Rededicate 250: Dan Hawk's Open Letter to Franklin Graham

Author Dan Hawk (L. Daniel Hawk, PhD) is a professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Ashland Theological Seminary, and an ordained minister of the United Methodist Church.

It is a response to this May 17, 2026 video address by Franklin Graham.

On May 24, 2026, he posted the following Open Letter to Franklin Graham:

(It appears on Facebook;  Emphasis mine.)

I write in response to your video message at the Rededicate 250 event last weekend, and specifically to your use of the Bible to reinforce Right-Wing political talking points.

You begin by declaring that the US is struggling against “sins that are weakening the foundation of our great republic.” You then support your claim by citing 2 Timothy 3:1-5a (ESV), which declares that in the last days:

“Men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power.”

You say that this passage could have been written today. I agree. This passage presents us with a truly uncanny description of the current president and many in his regime. 

Instead of commenting, however, you veer off to proclaim that the US is in a “downward moral decline, spiraling ever deeper into the mire . . . morally rotten; completely sick with sin."

And what sins are making America sick? “Transgenderism. Same-sex marriage. Opening women’s locker rooms to men.”

I’m moved to ask: By what biblical calculus do you present these as the most virulent and dangerous manifestations of moral rottenness? I can’t find a single reference to any of them in the Bible.

I can, however, cite a different moral trilogy, each of which threads through the entire Bible and is articulated by hundreds of verses:

Oppression. Arrogance. Greed.

Allow me to elaborate.

On Oppression: At Sinai, God declares that oppression of immigrants and the powerless (represented by the widow and orphan) will provoke God to bring devastating judgment on the nation (Exodus 22:12-24).

Israel’s prophets saw this happening in their times and pointed to the oppression and exploitation of the poor as a primary cause of the nation’s calamities. They even went so far as to proclaim that God wouldn’t listen to the prayers of worshipers as long as they oppressed the poor. (See, for example, Isaiah 1:10-20; Jeremiah 21:13-27; Amos 5:10-17).

It’s worth noting, by the way, that Isaiah refers to Jerusalem and its leaders as Sodom and Gomorrah, not because of sexual sin but because of their intransigent abuse of the poor.

On Arrogance: Israel’s prophets leveled this accusation at those in leadership, both in Israel and the surrounding nations, who abused their power and exalted themselves. Isaiah and Ezekiel give particularly lengthy denunciations and judgments against the Luciferian “Day Star, son of the Dawn” (14:13-20) and “the Prince of Tyre” (28:1-10), respectively.

On Greed: Once again, the prophets provide illuminating examples. Of oppressors concocting schemes to seize property they covet: (1 Kings 21:1-24; Micah 2:1-5; Jeremiah 21:13-17) and living in opulence by crushing the poor (Amos 4:1-3; 6:4-17).

Jesus castigated the Pharisees for displaying morality on the outside but being filled with greed and wickedness on the inside (Luke 11:39). And Paul pointedly equated greed with idolatry (Colossians 3:5).

This moral trilogy, and not the one you espouse, stands at the core of the Bible's ethical vision.

I also agree with your indictment of American violence. We disagree, however, on its character and causes. I invite you to take off your rose-colored Nationalist glasses and recognize how deeply the US is infatuated with violence; how violence has warped our society from our colonial beginnings; and how white America has employed violence to expand its territory, exert its power, and maintain its privilege and dominion – and how it continues to do so.

When you override biblical principles to support a wicked regime, you reveal an idolatrous loyalty to political power. When you distort the meaning of biblical passages to support vile ideologies, you disrespect and abuse Scripture. When you refuse to allow the Bible to challenge and expand your moral vision, you can be easily seduced by the allure of rival visions.

You are a prominent and avowed Bible-believing Christian. I urge you, therefore, to take the Bible seriously.

