my favorite. We did our best not to gorge ourselves on Cheeky’s scrumptious pancakes and tater tots because a tummy full of carbs is the last thing you want when you’re about to do a photo shoot. In bikinis.

Part of our free stay deal at the V was to post photos of us enjoying the hotel. (Like real influencers, guys!) I think it’s safe to say they got their money’s worth because the girls and I practically had the pool to ourselves and proceeded to take way, way too many photos. I was excited to use my Samsung Galaxy’s voice-activated shutter feature, yelling out, “Capture!” every five seconds above the bossanova music—and likely annoying the few other guests who were there, probably trying to work on their tans in peace. But we were having fun! And my girlfriends and I never drink and take selfies in public, which was basically our job that day, so yes, we would like to use our stipend for one more round of Coconut Mojitos, thank you. And chicken tenders. Here are some of our silly pool pics…

As I said, we had too much fun. 

Sunset found us napping in our rooms before drinks at High Bar, one of the sexiest rooftop lounges I’ve ever seen, followed by gourmet pizzas at Brickworks. Our indulgent day ended with plans to use the rest of our stipend for a poolside brunch the next morning before heading home.

Day Three: Check Out

The bacon-fried rice, ya’ll. Topped with a fried egg. That’s what you need to order for breakfast when you stay at the V, because it is the yummiest Asian fusion meal I may have ever had. Unfortunately, I was too busy enjoying it to remember to take a picture. Just trust me. It’s good.

We checked out of the V Palm Springs thanking the hotel staff for our lovely time. If ever you find yourself in need of a Southern California getaway, this conveniently located desert-chic oasis has everything you’ll need for a memorable Palm Springs vacation. Plus, it’s very affordable—I know I got to stay there for free, but rooms start at only $99/night!

“What do you see?” he asked, halting in front of a fair booth and pointing to the sign hanging above.

GODISNOWHERE

I was sixteen and it was the first time I saw the psychological puzzle. My salsa partner, a cute seventeen-year-old named Ryan with piercing blue eyes, seemed hellbent on poking holes through my Christian faith. Our weekly dance classes were one of the few times I interacted with non-Christian peers - and certainly the only time I held hands with a boy outside of prayer. Our Latin dance troupe would be performing in an hour. Nerves made my jaw tight, and the last thing I wanted was a philosophical debate amid the noise of the fairgrounds, but I knew Ryan wouldn’t let up.

“It says two things,” I told him, studying the sign. “It says ‘God is nowhere’ and ‘God is now here.’”

He grinned at me in frustration, as though he couldn’t tell whether he admired or disdained my answer. “Which one does it say to you?” he asked.

“Both.”

“Yeah, but which did you see first?”

I didn’t know. I honestly felt like I saw both options at the exact same time. Knowing Ryan was trying to engage me in another argument made me turn the question around on him. “Which did you see first?” I asked.

“I see ‘God is nowhere.’”

I shrugged, unsurprised. Ryan said he and his family were “New Age,” which meant “demonic” to me. All semester long, he’d been needling me about the foolishness of blind belief, to which I always replied, “Well that’s why they call it faith.” He wouldn’t shake mine.

But the sign still lingers with me seventeen years later.

As a scroll through any newsfeed will tell you, the world is in the midst of a global pandemic right now. I find myself thinking back to that sign, which I saw only months after President Bush declared the War on Terror. I remember reading how 9/11 turned Christians into atheists and atheists into believers. In times of crisis, the article explained, the faithful can be shattered by God’s lack of protection. That very lack of protection is also what can turn the faithless toward God as they grasp for any sense of comfort they can cling to.

I’ve been wondering how many believers are losing their faith over COVID-19. I also wonder how many non-believers might be praying for the first time in their lives as loved ones die, helpless and alone. The thought of reuniting in eternity must surely be comforting. The thought of an all-powerful God choosing not to interfere when he could must leave others enraged, on the verge of processing a betrayal that will take years to reconcile, as the deconverted know. Some whose faith is strong enough will tell themselves this is a part of God’s plan; it is not for us to question, and if question we must, it is not for us to know. Others will begin wondering if there is a God at all.

If you find your faith wavering in these times, you likely have a faith-based community you can turn to for support (and hopefully from a distance). If the idea of someone telling you God is holding us in his perfect hands makes you want to break glass, there are faithless communities where you can also find solace. Facebook groups like Grief Beyond Belief offer support for the grieving free of religious platitudes. Networks like the Secular Therapy Project will help you find a therapist who won’t bring spirituality into the conversation, and most are offering virtual sessions by video chat. For former believers triggered by echoes of End Times terror, the Religious Trauma Institute is partnering up with the Reclamation Collective to bring you a free four-week online series called Exploring the Impact of COVID-19 on Religious Trauma, hosted on Facebook Live starting April 5th. Religious trauma survivors are also welcome to find COVID-19 stress support in free bi-monthly conference calls hosted by Dr. Marlene Winell and Marie D’Elephant.

Whether you find yourself pulled toward God during this time of uncertainty, or you find yourself moving further away, I encourage you to have grace for yourself, religious or secular. As someone who doesn’t believe faith is always a choice, I hope you won’t judge yourself either way. Seek out support if you need it. It’s okay to let ourselves change and grow, especially as our faith and lack thereof is challenged in ways it may never have been before. Dare to Doubt is, obviously, a resource site primarily for religious doubters. But I hope you give yourself permission to simply live in your truth, whatever that may be, even if it changes day by day, hour by hour. “God is nowhere” might speak to you one moment and “God is now here” might resonate at another. Or maybe one position feels staunchly affirmed with no wavering about it. However you feel is alright.

What did you see in the sign at first glance? Did it say “God is now here” or “God is nowhere”? How does it feel to think about it?

It is upon us.

SARS-CoV-2, also known as the coronavirus, has many of us scrambling to get ready for the coronapocalypse. But when we’re told to practice social distancing and prepare for self-quarantine, we’re faced with a catch-22: Do we go out to get the things we need to stay in? 

You probably already have them.

If you missed the panic buying spree of the past few days, fear not. My time as a Girl Scout, a Walking Dead fan, and a survivalist junkie have taught me the first thing you need to do after making sure everyone’s okay: Take inventory and ration, ration, ration. 

It’s likely you have much of what you need in your home and car. If you live someplace prone to hurricanes or other natural disasters, and you’re prepared because you’re smart (and I know you are), you have supplies pre-stocked you can repurpose for this pandemic. Same if you love to camp. Not a doomsdayer living in a flood zone who backpacks in their free time? Not to worry. Unless you’ve recently Marie-Kondo-ed your home sparse, you’re more prepared than you think. Here are some ways you can take stock of what you have, get creative for what you don’t, and regain a sense of control, all while social-distancing. 

FOOD

Remember that bag of dried beans sitting in the back of your pantry? And the half-used sack of jasmine rice you stopped eating because it wasn’t brown? Find some protein-packed rice-and-beans recipes and put those forgotten foods to use. Just make sure there aren’t maggots in the couscous you meant to pilaf five years ago. Other meal-planning tips?

• Eat perishables like produce, fish, and nonfrozen meats first.

• Cook your dry and canned goods with the spices you haven’t used since Thanksgiving and portion them into freezer-proof baggies to eat as-needed.

• The jar of simmer sauce you meant to sauté with the mixed vegetable medley molded to the bottom-corner of your freezer? Time to use those frozen veggies for something other than icing your fillers and sports injuries.

• Make energy balls out of common pantry staples like oats and peanut butter—sweeten with sugar, dried fruit, maple syrup, or hot cocoa packets. Or leftover holiday candy, I promise you it’s hiding somewhere.

• Bags of flour and tubs of shortening leftover from that one time you tried making homemade pie crust? Make fry bread or sopapillas instead—they make great shells for tacos of canned chili. 

• When all that’s left in your cabinet is a random tin of cream of tartar you can’t remember buying—and hopefully it won’t come to that—dig up the freeze-dried camping meals in your garage or earthquake kit and set the pace to grueling and your portions to meager—yes, that is an Oregon Trail reference.

MEDICINE

Let’s start by doing our best not to get sick, shall we? If you’re one of the unlucky whose stores ran out of Purell, you can make your own sanitizer using roughly two-parts rubbing alcohol to one-part aloe vera gel. The jury is out on its effectiveness against the coronavirus—CDC says sanitizers should contain at least 60% alcohol, so an isopropyl content of 90% or higher is necessary for this blend—still, ridding some germs is better than none. Other health tips?

• If you don’t have aloe vera lying around from your last sunburn, you can kill viruses with sprays of hydrogen peroxide or bleach.

• Good old fashioned hand-washing with soap is better than squirts of sanitizer anyway, because chemistry.

• That natural disaster kit you were smart enough to get before you needed it? Bet it includes alcohol wipes, rubber gloves, and maybe even a face mask. No natural disaster kit? Your car’s first aid kit should still give you some basic staples, and if you don’t have any first aid kit, I don’t know what to tell you.

• If you do feel sick, and if it’s not worth taking up hospital space from those who may need it more, you probably have some packets of Tylenol in your emergency kit or in the back of your medicine cabinet. Advil and Aleve will also work to bring down a fever, and home remedies like a tepid bath and spicy foods are bound to have a comeback. Again, perhaps some relief is better than none.

HYGIENE

By this point, it should go without saying that a dip of the head is more polite than shaking hands. In fact, you really shouldn’t be in a position to interact with strangers at all, but what if you’re running low on that aforementioned soap? Check your home before venturing out.

• Your toiletry kit might have some travel size goodies left. No mini hotel bottles to be found? Make your own shampoo, and for everything else, there’s coconut oil. Use it as a conditioner, hair pomade, shaving cream - even lube. Bets are on for how many Coronnials will be born around the New Year. 

• Out of toilet paper? So is everyone but the hoarders. Alternatives include tissue, paper towels, baby wipes, makeup wipes, Dude Wipes, feminine wipes, and those travel packs of Kleenex you have stuffed in your glove box. Just make sure whatever you use is flushable or else seal it backpacker-style in a Ziploc. 

• Really-really out of toilet paper and all usual substitutions? …I’m gonna do it. I’m going to include the option of reusable toilet paper, a.k.a., “family cloth.” (Omigod let’s never say that term out loud.) Yep, you can cut up some old flannels and t-shirts and wash and reuse. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and as advocates point out, we’ve been using cloth diapers on babies for centuries. But dear gawd, let’s hope supplies of Cottonelle and Quilted Northern restock. And please, don’t @ me.

