Thank You, Church
For your love, concern, and hope
For the past five or six years, I’ve often felt like I was living on an island. Being a follower of Jesus in the American South hasn’t exactly been a walk in the park during this time.
The Trump years and a global pandemic ended up destroying the trust and respect I had for my church. Years ago, our family had put down roots there. We planned on it being our home. What we thought was a moderately conservative vibe felt mostly insulated from the cultural wars found in much of white American evangelicalism. I was told on more than one occasion that I was destined to be one of the church’s leaders.
But after 2016, it was like a switch flipped. Our church lurched toward the political right-wing. The “diversity of thought” and “diversity of generations” that our leaders often held up as a trophy of unity came under attack from within. Cultural conformity became the goal. My faith was openly questioned because we weren’t conservative. An elder tried to gaslight me into believing our marriage was in trouble, then he called me an idiot and refused to talk to me ever again.
With few places to turn, I started writing privately about these experiences in an attempt to figure out why this was happening. Looking back, this preserved my sanity even though I didn’t find many of the answers I was…