#FranklinGraham #Rededicate250 #ChristianNationalism #biblicalmorality

For those who seek to defend Graham and seek to decry Hawk, I don't believe this letter endorses or claims that the Bible endorses the sex-oriented trilogy that Graham identifies as Amercia's greatest ills.  I believe that Dr. Hawk draws attention to the most significant besetting sins that have plagued mankind, of which Israel of old and the US has also been most guilty.  President Trump's oppression, arrogance, and greed have been such a central element in blatant and obvious form in this second tour as POTUS, yet they go unmarked by Graham in favor of three of MAGA's proverbial dog whistles.  Hawk draws attention to the irony that people outside of MAGA cannot ignore, urging Graham to recheck his own perspective.  -- CMK

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Tracking My Healing Concerning Mother's Day (2026)

 My mother and I didn't get an ideal start – a story that even includes a literal miracle, but it wasn't enough to compensate for the heartache that my parents carried, long before I came around. Parents full of love fill the hearts of their children with the abundance of that love, but mine also had an abundance of shame and fear. I soon became their scapegoat, and in this very truncated, oversimplified rendition of this longer story of unrequited love, they eventually washed their hands of me. 

In 2007, when I first read Francine Shapiro's EMDR book, an early scene from her work as a therapist came to life in my mind. She described a young child who created many things as she played, then promptly destroyed each one in self-disgust, calling each “no good.” I saw myself as a tiny little girl, full of frustration and self-hatred,, trapped alive in a deep shoebox. 

I ran from corner to corner of the box for years of my life, growing from infant to toddler to school-age child. Looking up and holding up my invisible accomplishments, I saw myself reach and cry out to my parents, hoping to finally find something good enough that they would embrace with joy and the pride of parental love. All was “no good.”

When I asked myself whether I had just forgotten good moments of praise, I recalled one day as a teen when I asked my mother directly why nothing was ever good enough for her. My mother said harshly, “What? Do you want me to light a candle and have a moment of silence?”

 Later in my adulthood, as her disdain for me grew, she started rewriting the past of my wonderful accomplishments as utter failures and causes for shame. Some, she denied altogether, claiming they never existed. Still looking into that box in my mind in which I was still trapped, and still feeling like a rejected, unlovable child, I watched myself lay down in the center of it. I could no longer fight the sense of futility.

As Mother's Day in 2016 approached, experiences I had with some others stirred up those feelings of desire for love and acceptance. How I wished that someone would joyfully lift me out of that box to embrace me! I felt driven to “get the image out of my head.”   "Out of my body."  As I tried to envision what it might look like, I ended up with a foam board and digital mockup that became it's own multi-media image of what I saw that day when I read Shapiro's book. It was accepted into an art exhibit, and I included a statement about all the similar but different boxes I'd been placed in, never really getting out of that original box.  My religious experience was indistinguishable from the personal, and all of it became reinforced webbing of spiritual bypassing and blackmail.

In 2025, someone inspired by Aleksander Małachowski's photo of a Japanese cherry tree turned it into a Mother's Day meme. The grand tree and its burgeoning branches, which towered over a young girl, were identified as her mother, showering her with the blossoms of goodness that a mother bestows on her children. I wept terribly when I saw it, but I worked to come to terms with it. I sought an alternative image to replace the old one in my mind's eye. 

Aleksander Małachowski's photograph
of a Kanzan variety of Prunus serrulata (Japanese Flowering Cherry);
Mokotów District in Warsaw, Poland (just near Izumi Sushi in Biały Kamień)

Some days, I still wake up in that deep shoebox, but I understand that this is the nature of emotional healing. It is not a linear process, but it's one that walks us through parts of our painful past as life takes our healing to a new and deeper level. We are more like onions, and reckoning with our past pain in new times of healing becomes the peeling of a deeper onion layer, complete with tender, tearing eyes. I've learned to trust this as a normal, needed part of the process.

So a year ago, I decided to make my own, healthier image, more in line with the greater picture of a loving Creator. This effort didn't invalidate my original image, but I allowed the challenge of the new image to open my heart and understanding. I adapted the image by duplicating the little girl, placing her near the original girl, each in their own world – one representing my mother and one for me, for I look so much like her.

I relabelled the glorious tree in full bloom as the Love of God. And in the interim between the two, I added some pink blossoms to the original image of me in the box, acknowledging the many blessings that I could never number that my mother did share with me. I know they came at great cost to her, not only because of limited resources, but also because she had so little love for herself that there was far less to share with me.