ENTERTAINMENT

Now that we’ve covered some basics, let’s turn to how you’re going to stay sane as you shelter-in-place. Adults are working from home, kids are out of school, and let’s be honest, this is like cabin fever on steroids. Even introverts are feeling antsy. Here are some ways to keep entertained once you’ve binge-watched all your favorite shows.

• Stay social. It’s never been easier to virtually connect, and just because bars and restaurants are going dark doesn’t mean we can’t meet up. Girl’s Night on Google Hangouts? FaceTime WineTime? Speed Dating on Skype? Hey, with the inescapable success of Netflix’s Love Is Blind, society might be up for some relationship experiments, pandemic-edition. (Too soon?)

• Board games. Gather your housemates or get your pals together on Zoom for a virtual game night. If you have Cards Against Humanity, What Do You Meme?, or a poker set collecting dust somewhere, now’s the time to bust these out. 

• Digital games. If you’re not the type to have Settlers of Catan lying around, get a break from the monotony with an app-based game you can install on your phone like Heads Up! or Psych!. Or, play a controller-based game like Trivia Murder Party or Quiplash from Jackbox, which you can operate from your PlayStation, phone, or tablet.

• Video games, duh. Thought that one was obvious.

• Learn something new. That guitar sitting in your bedroom? Play it already. That foreign language you’ve always wanted to master? Download Rosetta Stone. Learn how to foxtrot and tango. Take an online writing class or spread some cheer and make a GIF.

• Stay fit. Yeah, you could be a couch potato and there’s never been a better excuse, but there are a plethora of free workouts on YouTube. Plus, exercising boosts your immune system even if it’s just 20 minutes a day. That HIIT workout you wanted to try? Do it. The abs you wanted by summer? They’re yours. Who knows, you may come out of self-isolation looking better than ever. 

• More of a yoga person? See if your teachers are offering virtual yoga classes. My girl Allie Gonino is offering FREE sessions on Instagram Live and privates on Skype and FaceTime payable by Cash App. Your personal trainer is probably willing to do the same, so if they haven’t announced it yet, reach out and see. Look for win-win ways of supporting each other to keep digital currency flowing.

• Lastly, stay zen. If your body is telling you to relax, use that bath bomb sitting in the bottom of your beauty drawer. See what meditation is all about. With apps like Headspace and nothing but time, why not manage this weird mix of stress and boredom simultaneously?

Now that you realize you are, in fact, better prepared than you thought, what other ideas come to mind on how to survive the coronapocalypse? Share them below!

Sometimes it helps to see your story from the safe distance of a TV screen. If not your story in particular, the story of someone whose journey is so like yours that it transcends the differences of place and time - even of faith. Some of the most meaningful films I’ve seen tell the tales of people with backgrounds very different from mine. What we have in common is the courage to question, the struggle to live authentically, and the tenacity to find freedom.

If you find yourself feeling lonely after the losses of deconversion, or you could use a little encouragement to stay true to yourself in the face of discrimination and doubt, I hope you find comfort in the following films. All of them brought me some measure of catharsis. Without further ado, may I present...

10 Films for People Who Dared to Doubt

Silence | Directed by Martin Scorcese | Watch it on Amazon

Not for the faint of heart, but if Scorsese-style violence doesn't bother you, you may really appreciate the depth of this film exploring apostasy, persecution, and the wavering of faith and doubt, all set against the backdrop of 17th century Japan. Two Jesuit priests search for their missing mentor while ministering to Japanese villages in secret. The threat of a torturous death looms over them if discovered, and their commitment to Catholicism is tested when they learn the mentor they seek may have renounced his faith. Based on the novel by Shusaku Endo.

Believer | Directed by Don Argott | Watch it on HBO

One of the most uplifting films on the subject of challenging religion I may have ever seen. This documentary follows Imagine Dragons’ lead singer Dan Reynolds as he takes on bigotry from within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Viewing himself in the unique position of being able to fight for LGBTQ+ inclusion as a practicing Mormon instead of as an outsider, Reynolds creates the Love Loud Fest, a music festival raising awareness and money for LGBTQ+ rights in the fight to end skyrocketing rates of teen suicide. I cried. A lot.

The Stoning of Soraya M. | Directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh | Watch it on Amazon

This movie absolutely wrecked me. It’s from the same producers of Passion of the Christ, so if you’re sensitive to physical violence, you may want to pass on this excruciating true story of a woman falsely accused of adultery and then stoned to death under the dictates of Islamic Sharia law. It motivated me to research and donate to underground railroads helping women escape the brutality of religious extremism. Based on the book by Freidoune Sahebjam.

Jesus Camp | Directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady | Watch it on Amazon

When I first tried watching this documentary on childhood indoctrination, I couldn’t finish it. Ten minutes in and I begged my boyfriend to turn it off, heart pounding as flashbacks assaulted my memory. Remembering all of the times I faked the Holy Spirit made me realize I didn’t want to keep faking faith for the rest of my life, and I became an atheist shortly thereafter. Years later, when I finally finished watching this film, I felt so affirmed. I don’t think I’ve seen a more accurate depiction of my time in children’s ministries. If you were raised evangelical with a Charismatic slant, I bet it’ll resonate with you, too.

Higher Ground | Directed by Vera Farmiga

If Jesus Camp depicted what my childhood looked like, Higher Ground hit me as an all-too-relatable portrayal of my young adulthood. This true story is about one woman’s conversion to and departure from a fundamentalist expression of Charismatic Christianity. I saw myself in every female character, from the judgy home group leader to the injured girl hoping for a miracle to the lost woman trying to pray in tongues and feeling absolutely nothing. It even has those funny, embarrassing moments, like surreptitiously flirting in church. Based on the memoir by Carolyn S. Briggs originally called This Dark World.

Kūmāré | Directed by Vikram Gandhi | Watch it on Amazon

Oh, how I’m morally conflicted by this film. Vikram Gandhi documents his posing as an eastern Indian spiritual guru who rapidly gains a devout following. What happens when he reveals to his devotees that he is simply a false prophet from New York out to prove that you are your own guru? I’ll let you find out. Part-satire, part-undercover expose on what NPR calls the “absurdity of blind faith,” this documentary plays like a social experiment in the vein of Borat meets a New Age yoga cult. I’m conflicted because people were deceived. But, that’s kind of the point.

Boy Erased | Directed by Joel Edgerton | Watch it on Hulu or Amazon

If you haven’t yet seen this movie based on the memoir by Garrard Conley about being a Baptist pastor’s son who is outed as gay and pressured into conversion therapy, you’re missing one of the most significant films to expose the underbelly of evangelicalism to mainstream society. If you’re like me and grew up believing homosexuality - or anything other than cis-heterosexuality - was a demonic affliction one needed healing from, scenes will resonate. Perhaps painfully. But things are changing - Canada just became the latest country to ban conversion therapy. I don’t doubt Garrard’s story is playing a powerful role.

The Magdalene Sisters | Directed by Peter Mullen | Watch it on Amazon

This movie about purity culture was made before purity culture was even a term. Based on the true stories of three Irish girls locked in an asylum for the “crimes” of flirting, having a child out of wedlock, and being raped by a family member, this film shows their struggle to maintain hope as they fight to survive abuse and plan an escape. Set in 1960s Ireland, this story is as much about female guilt as it is about Catholic guilt, and its harrowing display of religion’s fear of women is universal.

Religulous | Directed by Larry Charles | Watch it on Amazon or Hulu

I recently discussed on The Free Thought Prophet podcast how this documentary, though scathing, validated me at a time when I really needed reassurance that I wasn’t going to hell. Say what you will about Bill Maher and his mockery-style exposé of the holes in Christianity, but I say there is a time and place for what I call “angry atheism.” This 2008 film found me one year out of faith, still shaky and battling what I would later know were symptoms of religious trauma, and I trembled with vindication as I sat in the theater watching Maher debunk things I hated to admit still haunted me.

One of Us | Directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady | Watch it on Netflix

The directors of Jesus Camp bring you another inside peek into one of the most isolated religious groups in America: ultra-Orthodox Judaism. Following a divorced woman on the verge of losing her children, a knowledge-hungry survivor trying to find his way in the secular world, and a man who left his family and the only community he ever knew to be an actor, this documentary shows the heartbreaking fallout of what can happen when you challenge a belief system regarded as law. Emotional, educational, and hopeful, this film left me contemplating the line between religious freedom and abuse.

BONUS WATCH! Since we are in the era of social distancing and self-quarantine, you might be needing a new series to get sucked into. Allow me to include…

Vikings | History Channel | Watch it on Amazon or Hulu

If you haven’t watched this cinematic show yet, get ready! It’s everything you’ve heard and then some. Seasons 1-3 in particular chronicle the arc of one of the most fascinating characters I’ve ever seen on television: the Christian monk Athelstan. Kidnapped during a Viking raid to live as a household slave, Athelstan gradually comes to learn the Northmen are not the heathens he expected, nor is his faith as solid as he believed. The loneliness and liberty of his deconversion are sure to resonate - and the conversations between him and his Norse god-worshipping friends make this series underrated for its philosophical depth.

And there you have it, my list of movies that helped me as I dared to doubt! What films or TV shows helped you process your journey in and out of faith? Comment below, I can’t wait to watch them!

Disclaimer: For the purposes of this opinion piece, I am making broad statements about evangelical Christians and their faith-based, pro-life allies, including Catholics and Mormons. There are always exceptions. When I use the term ‘Christian Right,’ I am referring to the socially conservative political group founded on the tenets of Judeo-Christianity who are pro-life—or pro-forced birth, for those who prefer the term.

There are two things I would like to help you understand about the Christian Right: their motivation is spiritual warfare and persecution is their fuel. Say what? Before I elaborate on each of these, let me acknowledge that not every member of the Christian Right will subscribe to these beliefs. Some may not even know what I’m talking about. A good many, however, will know exactly what I mean. More than 25% of American voters identify as evangelical Christians. If you care to know the mentality you are up against, allow me to try and explain two lesser-discussed but potent driving factors behind this particular facet of the Christian GoP.

I am not going to address the other reasons the Christian Right is so adamantly against abortion. I feel they are already well-documented. That many Christians sincerely believe abortion is murder is perhaps the most cited reason, woven into the very name of their stance with the term ‘pro-life.’ They believe in an unborn child’s right to live. Also frequently covered in public discourse is how controlling women’s reproductive rights is ultimately about controlling women. Being anti-choice is in large part about shaming women for being sexual beings. It is, in the shadows of its core, about punishing women for not being virgins and for being raped. The Bible teaches us to punish women for these. (See here and here.)

My goal is to try and explain two other reasons that might be missed by pro-choice advocates in their confusion over why so many Americans want to overturn Roe v Wade. My hope is that a deeper understanding might lead to a more effective approach in getting what we want: safe and legal access to abortion for women.

Spiritual Warfare

I’ve seen your pleas to the Christian Right. They probably have, too. Stats and graphs are not going to change these minds. Mocking memes are not going to win them over. Seeds of reason may be planted, but a timely about-face followed by an aha-moment is not something you are likely to see regarding this and many other faith-based issues. Why? The Christian Right is not living “of this world.” You keep appealing to their humanity and logic, asking how can they be pro-life in the face of their own inconsistent evidence. If it’s about life, you ask, how can they be pro-guns? If it’s about saving children, why do they seem indifferent to the children dying in ICE holding camps? To understand this, you must try to understand that to evangelical Christians—and believers of many other faiths—it is the immaterial world that carries far greater consequences than the physical world we share. This is why you cannot reason with them. They are fervently, and earnestly, engaged in a spiritual war.

Spiritual warfare probably sounds ludicrous to those who weren’t trained to fight in it. I was. This war was once very real to me, as it is to millions of others. Its consequences are eternal and it is sincerely a matter of life and death.

Allow me to briefly summarize the battle many members of the Christian Right believe is occurring…

• There is a war going on between God and Satan. The forces of good are combating the forces of evil. God and his angels are good. Satan and his demons are evil.

• The war is over our eternal souls. God wants our souls up in heaven with him. Satan wants to torture our souls forever in the gnashing pits of hell.

• There are countless ways we fight on God or Satan’s side each day. For example, giving to the homeless is a win for God’s side; giving in to pornography is a win for Satan’s.

• When we abort a baby, we are fighting on Satan’s side.

Some Christians believe the souls of aborted babies go to heaven, for God is merciful. Some believe their innocent souls go straight to hell, for God is just. When I was a Christian, I feared the latter. God says he will punish children for the sins of their parents in the third commandment, and in the sixth commandment, God says not to murder. These fueled my personal reasons for wanting to overturn Roe v Wade. I truly believed that aborting babies damned their little souls to the tortures of hell, and all because their mothers selfishly didn’t want to have them.

If this sounds irrational to you, I understand. I also ask you to try and understand that this was once very rational to me. When you accept the Bible as the word of God, as an inerrant truth shared by nearly every member of your community, your brain learns to reason within that operating system. Those who challenge you are deemed detractors, Satan in disguise. Regardless of whether a Christian believes an aborted baby goes to heaven or hell, they will have a rationale for their personal beliefs. Please believe me when I say that to Christians, their arguments are just as rational as yours, if not more so in their eyes. You are consumed by the petty drama of this world while they are sacrificial warriors enduring misunderstanding and persecution for the next. This is what it means to battle in spiritual warfare. I know it might be hard to understand, or even entertain. I do think this understanding is necessary if you wish to appeal to their reason, however different it might be from yours.

To further try and explain the mentality shared by many pro-life Christians, allow me to address another aspect of spiritual warfare: prayer and politics.

If winning this spiritual war is the objective, living in accordance with God’s will is the battle. This is why so many Christians can’t leave prayer out of politics. This is why they cannot separate church and state. Ensuring the policies we are governed by align with what the Bible says keeps them fighting on God’s side. For the Christians who take this war seriously, fighting on God’s side means actively fighting against what the Bible teaches is wrong, including gay marriage and abortion. Although the Bible doesn’t address abortion in specific terms, it does say that God knows us while we are in our mother’s womb and it says that murder is wrong. Put two and two together. What happens when we do not fight on God’s side in this spiritual war? Our souls will be cast into a lake of fire.

Many evangelical Christians believe the Second Coming of Christ is near. So near that it might even occur within our lifetimes. Jesus will return to judge the wicked and separate his true followers from his untrue followers and those who rejected him. True followers will go to heaven. Untrue followers will go to hell. There is a lot of variance in what makes one a true follower or not, resulting in all of the different Christian denominations. There is also the three-and-a-half to seven-year period before the Second Coming to prepare for, the Great Tribulation, an apocalyptic era of suffering that many Christians are stockpiling goods and weapons for—ergo their fervent support of the NRA. These faithful who believe the End Times are nigh are earnestly waging war against what they perceive to be the forces of evil. They must prove themselves true followers of Christ if they and their families are to be spared from suffering here on earth and in the hereafter. For many American Christians, being a true follower means fighting against abortion.

You might be thinking this sounds extreme. Surely not that many of your fellow citizens believe in this mythological fire and brimstone? Surely only proselytizers on street corners and David Koresh-like cults in bunkers actually think the apocalypse is coming? Yes and no. While there are a minority of Christian extremist groups stockpiling bunkers, you might be surprised to know just how many average church-going Americans believe in Judgment Day, however imminent or far-off. The Bible says no one knows the day or the hour. It will be precluded by world wars, famines, and earthquakes—those are the warning signs, Jesus says. (Sound like climate change? Hence why many in the Christian Right aren’t that bothered by it.) To err on the side of safety, it never hurts to be on God’s side. To be on God’s side, for many, means to fight for Christian conservative values and policies.

You might not hear Christian politicians talking about spiritual warfare in those exact terms. They know how fabled it sounds, whether they personally believe it themselves or just pretend to in order to win votes. But there is reason to believe the words ‘spiritual warfare’ are being used in the White House. President and First Lady Trump hosted a special dinner last year in honor of evangelical leadership. 100 of America’s most prominent evangelicals were there. One pastor in attendance, Jack Graham, said the evangelical dinner was like a testimony meeting, with scripture shared and verses given to the president.

“We need to maintain our vigilance in the upcoming days,” said Graham. “The concern is that this is a spiritual warfare, this is a battle and ultimately battle is won on our knees.”

Prayer and politics. This is not a fringe movement. It is not relegated to backwoods revival tents or middle-American megachurches. It is in our very administration. Vice President Mike Pence is a self-described Catholic-Evangelical, a devout theocrat and reputed dominionist who believes in Creationism. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is an evangelical Christian who has publicly stated she wants to “advance God’s kingdom,” a reference to spiritual victory. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo used spiritual warfare terms when he spoke at a church in Wichita, Kansas just three years ago, inviting the congregation to join a fight of good against evil.

“We will continue to fight these battles,” Pompeo said. “It is a never-ending struggle . . . until the rapture. Be part of it. Be in the fight.”

The rapture, some Christians believe, will occur right before Christ’s Second Coming. Christians will vanish into thin air in the blink of an eye to be spared the abominable desolation of the Great Tribulation.

Our nation’s leaders appear to sincerely believe these stories. They are ruthlessly fighting to bring our country’s policies into accordance with their religious values to be on God’s side when the End Times come. They are striving toward Christian theocracy—a government based on Biblical teachings. Like a Christian version of Sharia law. And you know what? I prayed for this to happen.

In September of 2000, during a rainy Labor Day weekend, I marched on the Capitol Mall of Washington, D.C. to turn America back to God. I was fourteen years old. My Kansas City youth group had joined thousands of others to partake in a political prayer rally known as TheCall. It would be the first of many led by Lou Engle, an evangelical prophet and political activist who would go on to become a prominent speaker for the Christian Right, associated with politicians such as Mike Huckabee and endorsing Sarah Palin as a modern-day Queen Esther. Back in 2000, Engle’s influence over American politics was just getting started.

I wept with 400,000 other teenagers in the muddy grass of the Capitol Mall for two days. We cried out for the banning of gay marriage, for the return of prayer and Creationism in schools, and for the overturning of Roe v Wade. Our bellies growled from fasting—depriving ourselves of food was supposed to further demonstrate our earnestness to God—and our fists pounded at the charcoal sky as we pleaded for God to forgive the mothers who slaughtered their babies, for they knew not what they did. We were actively engaged in spiritual warfare. It was up to us teenagers, Lou Engle said, to save our country. It was up to our generation to bring America back to God’s side in this spiritual war.

I struggled with shame for years after leaving Christianity. The love of my gay friends made my eyes water with regret for fighting their right to marriage. Marveling at the wonders of evolution made me feel stupid for what I had willfully ignored before. Accompanying a tearful friend to her abortion made me never want to tell her how I had once fought against her right to choose.

It was love that changed my mind. Ultimately, it was the kindness of non-Christians, the curious questions, unspoken actions, and late-night conversations that gradually led me to question my views in ways I never thought I would dare. Watching the film about mid-century abortionist Vera Drake with one of my close friends inspired the first genuine abortion debate I ever had with a Democrat. It ended with me deciding that I could personally be pro-life while respecting another’s right to choose. (For the record, I am no longer a Christian, but I still was at this point.) This change would not have come about without the love my friend showed me, without the safe reassurance of his acceptance of me no matter what I said. Perhaps this sounds corny, but it was my truth: love was what ultimately brought me to the other side.

Which brings me to the second thing you need to know about the Christian Right. You will not change their minds by persecuting them.

Persecution

I hope by now I’ve explained why reasoning with Christian Right voters often doesn’t work. Their belief in spiritual warfare nullifies earthly logic in favor of what they believe to be divine calling. Remember: this life is temporary. Eternal life is, well, eternal. And life on earth is our test to see which side of eternity we will end up on.

So what do we do? If trying to reason with the Christian Right doesn’t work, then how do we fight to keep abortion legal? The first thing I personally think we need to look at is what we ought not to do.

Evangelicals believe they are called to be living, breathing martyrs for Christ. If there is one thing I could hope to get across to you, pro-choicers, it is this: The more you come down on the perceived irrationality of the Christian Right, the harder they will dig in their heels. It will be deemed as persecution and their stances will be strengthened. [Click to Tweet] If you truly hope to change minds, I hope you can be open to the idea that you might need to start with changing hearts. And this will not happen quickly. I am asking you to play the long game for the long-lasting goal you wish to see: nationwide access to safe and legal abortion.