When I created that original image in 2016, so much of the pain I always felt on Mother's Day dropped away. This year, 2026, was the first year in a decade that I felt the familiar pain again, reminded of it by so many beloved Christian friends who have distanced themselves or disavowed me because of politics. “It's not good enough!” I'm no longer good enough. I even had the idea that, though I'm still a conservative libertarian, my die-hard Democrat, born again parents might be proud of me, just once, for rejecting Donald Trump's madness. And then, I laughed. They made up their mind about me when I was in my cradle.

When I sought out the images from a year ago to draw comfort from them, asking God to change and renew my heart and mind yet again, I could feel the change of growth. I added more cherry petals to my original image. 

And because of greater self-differentiation, I realized that I am not my mother, so the duplicate image of her I had created to represent myself needed to change. I added my long, lighter hair with a white strand now tinted purple. I gave myself a pink dress, too. We're individual, wonderful creations of God; connected and joined; yet very different, separate, and separated. Both of us are abundantly blessed, overshadowed by the burgeoning, budding branches of plenty of God's providence and love.

I wonder what I will see in these images in the years to come, if I am graced to have them.

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Deal Breakers.: A response to Trump before Military Leaders on September 30, 2025

Some issues in life are so completely wrong, they become Deal-Breakers. When we learn of them and can no longer deny them, they force a hard moral decision and personal course correction. If we delay, we become just as responsible and just as guilty for the harm they cause.

These are but two of the interrelated religious deal-breakers I've experienced:

* Leaders at my "church" used allegedly "Biblical ideology" to support wife-beating ('96). 

* Christian Reconstruction's endpoint [the OG, Presby, Project 2025 strategic side of the Christian Right] ultimately demanded a religious/racial caste system and servitude – likely the most significant impetus for its ideology [which took me more than decade to process and another to accept] (''02).

Stuart Rojstaczer on Instagram

The Hegseth/Trump military meeting on September 30^th was another kind of deal-breaker, religious in the sense that it formalized the undoing of the virtues of tolerance and respect from which American inalienable rights derived. They are the Christian virtues that our Christian Founders imbued in the words of our Constitution – the Christian foundation of our nation. 

Without those virtues and inalienable rights, America ceases to be a Christian nation, thus breaking the trust that our Constitution once provided. 

Yesterday, the figurehead and Commander-in-Chief of our Christian nation formally denounced these virtues. It was the Art of Deal-Breaking, but we did collectively elect a moral deal-breaking reality TV star. 

I'm sure most of his Christian supporters cheered, believing that his change in military policy after months of disregard for the Rule of Law brought our nation closer to being a "Christian nation." 

Based on studies of behavior and the history of similar events in other nations, my heart aches because I know that 2/3rds of MAGA Christians may never fully grasp the gravity of what just happened. 

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A Different Kind of Epitaph for Voddie Baucham

I hope Voddie Baucham found whatever it was he was looking for and that his family finds comfort. A former follower-friend of his told me that he was basically a child inside who was desperately afraid of ending up alone, powerless, and desperately poor again, like he was as a child in LA. 

(Summary of posts concerning Voddie Baucham.)

I prayed often for his healing, and I usually think of him when I read quotes and content from Alice Miller, the child psychologist who opposed "the black pedagogy" of child abuse. He read like a page out of her textbook that described wounded children who grew up to become intolerant of the behavior of children or outright abusers themselves. He worked so desperately to be acknowledged, seen, powerful, and important. His wife has lupus pretty severely, and I hope that she remains as well as she can.

But at the same time, I feel like one of the biggest, meanest, most manipulative bullies of this genre is now gone. The people whom he cruelly intimidated and manipulated, lording his education and position over them in intimidation and what sometimes sounded like anger... those people can feel free today. They don't ever have to worry about running into him somewhere, and they can know that he can no longer hurt them again in any way.

Many people love him, but they don't know what it's like to be someone he decided to use, tearing them down as an example so he could feel powerful, right, and so much better than them. (he tried with me but never succeeded, thanks to the grace of God and the power of truth. How ironic that his death falls so swiftly behind Kirk's. I saw a comment in an announcement about Baucham's passing that asked, "Will they put me on a government watch list?" because they had nothing good to say about him.