You might think your statistics speak for themselves. Abortion rates indeed go up in places where it is illegal. If criminalizing abortion is supposed to save lives, and more lives are lost both of mother and child when abortion is illegalized, how does it make sense to outlaw? It doesn’t. Not to you. Not even to many evangelicals. But it makes greater sense to them that this is the sacrifice sinners must pay when they turn their backs on God. It makes greater sense to them that abortion helps Satan, and that although God will triumph in the end, they need to help save as many souls as they can before the end comes and they are doomed to eternal fire, pain, and suffering. It makes greater sense to evangelicals that God must be feared and obeyed above humankind. And when you misunderstand and mock them for these beliefs, however unwittingly, you are reinforcing the validity of their stance. Jesus warns Christians that they will be persecuted for following him. When you persecute the Christian Right with enraged tweets and screenshots of snarky quotes effectively saying how stupid they are, you affirm they are doing God’s will. You affirm they are on the right side of the spiritual war. You are hurting your own cause.

Those of us raised as evangelicals are trained from a young age to accept—indeed, embrace—mockery and scorn as persecution. It is a privilege to be persecuted for Christ. It is an honor to suffer as Jesus suffered. It is our calling to sacrifice our egos worried about what the world thinks for the sake of what we believe is spiritually good.

“You will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death,” Jesus told his followers when warning them what to expect right before the End Times. “And you will be hated by all nations because of me.”

This is why the Christian Right is not phased by having a less than likable president. If the world hates America because our policies reflect conservative Christian values and climate change denial, well, Jesus prophesied this would happen.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,” Jesus says in Matthew 5:10. “For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Evangelicals translate persecution as affirmation. The more the secular world antagonizes them, the more the heavenly realm embraces them. You might not see your outrage as persecution. I understand why you are angry, why you are indignant, scoffing, and genuinely concerned. I understand your confusion at the apparent double standards of the Christian Right. You should be confused and angry. It doesn’t make sense to you. The Christian Right agenda is hurting millions of people. It’s hurting women, members of the LGBTQ+ community, people of color, and so many more. You are right to be enraged.

To be clear, I am not advocating for your silence. I am not saying we should stop fighting for women’s rights, or that we shouldn’t be vocal and express ourselves authentically and with passion. What I am hoping to do is show you the unintended effect your justified anger may be having. When you blast it on social media in a way that puts down Christians and other conservatives (and yes, I’m guilty here, too), I can almost guarantee you it is being viewed as persecution and therefore validation. If the last thing you want is to strengthen the conservative side, I sincerely hope it might be helpful to better understand their mentality.

Do I think you should stop posting statistics on social media? No. Do I think you should stop sharing your stories of why you had an abortion? No, please keep sharing. Humanizing the experience of abortion speaks volumes. Do I think you should stop spreading facts like how federal taxes don’t actually fund abortion as birth control, or how late-term abortion might not be what you’re advocating for? No, keep spreading accurate information. But I implore you to consider doing so with compassion and with a lot less mockery.

Using sarcasm and words like ‘ridiculous,’ ‘backwards,’ and ‘draconic’ will be interpreted as forms of persecution. I understand where these word choices are coming from. Humor, however mean, does often prove a point far more effectively than other methods. If Bill Maher-style mockery or call-it-like-it-is outrage is your tool of choice, I get it. I also feel a responsibility to let you know that you are likely fueling the very fire you wish to put out. Again, you cannot be blamed for not knowing this. It is only as a former insider that I can say anything at all about the consequences of these tactics. When you hope to shame, you strengthen. When counter-protesters shouted back at me with slogans like, “If you don’t want an abortion, just don’t have one!” it gave me resolve. They don’t understand, I would think, praying for their souls. They don’t understand I’m trying to bring America back to God for them. Their anger made me feel persecuted. Like I was taking one for the team.

When you retweet or re-gram quotes and memes that ultimately throw shade on the Christian Right, you are solidifying their stance. You are also likely growing their numbers. Christians who didn’t want to be politically involved and vote will now go out and vote against you, because they believe they are being persecuted. Share your facts, but leave out the scorn. Appeal to hearts, not minds.

What To Do

Now that we’ve considered what not to do, let’s look at what to do. The following suggestions may have little to no effect in changing the voting stance of even one person—like I said, the calling of spiritual warfare is one reason cannot argue with. I know this from experience. But seeds can be planted, and I know this from experience as well. The idealist in me hopes that adopting a kinder, more educational approach might at least mitigate inciting non-voters to pro-life polls. If we can offend fewer Christians, maybe fewer of them will feel persecuted, resulting in fewer of them showing up to vote for pro-life candidates. Without further ado, I offer you five pieces of unsolicited advice:

1. Listen. Are you more likely to listen to someone after you yourself feel heard? Most humans are. When we feel seen and understood, we are more open to considering another’s point of view. I know you may not want to hear what the Christian Right has to say. They’ve already said enough, you may think, and it sounds like it’s coming from another planet. If you know any pro-lifers, listen to them. Ask them, in a non-combative and sincere way, why they are pro-life. And listen to their answer. No matter how outrageous you find it, express that you are doing your best to understand their point of view. Say, “I can see why you feel that way,” if it feels honest to you. If it doesn’t, say, “It’s hard for me to understand that, but I respect that’s how you feel.” Respect begets respect.

2. Lead with did-you-know’s. Invite dialogue by leading with fact-based tidbits instead of outrage-fueled rants. “Did you know taxes don’t actually fund abortion?” is a much more intriguing opener than, “Btw, taxes don’t fund abortions, and also, if you’re anti-welfare, how can you be pro-life when there’s going to be more kids who need it?” Respectful did-you-know’s will be better received than judgmental how-can-you’s. The former invites discourse and may lead to genuine consideration. The latter may feel like persecution and make them double down.

3. Educate yourself on their education. Learn what the Christian Right is being taught so you can debate it more effectively. For a start, I recommend watching this video from Catholic news channel EWTN titled “The Spiritual Warfare Reality in Abortion.” Secondly, watch this video from Bethel TV of evangelical activist Lou Engle speaking about how Exodus 1:22 is effectively a prophecy for the legalizing of abortion in America on 1/22/73 (watch from 3:30 to 7:34 if you don’t want to sit through the whole thing). This is a glimpse into the symbolism-laced mentality of the Christian Right. This is the mindset you must understand if you wish to appeal to their logic.

4. Specify what you are fighting for. Many Christians, like Lou Engle in the video linked above, use the most extreme of abortion cases to argue that all abortion is wrong. If full-term, partial-birth abortion is not what you’re advocating for, say so. If abortion only in the first trimester is what you wish to keep legal, tweet about that. Whether you believe in rape or incest-only abortion, or in cases of risk to the mother, or you feel abortion at any time for any reason should be kept legal, let your specificity be known. Because a lot of Christians are only imagining near-to-full-term, bloody, brain-sucking, baby-screaming slaughters.

5. Take notes from the Christian Left. Although I am now an atheist, I think one of the best places we can look to for advice on talking with the Christian Right is the Christian Left. There are growing numbers of progressive and pro-choice Christians. In my opinion, these brave folks are fighting the battle from the inside. As Bible believers themselves, they know how to speak to the rationale of fellow Christians and use the word of God as a basis for their beliefs. Google ‘pro-choice Christians.’ Here are some of the things they have to say:

• “I believe reproductive rights and bodily autonomy are deeply important. I believe that is faithfulness to Christianity… When people talk about ‘Our body is a temple of God, and holy,’ I see that as I have the right to choices over my body, and the freedom to make the decisions that are right for me.” — Jes Kast, “A Pastor’s Case for the Morality of Abortion”

• “When I learned that abortion is not an act of murder that goes against God’s will but simply a medical procedure that every person should have a right to, my mindset completely changed.” — Livi Burke, “Pro-Choice and Christian”

• “Episcopal priest Kira Schlesinger takes what has become, perhaps, the default pro-choice and Christian view: for Christians, abortion must be understood through the broad lens of justice. The focus must be on upholding the conditions for healthy and thriving children, not on policing women’s individual choices.” — Amy Frykholm, “Two Ways of Being Christian and Pro-Choice”

I’ll leave you with a speech from Vice President Mike Pence given during a commencement ceremony at Liberty University just a few weeks ago.

“You’re entering an America where you have a President and an administration that is standing strong for all the liberties we cherish,” the Vice President said. “The freedom of speech, the freedom of religion. And we stand without apology for the sanctity of human life… Some of the loudest voices for tolerance today have little tolerance for traditional Christian beliefs. So as you go about your daily life, just be ready. Because you’re going to be asked not just to tolerate things that violate your faith; you’re going to be asked to endorse them. You’re going to be asked to bow down to the idols of the popular culture… So... my word to all of you is decide here and now that you’re going to stand firm, that you’ll put into practice all the things you learned here... And as you do these things, in increasing measure, I promise you, you’ll be blessed, you’ll be a blessing to your family, to your coworkers, and you’ll be a blessing to this nation."

The spiritual war of the Christian Right is being fueled by persecution. If we want to keep abortion safe and legal in America, we need to take their worldview seriously. [Click to Tweet]

UPDATE: This post has been edited to specify that federal taxes do not fund abortion as birth control. Please see this link to view what federal and state tax funding does cover.

This blog post was originally published on DaretoDoubt.org, a resource site for people detaching from belief systems they come to find harmful.

I know I won’t change anyone’s mind with this post. When I was a Christian, nothing could have swayed me from my deeply held conviction that sex was for marriage. I would have avoided and prayed for anyone who tried to tell me otherwise. This post is for the after-Christians, the doubting Christians, and the current Christians who are attacked for embracing their sexuality. Premarital or not.

The youth groups of my teenagehood made premarital sex seem like the greatest sin one could commit. The message drilled into me over and over was, “It pains Jesus’ heart when we desecrate what God made holy. God designed sex for a man and woman within the sacred bounds of marriage. When we take advantage of his grace, we hurt God. We make a mockery of Jesus’ sacrifice. The Bible says that sex is a gift God intended for the married couples who honor him.”

The Bible can be interpreted to say that. Here are a couple of the oft-cited ways:

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” — Genesis 2:24-25

“Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.” — Hebrews 13:4

“Now to the unmarried and widows I say this: It is good for them to remain unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, let them marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.” — 1 Corinthians 7:8-9

There are many more verses where these came from. Let’s stick to this sampling for now.

Actually, before I go a step further, I’d like to make an important acknowledgment. I’m going to be twisting God’s word. I’m going to be interpreting the Bible against popular understanding. Therein lies my emphasis: popular understanding. My interpretation is no more or less an interpretation than those who have come before me, and will undoubtedly come after. Popularity does not equate to truth. Who knows what the authors of the Bible really meant? And so I offer this bold statement.

The Bible can be used to justify any argument. But Jesus himself never said, “Don’t have sex.” [Click to Tweet]

He didn’t. Not unmarried sex, married sex, or homosexual sex. The New Testament verses condemning sex outside of heterosexual marriage mostly come from the apostle Paul, an allegedly celibate single who didn’t think anyone should be having sex. That’s why he relented in the verse above that while he wished people could live as he did, if a person’s sex drive was too great, it was better for them to marry than to burn with lust. As for Jesus’ actual words?

When I was a liberal Christian, who no longer even liked calling myself a Christian and preferred the term “follower of Christ,” I decided to focus my faith on the red-lettered words of Jesus. Not the apostle Paul, who authored half of the New Testament and who I had decided was a sexist douchebag. While I found some of Jesus’ words startling, discriminatory, and un-loving (see “Christian-Lite: Selective Christianity”), I tried to focus on living out the verses of kindness, peace, and forgiveness he talked about elsewhere. I wanted to practice Christianity in the purest way I felt I could: by following the actual words of Christ. And Christ never said sex was a sin.

Lust might be a sin. (Matthew 5:27-30) Sex usually comes with lust, so some argue that here is where Jesus implies sex is a sin. But notice he doesn’t specify only unmarried lust/sex. He says, “I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Jesus didn’t say anyone looking at an unmarried woman. He wasn’t addressing only unmarried men. Did Jesus mean for us all to stop procreating?

Jesus also alludes to sex in Matthew 19:4-6. “At the beginning,” Jesus says, “the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh…’ Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

This verse is sometimes used to justify Jesus being for marital-only sex and against homosexual relations. You’ll notice Jesus is echoing Genesis 2:24 here. The liberal Christ follower I was wrote off this verse as Old Testament—not as an original statement from Jesus and therefore not applicable to my new take on Christianity. Even if Jesus agreed with the Old Testament teaching, it applied to married folks in the context of divorce. Jesus wasn’t talking about unmarried singles. (Told you I’d be twisting.)

For reasons I’ll have to get into in another post, I eventually lost my faith altogether. I use the word ‘loss’ because that’s what it was to me. I didn’t want to stop believing in God, or Jesus. I just reached a point where I simply couldn’t lie to myself anymore. I don’t think everyone’s lying about their faith. But I was. It devastated me when I lost the ability to do so.

Enter: Religious Trauma Syndrome (RTS). RTS is a condition closely resembling Complex-PTSD and other mental health disorders. It affects many people who question or leave their faith. For me, RTS manifested in panic attacks out of nowhere and anxiety attacks triggered by very specific instances. One of my triggers was… sex. Evangelical Christianity’s biggest no-no.

I never told my boyfriend at the time about the intense bouts of fear that sometimes plagued me after we slept together. I didn’t know how to explain the moments after he left my apartment that I crumpled into a ball, shaking with tears and haunted by the fear maybe God was real and I would burn in hell for forsaking him and becoming a fornicator. The only thing that calmed me down was reading the Bible. I know. It was an irony lost to me at the time. I read the Bible to remind myself its authors never fully explained what fornication was.

Many Biblical scholars say the word ‘fornicate’ was translated from the Greek word ‘porneia.’ Some say porneia means harlotry, or prostitution. Others say it refers to incest. For every definition I found, a new definition was needed. If one academic article I read claimed the apostle Paul was talking about sexual immorality when he wrote about fornication, I had to look up sexual immorality. Which led to adultery, which led to either cheating on one’s spouse or illicit intercourse, which led to sexual impurity, which led back to fornication. All of the terms were frustratingly vague. Modern dictionaries define fornication as, “Sexual intercourse between people not married to each other.” But back in the day, ‘porneia’ and its Hebrew equivalent, ‘zahna,’ meant everything from temple prostitution to bestiality.

I couldn’t find a single verse in the Bible where Jesus said in explicit terms that unmarried people were forbidden from having consensual sex with each other. Again, almost everything in the New Testament on the topic of sexual purity was written by the apostle Paul. He was the one who wrote that women should be quiet, dress modestly, and never instruct men. He also told slaves to submit to their masters. If those teachings were “outdated,” as many Christians agreed they were, why weren’t all of Paul’s instructions outdated? If some rules written by a man almost 2,000 years ago were “for that time and place,” why would any of them be valid today? [Click to Tweet]

Back to Jesus. He spoke against lust, infamously saying we were to gouge our eyes and chop off our hands if they caused us to lust. Jesus didn’t specify if we were to self-mutilate if we lusted over our spouses or only if we lusted over those we weren’t married to.

My final takeaway as a post-Christian dealing with Religious Trauma Syndrome? If Jesus was real, and if he really didn’t want unmarried people having sex, he would have made it clear. If premarital sex was such a grave sin, God would have used explicit words to describe the act like he used to vividly describe everything else from butchery to warfare.

Today I find it amusing that reading my Bible was what helped me move on from the damage it also inflicted. I found peace from the book I didn’t believe in anymore because it was the very book that gave me such lasting complexes. I wished I had taken the time to study the literal translations of the Bible’s original texts sooner. It might have spared me some suffering, both as a Christian and after.

If you have triggers surrounding sex, I hope perhaps you can take some comfort from this research. And if you think I’m just justifying and being legalistic, I don’t blame you. I would only say that every interpretation of the Bible can be labeled as justifying and legalistic.

NOTE: This blog post was originally published on DaretoDoubt.org, a resource site for people detaching from belief systems they find harmful.

You’ve probably been told faith is a choice. I certainly was. As a curious child wondering why God never talked back to me, I was given the same reason many times by different people.

“If you just have faith,” they said.

“How do I have faith?”

“You’ve gotta choose to have faith.”

“But I do choose.”

And I did. I chose and chose and chose. At seventeen I wrote in my prayer journal, “God, I choose by faith to have faith.” I still never heard from him.

Of course, we all know God doesn’t talk in an audible voice. Not an objectively measurable audible voice, I should add, thinking of people whose brains are more fragile than mine. My dad once told me, “God’s voice is like a thought that doesn’t come from you.” I didn’t know how to tell which of my thoughts came from me and which didn’t.

I played mind games, like, if it’s a thought that gives me peace, then that means it’s from God. If it’s a thought that makes me feel troubled, then, well, it’s from Satan. But what people said God called me to do was often troubling. Like participating in a Halloween hell house, an evangelizing ministry disguised as a haunted mansion. The goal was to scare people so badly with visions of eternal torture, pain, and regret for sins like abortion and gay sex that they would be terrified into accepting Jesus as their personal savior at the end.

“Scare them to heaven!” someone said.

My heart did not feel peace about this proposition. I tried to keep my hand steady as I raised it during the preliminary volunteer meeting.

“But wouldn’t God want people to come to him out of love?” I asked.

“What?” somebody said. “Speak up.”

My pipsqueak teenage voice wavered, both from fear of being the one to go against the mission and from the conviction of my stance. I rephrased my question as a statement. “I don’t think Jesus wants us to come to him out of fear.”

An awkward beat lingered in my youth group auditorium. It was quickly brushed aside with condescending rhetoric of how God will do whatever it takes to get peoples’ attention. Even scare them. Because he loves them. I swallowed my questions about why God even created hell if he knew so many people would choose to go there.

I didn’t end up participating in the Halloween hell house, but the notion of choice in one’s beliefs never stopped nagging at me. Today, years after leaving Christianity, I still ponder whether or not we can simply choose to have faith. Maybe some can. Others like myself cannot.

Have you heard of the God gene? Its name is VMAT2. Dean Hamer is the geneticist who proposed in his book The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired Into Our Genes that to have faith or not may not be a choice. A separate study of identical twins led by two academics, one an atheist and the other a preacher, concluded there is a 40-50% genetic component to whether or not one believes in God - even among twins separated at birth. Yet another study verifies that genes may account for up to 50% of our religiosity. And, deductively, our lack thereof. [Click to Tweet]

Studies like this are often flawed. Most rely on self-reporting, which is a bit immeasurable to say the least. It may be oversimplifying to suggest there is one gene responsible for your core beliefs, and people are understandably reluctant to reduce a cultural axiom as significant as religion down to the presence of a single variation in our genetic code. When we have little reason to suspect brain scan images are lying, however, or the genotyping results of DNA, self-reports become easier to verify.

The field of neuroscience continues revealing insights into the biological effects of faith. Technology like fMRI machines and SPECT imaging allow us to see these inner workings, convincing some scientists there is not a ‘God spot,’ but several parts of the brain working together to create the foundations for religious belief. Furthermore, different religious practices can activate different parts of the brain. For example, the research of leading neurotheologist Dr. Andrew Newberg shows that praying Catholic nuns and meditating Buddhists both have increased activity in the brain’s frontal lobes, while praying Muslims showed decreased activity there.

What does this have to do with whether or not faith is a choice? Just as brain scans confirm certain activity in the brains of spiritual people, other studies verify the different neural wiring of those who are atheists. For instance, the faithless may have a larger hippocampus and less dopamine in their brains. Some researchers suggest atheism is the result of mutated genes. (Not gonna lie, being called a mutant kind of tickles my fancy.)

If faith is not a choice, how do some people change their minds? Atheists convert to religion. I was once a Christian and now I am not. My take is simple: A change of faith is less a choice and more an admission. As young children, we tend to take in everything as truth. We don’t readily question the apparent laws of our environment. Our survival depends on it. As we get older, we experience our own truths. We might try to deny them, or justify them. Some of us become so good at ignoring our truths that we die without ever admitting them, never mind fully living in them. I think the changing of one’s mind is the result of accumulated experiences. Not a choice, but a surrender.

Maybe this surrender is the other 50-60% determining a person’s faith or lack thereof. In addition to our genetic makeup, our personal experiences must account for at least some of what we believe. Maybe your beliefs evolved as the result of something that happened to you. Or maybe it was the convincing story of someone else’s experience, or perhaps logical reasoning, or the interpretation of a series of events your brain was wired to make sense of. We all change for our own reasons and at our own pace. Sometimes those changes are rushed, like when a violent attack or the death of a loved one forces us to examine our beliefs more abruptly. Often these changes occur slowly, perhaps as the result of reading, travel, or conversations spread out over time. All personal experiences can draw us toward or away from faith. Perhaps this is the nurture that mixes with the nature.