He lied about me online and personally insulted me -- and then started writing to me, lying to me and about me, following that up with more lies as time went on.  He'd told at least a dozen different people that he was suing me (which was another lie).  He claimed that I lied about him, which always went poorly for him.  He published a miserable fable about me in a book that others encouraged me to sue him over. Instead, I said that he wasn't that important. Because he wasn't. However, when I read his emails, the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

I didn't get any backlash from him when I wrote about him on No Longer Quivering in 2020, choosing to acknowledge him as a fellow believer with some aberrant beliefs, and someone whose perspective and epistemology differed from mine. I called for unity through love, while still acknowledging the theological and philosophical differences between us. But I affirmed him as a fellow Believer. I don't believe he ever responded, if he ever took notice.

I will not see Voddie in Vahalla, but I hope to be happily seated with him in unity at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb one day. Soon after he "slammed" me on his blog, I went there to see if I could find the post to quote it, but he'd deleted it. He deleted all of them before it ever occurred to me that he would do such a thing. Instead, I found a sweet picture of him holding a baby, announcing that he'd just adopted a little girl. I found it commendable and rejoiced. (Other cohorts of his would only adopt boys.) I'm glad that he dared to do that back then, and that's the picture of him that I've continued to hold of him in my mind's eye. He expressed great love in that photo with a tiny baby, and I always prayed that God would multiply it. It was lovely and seemed genuine.

Our lives are but a vapor, and in that sense, I hope that I will soon see Voddie. As people tell of glimpses of heaven, loved ones come to meet new arrivals when we make our way to that undiscovered country. Should I be found faithful, I hope that Voddie is among those who gather to greet me.

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A Critical Review of Quiverfull Families, a book by Emily Hunter McGowin

Quiverfull Families: The Quiverfull Movement and Evangelical Theology of the Family offers a favorably biased assessment of the Evangelical Protestant Quiverfull Movement, including interviews with a minister apologist and two-year longitudinal interviews with three mothers who discuss their lifestyle. The now-Anglican author, a former Evangelical and graduate of Baylor's Truett Seminary, offers us her doctoral dissertation developed during her study at a Catholic university. I found the book's title misleading, as it suggests a much broader focus on families instead of its tapered focus primarily limited to the self-reported data of three subjects: mothers who exemplified the Quiverfull ideal during the study. The author's compassionate ethnographic glimpse into the lives of these courageous and transparently candid mothers shines as the most valuable element of the book.

In keeping with the adage of considering the source, I read the book from the perspective of a former Christian Reconstructionist who abandoned that position but remained an Evangelical. I spent a decade of my childbearing years as a wife in the Quiverfull Movement (QF), including four years as a church member who followed Bill Gothard's teachings. Eventually, I became a vocal critic from both Christian Counter-Cult and Thought Reform perspectives, and my presuppositional views about the nature of QF theology differ significantly from the author's own.  While I was overwhelmed with the aftermath of QF in my own life and the lives of my loved ones who suffered so much, please note that the author's introduction to and experience with the sect differed profoundly from mine.

For the reader who seeks only to understand the mindset of QF mothers in good standing, the book offers a glimpse into the concerns and beliefs of those mothers. However, the former follower who experienced emotional/psychological abuse, domestic violence, a broken marriage, estrangement from family, ostracizing within their QF community, shunning for leaving QF, expulsion, educational neglect as a child, gender abuse, spiritual abuse, or pronouncement of their eternal damnation will find the book's assessment of QF difficult. For example, I found the descriptions of “Titus 2 encouragement” problematic. Perhaps the author's limited pool of model-citizen subjects lacked the painful experience of stress created by the milieu management practice, though QF trains followers to speak of it in glowing terms only as one of its sacred systems. Underachieving members, outliers within QF, and former members know well the policing and chatter of women peers concerning their compliance and punishment by elder enforcers who demand submission. (QF adapted the well-practiced, high demand mentoring system from prior waves of Shepherding/Discipleship in spiritually abusive Evangelicalism.)

Limitations of Ethnography or the Nature of the Subject?