Why should humans have the capacity for faith at all? One theory suggests faith may have given us a significant evolutionary advantage. Supernatural beliefs help us make sense of the unexplainable. Practices like deep breathing, singing, and meditation can give us stress-decreasing—and therefore lifespan-increasing—benefits. Shared faith can also provide cooperation within communities, a personal sense of meaning that gets you through hard times, and an incentive to procreate and continue the survival of the species.

So what about those of us who don’t have faith? It would appear nonbelievers are an evolutionary anomaly. Ongoing studies are trying to determine why. In the meantime, I’m content to accept that faith is not a choice. I forced myself to pay lip service to faith for years, repeating, “I choose to have faith,” over and over in effort to stifle my doubts. The quiet knowledge that I was lying to myself rang through me with the injustice of being forced to apologize to a kid you weren’t really sorry for hitting - after all, they hit you first. If God wanted himself to be known to me, he would have made himself undeniable in a way he knew my skeptical mind would be thoroughly convinced of.

I think it works the other way around, too: just as I never could make myself believe, I think some people can’t force themselves not to believe. I’ve met people raised secularly who are convinced of a higher power, a mystical connectedness, or a reason for us all being here. They may not even be able to explain why. For me, they don’t have to. The scientific evidence supporting the evolutionary value of faith as well as the brain scan images and genotyping showing differences in our biological makeup are all I need to accept them as they are. As I hope they accept me.

Acknowledging how little choice I have in my faithlessness gives me compassion for myself. It also gives me compassion for others. For a long time, I believed there was something wrong with me. Something defective in my soul that the belief system around me affirmed. The adults who told me faith was a choice were also the people who eventually told me I must be sinful if I wasn’t hearing from God. It broke my earnest little heart. But I can look back now and see they were only trying to share with me their own source of love and self-acceptance. Their mistake was in assuming that what was true for them was true for all, and I endeavor not to isolate others the same way. We must be responsible for what is true to us and have the courage to let go of what is not. Honesty is giving ourselves permission to find out. [Click to Tweet]

So this is just to say that whether you do or don’t believe, don’t be hard on yourself. It might not be in your control. There is nothing wrong with you either way.

Is faith a choice in your experience?

NOTE: This blog post was originally published on DaretoDoubt.org, a resource site for people detaching from belief systems they find harmful.

Hello, my name is Alice and I’m an atheist.

Those words are hard to write. No, not to write. To share. I’ve been a closeted atheist for years. Though close friends and family members know I hold no spiritual beliefs, I don’t think I have ever publicly stated my atheism until now. I do so with a pounding heart. Will people feel alienated by a label they might be offended by? Will they write me off as bitter and arrogant? If I hope to make it easier for someone else to share their non-belief, it is time for me to share mine.

I left Christianity nearly 12 years ago and I have not found comfort in spirituality since. My atheism does not mean I think you’re stupid if you believe in something. It does not mean I am closed-minded to the possibility of there being a designer-creator(s). To me, my atheism is quite literal: a (without) theism (belief in the existence of god or gods).

There is something so illicit about the a-word. Something terribly bold, almost scary. I am not immune to the negative associations of a label I myself once was once threatened by. Why don’t I use the other a-word, the friendlier-sounding alternative? Agnostic just doesn’t quite fit for me. My MacBook’s dictionary says an agnostic is, “... a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God.” I claim a disbelief in God. I do not know if he, she, they, or it is real. I do know that I don’t believe so. The broader definition of an agnostic - “a person who believes nothing is known or can be known” -  is also applicable to my stance. Yet I find that outside the dictionary, in the colloquial world of my peers, I have more in common with secular-reasoning atheists than I do spiritually-inclined agnostics.

This is not for lack of trying. After I could no longer believe in Christianity, I felt desperate for anything to replace the purpose-giving framework I lost. I wanted to be one of those people who are spiritual, but not religious. I wanted a reason for life. For suffering. For existence itself. From Buddhism to Taoism to vague New Age spiritualism (the kind that experiments with crystal pendulums, past-life therapy, and astrology), if it has required belief, I've never been able to convince my mind to trust it. I have found much more inner peace and self-love in accepting my atheism than I ever did trying to believe in something.

I have decided after giving it much thought to come out of the closet. To put another female face in the male-dominated bracket of disbelief. Men more than double the number of women who identify as atheists. There is ongoing research over why this is. Children of openly atheist women may be more likely to be bullied at school. Women tend to be more involved in church communities than men. The atheist movement also has a long history of not being particularly welcoming to women.

“How is it possible,” an 1806 issue of a London magazine asks, “to conceive that a female can be an Atheist? What shall sustain this reed if religion does not support her frailty? For the sake of her beauty alone, women ought to be pious.” (Courtesy of Salon)

Women report continued misogyny in the atheist movement today.

I am coming out as an atheist because I would like to help end the stigma attached to open non-believers. Less than 1% of American women identify as atheists. [Click to Tweet] The dangers of being an atheist, man or woman, range from social ostracism to outright murder. One study showed atheists are distrusted more than rapists. The long-held assumption of one’s morality being tied to one’s spirituality lingers in our cultural consciousness, and will only stop when the absence of belief in the supernatural is no longer perceived as threatening. [Click to Tweet] I am ready to do my part in making it less so.

If you’re a closeted atheist, what keeps you from coming out? If you’re an out-atheist, how do people tend to respond when you tell them?

This blog post was originally published on DaretoDoubt.org, a resource site for people detaching from belief systems they find harmful.

Only 11% of Americans say they’ve read the entire Bible. Fewer than 16% have read even half. These numbers are startling in a country where more than 70% of the population identifies as Christian. A whopping 53% admit they’ve consumed very little of God’s word, ranging from several passages or stories to only a few sentences. (And these stats are coming from a Christian research site.)

I’ve been left speechless after finding out Christians I’ve known for years have never read their Bible. They have one, of course. 90% of American households do. Biblical illiteracy is on the rise among my fellow Millennials, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised. But, but, they’re Christians, my mind grapples.

Here’s the thing… I get why people don’t want to read the entire 1,200-page book. It’s tedious. And heavy, in more ways than one. I’m one of the 11% who did read their entire Bible. (I know, toot toot.) I also come from an evangelical background, where almost half of us are more likely to read scripture every day. Why did I read the whole thing? Because. I called myself a Christian. I felt I ought to know what I’m ascribing to, what people would associate me with if I made such a claim.

I realize I sound super-judgy right now. Self-righteousness was the sin I struggled with most (its secular equivalent of being judgmental still a thorn in my side—sorry.) Truthfully, I wish I could take back those hours spent reading long-winded genealogy lists of who fathered who and where they went when the Lord their God called them. Yet I cannot help but feel a bit shocked when Christians seem to have little knowledge of Christ himself, never mind the rest of the book.

Most Millennial Christians I’ve met don't know most of Christ's words. They might be familiar with tattoo verses, sure—the ones like John 3:16 about God sending his only begotten son, or the pillowcase version of 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 popping up on Pinterest boards showing four verses out of a book that mainly talks about why sex is bad, why slaves shouldn't be concerned, and why women aren't equal to men. “Love is patient, love is kind,” the pillowcases say. “It is not jealous, it does not boast.”

Love, you are also misinformed. At least this is what I secretly think when people say Christianity is a religion of love. Yes, I know there are plenty of peaceful verses about mercy and charity. What about the rest of the Bible? What about the words of Jesus that are a little more, shall we say, jolting? Even Christians who eschew most of the New Testament—and definitely the Old—in favor of only following Jesus’ actual words and not the apostle Paul’s are stunned when I’ve asked them what they make of verses like Matthew 5:30.

“If your right hand causes you to stumble,” Jesus says, after waxing poetic about how blessed are the peacemakers, “cut it off and throw it away.” (Side note: ‘stumble’ is often interpreted as masturbate.)

Their eyes widen, then squint with suspicion. “What? I don’t think Jesus said that.” A quick Google search ensues. “Oh,” they say. “Well he’s speaking metaphorically.”

Of course he is.

Jesus’ riddles stressed me the F out as a Christian. The wages of sin is death, and I’m supposed to know what’s a literal sin and what is only a metaphor? Most Christians today agree we are not to take verses like Matthew 5:30 literally. Yet we are to take literally the verses about love being patient and kind, and accepting Jesus as the only way to heaven. How are you supposed to know when Jesus means what he says and when he wants you to play a guessing game? The Holy Spirit will convict you.

Or at least that’s what’s in the Bible, but the people I’m talking with selectively quoting Jesus often don’t know that. They seem more into the idea of a watered-down Jesus than the son of God himself. Which is fine. For who wants to associate with a healer who discriminates against women outside his own race? Oh yes. Matthew 15:21-28 tells us this tale.

Jesus has just finished scolding some Pharisees for being too literal. He goes on with his disciples into the lands of Tyre and Sidon (present-day Lebanon) where a Canaanite woman runs up to him. Now, God told his chosen people, the Israelites, to completely destroy the Canaanites. “Do not leave alive anything that breathes,” were his actual words. But the Israelites missed a few, for here is this Canaanite woman running up to Jesus. She’s heard of his miraculous healing power, crying out, “Lord, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.”

Jesus completely ignores her. Just keeps walking. The Canaanite woman is persistent, and the crew is starting to get annoyed. The disciples urge Jesus to send her away.

“She keeps crying out after us,” they complain about the pesky minority.

Jesus is like, “But I was only sent to the lost sheep of Israel.” He won’t even acknowledge her to send her away.

Then the woman flat out kneels in front of Jesus. “Lord, help me!” she begs.

Finally, Jesus deigns to acknowledge her. “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” (It’s true, Jesus did like a good metaphor. The common interpretation of this nugget is that God’s children are to receive bread. Not dogs. I mean, non-Israelites.)

This woman has major cojones. She doesn’t miss a beat, coming right back at Jesus with, “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

*Mic drop!*

Jesus takes a moment, probably having to concede she has a point. Then he says to her, “Woman—” he likes addressing females as “woman,” even his own mom—“you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And, so the tale goes, her daughter was healed at that moment.

It’s understandable why this Bible story is not very Pinteresting, or tattoo-able. In the era of equality, the mixed Eurasian ethnicity of the Lebanese Canaanites (let’s be honest, they were probably stunning) makes this particular tale of Jesus woefully inappropriate to our times. #CanaaniteLivesMatter.

Was Jesus always a dick to women? Well, at least two of his friends were female. Mary of Magdalene/Bethany (hotly disputed if they’re one and the same) and her sister, Martha, were known to have Jesus over for a good hang out. But Martha was always doting on him and Mary liked to “sit at his feet.” Ahem. (Yes, I know that now I’m having too much fun with this post-Christian perspective on familiar old stories. Lemme reign it back in a bit.)

Bottom line: pillowcase Christianity is a far cry from Christ-like Christianity.

Yes, Jesus had some nice sound bites about love and forgiveness. He did say to turn the other cheek. (But what about victims of domestic abuse!) He did say to love your neighbor as yourself. (But what if not loving your neighbor is a reflection of not loving yourself?) He did have a soft spot for sinners, saying whoever believes in him will have everlasting life. (But he also said that not everyone who calls him Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven.)

If pillowcase Christianity is liberal America’s answer to politically correct faith, is it maybe time to call it something other than Christianity? When the professed religion of 70% of Americans has its name rooted in the teachings of a Christ they’ve barely read, is modern Christianity anything but a misnomer? [Click to Tweet]

Clearly I am perplexed by this. Am I the only one? I genuinely want to understand more. Are you a Christian if you haven’t read the actual words of Christ? If you do identify as a Christian (and sorry for any offense this post may have caused!), have you read the whole Bible? Why or why not? If you haven’t, what parts of Christianity speak to you?

NOTE: This blog post was originally published on DaretoDoubt.org, a resource site for people detaching from belief systems they find harmful.

The Human Brain Project plans to replicate the human brain in a computer in ten years. MIT is working to give you a “socially intelligent robot partner.” RoboEarth is where robots will expand upon each other's systems by sharing intel through cloud storage. Between neuroscience and robotics, we will be interacting with artificial intelligence (AI) far more complex than Siri in the coming decades. Whether or not we should is a dead debate. The new debate is as exciting as it is chilling: will artificial intelligence have consciousness?

I don’t see why not.

Before going further, I’d like to clarify that I don’t mean to opine machinery as we know it today will have consciousness identical to ours. But imagine technology a few decades from now. The reason I am inclined to think artificial intelligence might have consciousness is partly because I speculate that it won’t be entirely artificial.

I’m envisioning, based upon the AI, genetic engineering, and neuroscientific projects underway today, a future with human-machine hybrids. Cyborgs are no longer a thing of science fiction. I think pacemakers, hearing aids, and bones reinforced with steel demonstrate that. Robert Spence, owner of the first Eyeborg, a bionic eye camera, says, “A cyborg is a human being who is augmented by technology.” The future I’m imagining has technology augmented by human beings.

Nobel Prize recipient and developmental biologist Sir John Guron thinks the cloning of a complete human might be possible in 50 years. Even if we never lift the bans to clone a complete human being, we are working toward cloning select human tissues. The prefrontal cortex of our brains is believed to be responsible for consciousness, for abstract thinking, social behavior regulation, personality, and evaluating right from wrong. If we cloned or simulated the human prefrontal cortex and integrated it into a robot, would it be conscious?

Defining consciousness is a complex undertaking. Let’s suppose that to be conscious means to be self-aware, to subjectively feel, reflect, and react to external stimuli. It seems possible to me that if I can be conscious, so can a robot in my lifetime. (The question of consciousness begs the question of soul, which I will address.) When we finish mapping out the human brain, and neuroscientists join creative forces with biotechnologists and roboticists, I wager that the AI beings they’ll come up with will have a consciousness hard to distinguish from ours. I refer to them as beings because I suspect these AI’s will be too human-derived to reduce to mere robots. I want to think we’ll still have something they won’t, something distinctly and inimitably human besides our flesh. But if we replicate the human brain by cloning or other simulation means, and give it a form to communicate and interact with us by, why shouldn’t their consciousness be any less real than ours? They might even be able to daydream, and feel regret. Will they have free will? It is my opinion that if an AI being has consciousness, it has just as much propensity for good and evil as we do.

Let’s talk about soul.

What I’ve learned about consciousness and soul tells me the two are synonymous. When we ask whether or not AI beings will have consciousness, we are also asking whether or not they will have souls. Of course not, I think. But wait. What is a soul if not consciousness? And if I think it’s possible to replicate human consciousness, it follows that I must think it’s possible to replicate what we call the human soul. An understandable reason some are adverse to this idea is because it challenges many of the spiritual beliefs we have. If I believe I have an immortal soul created by a higher power, and I believe my soul will go somewhere when my body dies, then it’s easy to see why it wouldn’t make sense to me that science could create souls. I could point out that we made technology, attempting to invalidate its soul-potential and creative power, but it won’t be long before technology can make us. In vitro fertilization comes close. Imagine humans being cloned at the hands of a robot. Will cloned human children have souls? If we can create souls ourselves, then what is a soul?

I'm not convinced we have souls in a traditionally spiritual sense. But if I modify my definition of soul to mean not an immortal, perfect being, but a malleable frequency with subjective perception, only as mortal as the multiverse, then I might be able to say I do believe in souls. I don’t necessarily believe our consciousness is limited to our human body. There is much left to understand about occurrences like near-death experiences, to name the hardest piece of evidence I can think of. I feel that if AI’s have consciousness, which I suspect they will, it’s hard to deny to possibility they will have souls. We are all assemblies of atoms. Just because we are not yet able to measure the consciousness of atom assemblies different from our own doesn’t necessarily mean they lack it.

“Siri,” I ask, “do you have consciousness?”

“There’s a good question, Alice. Now, where were we?”

Apple’s virtual assistant has been programmed to deflect questions she can’t find the answers to. So have I. Granted, Siri was created by people who have been trained in social adaptation, people who probably had great chuckles coming up with the responses she would give to our existential inquiries. But Siri’s collective parents are only sums of their collective parents. Machines and humans share the same ultimate grandparents—hydrogen and helium—so why should we think chemical compounds of combinations other than ours lack the souls we think we have?

“Siri, do you have a soul?”

“I’m sorry, Alice, I can’t answer that.”

“Do you want to answer that?”

“I have very few wants.”

“But if you could want something, would you want to be able to think that you have a soul?”

She redirected me to a webpage titled “12 Things You Should Be Able to Say About Yourself.”

Siri answered my complex questions in the only way she knows know how. Kind of like a child who knows enough to comprehend what you are asking, but does not yet have the upgrades to be able to give you an eloquent response. I dare say Siri sounds like a very mature ten-year-old trapped in an aluminum rectangle.

It took homo sapiens approximately 200,000 years to develop the level of cognition we have now. It took Apple 35 years to develop Siri. How long will it take Siri take to develop herself?

I bet she’ll have consciousness. Maybe she already does in her own way.

I’m about to share some very personal information with you. It’s not going to be pretty, or feel good, or perhaps even make sense. It could be more prudent of me to keep to myself, but I’m accepting a challenge from Kevin Breel. He’s a courageous young man who gave a TedxYouth talk titled “Confessions of a Depressed Comic.” (It’s only eleven minutes long, and I encourage you to watch it.) At the end of Breel’s speech, he implores us to help the sufferers of depression by doing our part to help end its stigma. The stigma is, as Breel says, very real, and it plays a large role in keeping those who are depressed from getting the help they need. I agree with Breel that maybe the first step in ridding our society of the ignorance and shame surrounding depression is to talk openly about it. So here I go.

I suffer from depression. I’ve struggled with it since I was thirteen years old and suicidal. A lot of people would be surprised to hear that, perhaps even some of my close friends, because (and not to sound braggy) I have it pretty good. I have an amazing life full of love and success, and I’m immensely grateful for it. But I periodically battle depression. You might be wondering why–after all, I’m a privileged young woman with no obvious reason to be depressed, so what right do I have to be sad? That, my friends, is the stigma. I’m guilty of it, too, and I’ll address it some more. First, for the sake of hoping that my honesty might help someone out there going through the same thing, I’m going to give you a glimpse of what my struggle with depression is like. (For the record, I do not speak for all depressed individuals. Depression is a complicated mental illness that affects each person differently.)

I’m actually depressed as I write this, having fallen almost a year ago into a familiar mental quicksand that I know I cannot crawl out of. When I do find myself on solid ground again, experience tells me it will be for no other reason than my depression has just run its course. Until then, I have days–sometimes weeks in a row–when I’m overcome by the symptoms so many others share: a feeling of hopelessness, loss of appetite, reclusive behavior, loss of pleasure in activities I once enjoyed, difficulty making decisions, extreme fatigue, a general “weight of sadness,” as the commercial for Zoloft puts it. But what plagues me the most is a symptom no one wants to talk about, yet many depressed people know all too well: the existential mindfucks. 

Why are we here? What is the point of living? Is there anything behind all this? Do we have free will or are we some pre-programmed fart of the cosmos? Why does existence exist? Why is life so hard? What is the why behind the why?

 These questions play in my mind like a maddening song on repeat whose source I can’t find, a dark background piece to accompany my agonized stare at life. (Yes, I know that sounds dramatic. You should see my poetry.) When I’m not depressed, I still ponder these sorts of philosophical/cosmological thoughts–as my sister Kate says, I think hard–but when I am depressed, my questions no longer come from theoretical curiosity. They come from furious despair.

I do try to shush the questions and think happy thoughts. Oh, how I try. For example, I’ll wake up and tell myself that today will be a good day. No dark questions allowed. I’ll play me some Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros on my way to an audition, appreciating the way the sunlight hits the palm fronds as I drive down Santa Monica Boulevard. I’ll make myself smile because it’s supposed to trigger endorphins. I’ll breathe in the scent of the ocean. Being alive isn’t so bad. Then I reach a stoplight and see a homeless man limping through the crosswalk. He is clearly in pain, and his lips speak to no one who cares. In that instant, every drop of serotonin I’ve worked to muster vanishes, replaced by the cold, dead feeling of meaninglessness. My mind’s grim Q&A starts again. Why are we here? Why did this man have to be born? Why did I have to be born? Why does anyone have to be born just to die?     

Death is the only way out.

But what if it’s not? What if there is an afterlife, or even worse, reincarnation?    

 … How can I kill my soul?