My criticisms of the book may concern the limitations of ethnography for this particular religious group, given its convoluted hidden curriculum and broad demographic across different denominations. I was disappointed that the author did not include the battery of questions prepared for subjects in her dissertation which prevents the reader from understanding more about the research and the veracity of its focus. While much material in the book discusses the benefits of ethnography in a theoretical sense which seemed worthy of a separate book, I found it necessary to consult many other sources to ensure that I was fairly evaluating the work rather than the research modality. As someone experienced in academic research, I found these elements to pose an unfair burden to the general reader. 

McGowin defines QF families as those who practice the intersection of three ideals: homeschooling, gender hierarchy, and pronatalism. These converging interests are not the distinctions that define the ideology as expressly QF. Evangelicals have historically and ubiquitously embraced the values of family, pronatalism (also a necessity for pioneering agrarian culture), the home education of children, the domesticity movement, along with those denominations that long pursued patriarchy. Christian Reconstruction became the catalyst that caused the much smaller subculture of QF to coalesce. I assert that the control mechanisms of manipulation and systems of control set QF followers apart from other Evangelicals as illustrated by personal testimony and decades of conflict which the book does not mention (e.g., ecclesial courts, lawsuits, exclusivism, Etc.).

The author notes her aversion to criticism of the QF belief system and thus rejects consideration of many critical assessments of QF in her disseration, qualifying different varieties of critics by assigning all to a single strawman category of misinformed people who denigrate QF adherents. (To the contrary, research from these neglected sources shows that people join high demand ideological sects like QF not because they are deficient in some way but because they are ethical, responsible, discerning and intelligent.)

While the ethnographic method may have prevented extensive exploration of critical sources, I'm disappointed that the author deems the disciplines that study high demand, spiritually abusive, or aberrant Christian organizations illegitimate, excluding their mention. The study ignores this literature from Christian counter-cult apologetics (a Protestant Christian discipline that evaluates theological orthodoxy/praxy of Bible-based religion), cult education organizations, and decades of peer-reviewed research by men like Paul Martin and Larry Pile (both of whom were former members of The Great Commission, a Bible-based sect that differed little from and shared “visionaries” with QF). References to A Matter of Basic Principles, the watershed Biblical critique of Gothard's program by Don Veinot and Ron Henzel (now in its second edition), and decades of their Midwest Christian Outreach critiques of Gothard and Vision Forum are also notably absent from the book. (If the ethnographic theological study design precluded citation of this material, a qualifying statement could have clarified that for the reader.)

Critical Engagement

I share far more common ideas about QF with the author than disparagements which she elucidates in her personal summary. She uses the term "family blueprint" to describe QF's formulaic cookie-cutter preference for uniformity. I also found the Eclipse of the Church section very astute and well-reasoned. The section noting the pitfalls of"privatization" of the family leading to isolation points out how families' most vulnerable members may become predisposed to domestic violence. I'm grateful for the inclusion of these insights, as they provide balance which does speak to the subject of families.

The author concludes by stating, “Despite their lofty goals, however, the Quiverfull movement produces an idealization of the family that leads to social isolation, the eclipse of the church, and in some caes, the cover-up of sin.” While I agree, this statement is a weak assessment, failing to do proper justice to those who have suffered devastating harm while practicing the lifestyle. While "the map is not the territory” in any such survey, I believe the reader merited a more thorough, well-defined map concerning decades of practice and belief that go unmarked in the book and one from a broader theological Evangelical perspective.

I cannot get past the author's statement near the end of the work which declares that QF's “religious practice exposes important weaknesses in evangelical theology. [ . . .] My subject position leads me to contexualize Quiverfull within evangelicalism and offer observations on its continuity and discontinuity with what I understand to be American evangelical norms.” 

Though from a different set of Evangelical roots within a smaller subset of Evangelicalism than the author, I arrive at a different conclusion. While perhaps intentionally vague because of the limitations of ethnography, I cannot determine if the author views QF as a fair exemplar or perhaps a microcosm of all Evangelicalism. I don't know whether she's aware that informed Evangelical Counter Cult apologists reject QF as a pagan belief system, even if she personally rejects them as unhelpful. Such a strong statement deserves a robustly defended thesis from a theological perspective, but the author offers what I found to be more personal generalizations about the culture to vet the statement. I wish the author had been more specific about her meaning and the rationales, though perhaps the generalizations were meant to be charitable.