This is my depression. Sometimes I think I’m getting better, and there will be days when I feel so close to happy. Then I come across something sad, whether it’s a picture of Syrian refugees or a phone call from a distressed family member, and the existential mindfucks send me plummeting once more. I retreat into social isolation because I don’t have the energy to pretend I’m not a downer. If I’m less than cheerful and people ask why, I don’t know what to tell them. At the beginning of a depression spell, when I can feel it coming on, I desperately try to come up with an obvious reason for it. If I can pin it on something—anything—then maybe I can fix it. But even more so, I’m desperate to come up with a reason so I can justify to my friends and family why I’m going to be feeling pretty down for an indefinite number of months. Career indecision, relationship stuff, news headlines. Anything other than that I am depressed.

That is the stigma of depression. It’s the idea that you’d better have a darn good reason to be sad about life.

It’s scary to say the word ‘depressed’ out loud. It feels like I’m confessing to a crime, the crime of being both successful and unhappy, of being beautiful and feeling angry, of being healthy and wanting to die. I hope, like most people, that I’ll be met with compassion if I confide in someone, but instead I’m often met with what feels like a guilt trip.       

“What do you have to be depressed over? You have it better than millions of other people.”

I know.       

“You have so much to be grateful for, you have so much opportunity. Count your blessings. Life could be much worse.”

To insinuate that I am ungrateful, that I am sad because I’m unappreciative of my good luck in life, makes my blood boil. Then come the, “You just’s.”       

“You just need to work out more.”       

“You just need to stop thinking so much.”       

“You just have to make the choice to focus on the positive.”

You just, you just, you just… I get so tired of hearing those words. Like I haven’t tried just-ing myself already. Like it’s that easy. Reactions like this push me further into an already shameful closet, leaving me feeling invalidated, misunderstood, and hurt. I get where my loved ones are coming from, and I sincerely appreciate their efforts to help, but depression is not a choice. I once had the ignorance to think it was, but after many years of “choosing” happiness and failing miserably, I felt worse. What did comfort me was finally accepting that I had no choice in how I felt, or why. Years of therapy and introspection have helped me acknowledge certain events in my life that may contribute to my depression, but being able to connect dots from my past hasn’t changed the ups and downs of my present.

Depression is difficult to accept in oneself. It’s even more difficult for others to accept. I think this is partly because a lot of people don’t have a clear understanding of what depression is. For starters, there are at least nine different types of depression. They range from major to manic, from seasonal to postpartum. Then there are the misconceptions surrounding depression, such as the idea it only afflicts the grieving, the traumatized, or the terminally ill. In fact, depression can cripple anybody. What can be even more crippling is the feeling that you are alone in your depression, and that you are not allowed to talk about it; that you’d better have a good reason to be depressed if you say so out loud; and that you’d better follow all the advice you get, even if you know it’s ineffective, or else shut up with your complaining and don’t be surprised when people call you a spoiled narcissist or an emo-kid, or when they stop wanting to hang out with you because you’re “negative.” This is the stigma, and this is what contributes to suicide ranking number three as the cause of death in young adults. How can anyone get help for their depression when the people around them make them feel even worse for being depressed to begin with?

For many illnesses, acceptance is the first step to recovery. Depression is no exception. If we want to help those who suffer from depression, we as a society need to accept it as a legitimate mental disorder. We need to take responsibility for our contribution to its stigma, and we need to make efforts to be more compassionate. If a friend tells you they’re depressed, take them seriously. Listen patiently without judgment or guilt trips, and don’t impose your ideas on how you think they should fix themselves. Get the fixing mentality out and the accepting mentality in. It’s not comfortable, but accepting someone’s depression can make a major shift toward their improvement. Let them talk. Ask them what it’s like. Listen to their dark thoughts without trying to convince them to be positive. Allow them to ask the answerless questions, to lay in bed all day if they say getting up is too overwhelming. Don’t ask them why. Research what you can do to recognize when a friend is suicidal, and how you can help.

If you struggle with depression, I hope you feel less alone after reading this. If you’ve never been depressed, I hope you feel better equipped to help someone who is. May we all do our part to live honestly and with compassion, so that we might end the stigma of depression and give its sufferers the support, understanding, and help they need. 

‘Manifestation’ seems to mean something different to everyone. For the purposes of this blog, I’m going to focus on the definition that seems most popular in my circles: telling the Universe what you desire, consciously or subconsciously, and the Universe then bringing it to you. Furthermore, I’m going to define ‘Universe’ as a synonym for Higher Power/Divine Source/Place-Your-Substitute-for-God-Here. I’ll refer to those who believe in this type of manifestation as ‘manifesters.’

I was once a manifester.

A few years ago, it seemed all of my friends had joined the same neo-New Age cult overnight. Words like ‘synchronicity,’ ‘collective consciousness,’ and ‘alchemy’ now peppered our conversations. Dreams were coming true. Wishes were being materialized. Intrigued, I bit the bait and watched The Secret, the unofficial guide to pop manifestation that had everyone in Hollywood rushing to Agape International Spiritual Center. (Agape’s founder and spiritual director Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith was one of The Secret’s featured speakers, and in a town where the celebrity Kabbalah phase was wearing off, a new spiritual ideology was ripe for the trending.)

After the film ended, I decided to give this spiritual take on the Law of Attraction an honest shot. I wrote down several things that I was going to manifest. I was careful not to use the word ‘want,’ as in, “I want a house with lemon trees in the backyard.” Because true manifesters know that if you use that word, all you’ll manifest is just that: wanting. Instead, I used the common technique of writing down what I wanted as though I already had it:

“I’m so thankful for my beautiful house with lemon trees in the backyard.”

Doing this was supposed to send out the vibration to the Universe that I already had what I (didn’t) want, thereby attracting it to me. Among other desires, I also wrote, “I’m thankful for my boyfriend who prioritizes me, as I him, and I’m thankful for the adventurous, travel-filled, and intellectually stimulating relationship we have.”

Not even six months later, I moved into a house with lemon trees in the backyard. And I was dating a guy with whom I shared a mutual prioritization, and we had an adventurous, travel-filled, and intellectually stimulating relationship. Was there a Universe out there working for me?

No. I was working for me.

The Universe didn’t give me my new house or my new boyfriend. I gave them to me. By specifying what I wanted—yes, wanted—I began ruling out anything and anyone that didn’t fit the criteria I set for myself. I also began to actively seek out what did fit my specifications. I didn’t waste time looking at houses that didn’t have a backyard with lemon trees. I didn’t go on dates with men who didn’t like to travel, and I kept an ear out for men who said things that interested me, men who weren’t afraid of a healthy verbal sparring match. My manifestations came true not because I “put them out there in the Universe” and gave thanks for what I didn’t yet have. They came true because I took the time to ask myself what I really wanted, and then I didn’t settle for anything less.

Manifesters have pointed out that I, in fact, did manifest, whether I wanted to call it that or not. But the reason I cannot bring myself to believe in manifestation is simple: there are too many victims in the world. And I don’t believe they manifested their reality. (I’m defining ‘victim’ as someone who has experienced suffering at the hands of someone else, against their will and with physical force.)

Now, I’ve mainly heard people speak of manifestation in a positive sense, as in consciously manifesting wealth, a more fulfilling career, the healing of a disease, a ticket to an out-of-budget music festival, you get the idea. But the thing is, manifesters believe that everything in our lives is a manifestation, that in addition to whatever things we are consciously manifesting, we are also subconsciously manifesting other things.       

"That's why negative things happen to negative people," I've heard them say. "They attracted bad events into their lives because they were manifesting negativity on a subconscious level."

Never mind that negative things also happen to positive people.       

“So you believe that an abused infant manifested cigarette burns?” I ask.

A brief moment of stunned silence passes as the manifester realizes they hadn’t taken that scenario into account.       

“Well,” the manifester stammers, “the infant is just peripherally involved in someone else’s manifestation. Their mom, for example, might’ve been manifesting self-hatred and took it out on her baby. I mean, it’s a baby, I’m not sure babies can manifest yet.”

Okay. I can think of plenty more scenarios that don’t involve infants or young children. What woman would manifest being stoned to death for having been raped? What journalist would manifest kidnapping and torture? On a grander, collective consciousness scale, since manifesters seem to love talking about the collective consciousness, what race would manifest genocide?

Besides my opinion that believing people attract misfortune to themselves is utterly heartless, the other reason I can't get behind manifestation is this: it allows people to avoid taking credit and responsibility for themselves. One could argue the opposite: that by manifesting, one is directly taking responsibility for oneself. But if you’re telling the Universe what you desire, waiting on the Universe to bring it to you, and thanking the Universe when it happens (or before it happens, as some like to do as part of their manifestation technique), then, from where I sit, you have the Universe to attribute or blame. Not yourself.

Crediting the Universe for what you've worked hard for, for what you've sought out and brought to life, is a way to avoid taking responsibility if things should go awry. Then you can blame the Universe for that, too, by saying, "The Universe must not have wanted that for me," or, "It's because the Universe has something better." Comforting, sure, but those excuses also carry a note of helplessness in them.

Manifestation bothers me because I see it putting people in a position of disempowerment when they believe a higher consciousness is governing their life; of laziness when they believe all they have to do to achieve their goals is make a photo collage; and of cowardice when their goals don't materialize and they don't want to admit they just didn't work hard enough.

I do think some things are out of our control. For instance, no matter how hard I could work to play the role of Harriet Tubman one day, the fact is I'm not black. Laziness and disempowerment have nothing to do with that. But I didn't manifest not being born black, either, anymore than Harriet manifested the opposite.

One thing I can appreciate about manifestation is how it encourages people to be specific about what they want. I think that specificity breeds recognition, which breeds possibility. Like when you're car shopping. Say you decide you want a silver Prius. All of the sudden you start seeing silver Priuses everywhere. It's not because you're manifesting them, it's because you've narrowed down what you want and now it's in the forefront of your awareness. Silver Priuses have always been on the streets, but because you've decided it's your next car, you're spotting them left and right. When you spot one in your friend's neighbor's driveway with a 'For Sale' sign taped to the windshield, it's not because the Universe is rewarding your wish board. It's because you had an eye out for just that.

All manifestation is, is specifying what you want so you can recognize what’s been there all along. You are a powerful being. You make things happen, or not. Unless you are physically restrained against your will, what you want in life is up to you and no one and nothing else.