May the varieties of our religious experiences concerning the Quiverfull Movement continue in ongoing discussion and through expanding research. As our One God and One Mediator saves us and brings us together into the knowledge of the truth as fellow Christians, may we all find the hope and healing we need. May we also endeavor to find that greater understanding and compassion for one another with God's help (1 Tim 2:1-7).

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On "Ghosts" and Other Undue Influences

Some Evangelical Christians talk more than others about evil influences in the spiritual realm, and different denominations believe different things about evil spirits. Some believe that people and even Christians can actually be “possessed,” while others think that demons can only create oppression and opposition that impede an individual Christian's efforts. There are many different ideas about how to resist and overcome all of that.

My husband who grew up in a liturgical church would add some balance to some of these ideas by saying that the spirit of man and human nature usually give us plenty of cause and a means of explaining most problems. We often don't need any supernatural creatures to serve as our scapegoats.

Job said that man was made for trouble.

As my clock approaches midnight on October 30^th, I found myself thinking about the many kinds of would-be ghosts we face in life. I like the following description that Henrik Ibsen offers in his 1881 play better than most ideas.  

A quote from "Ghosts":

“I am half inclined to think we are all ghosts…it is not only what we have inherited from our fathers and mothers that exists again in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs and things of that kind. 

They are not actually alive in us; but there they are dormant all the same, and we can never be rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper and read it, I fancy I see ghosts creeping between the lines. There must be ghosts all over the world. They must be as countless as the grains of the sands, it seems to me. And we are so miserably afraid of the light, all of us.”

May we find all the courage, strength, support, and hope 

that we all need  to help us step into the light.

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Always Growing

 The more things change, the more they seem to stay the same.  😊  A good life of growth always requires commitment, courage, discernment, honesty, and hard work.

From a post originally published in January of 2016:

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A Pause for Respite and Recollection

I fully intended to delve right back into writing about Bruce Ware's infamous 2008 sermon at Denton Bible Church when I returned from a short break away from home with my husband. We left for it a few hours after I put the previous post online, so very focused on the many things yet to say about it all and why it's still important. Had it not been for the little getaway, I'd likely write every day.

But a remarkable thing happened.

We drove to the Lower Florida Keys where I found a most affordable place to stay on a docked houseboat. It was beautiful there and felt very private. It was so nice to have a kitchen, but the best thing was the outdoor deck that opened up onto the water. It also looked out over a patch of many mangroves – the water inches from where we sat. Inside in the coolness of air conditoning, we could still enjoy the view through the patio doors while seated snugly on the sofa.

On the first night, my husband and I awakened in the still of the night (as we usually do and have done so for most of our 33 years together). We usually spend at least twenty minutes in the middle of most nights talking about obscure and fascinating things like the nerd-geeks that we are, and then we go back to sleep (on the good nights). We jokingly call it our liguis obscurus. Sitting out on the deck in the middle of the night, inches away from the still, watching the calm water filled us with awe, wonder, and gratitude to share such beauty. Though we didn't see any dolphins or manatees swim by, it was still amazing to think they might. 

Even with the lights from the marina and the many boats, I could still see the stars in the clear sky. Most of the world slept, and we sat and watched the stars in the sky circling over us. It always makes me think of the Genesis creation account, and I imagine that I can sense the Spirit of God hovering over the surface of the deep. Though it was still that night, the surface of the water still seemed to emanate the energy of life. I felt a new and different sense of being "kept" by God who neither slumbers nor sleeps. We were awake to witness it and drink it in.

We then stayed two nights in a nice hotel in a different town on the southern side of the Keys, looking out on a little bay-like area facing the Straights of Florida. Though there was incidental light there, too, I awakened early on our last night there and watched Jupiter rise over the eastern sky. I could hear the hum of the air conditioner while out on the beautiful balcony while the world (and my husband) slept. I regretted not bringing a scope that might have allowed me to see Jupiter's moons because it was shining so brightly with an orange glint when it first made its debut.

I watched the lights on buildings on the other side of the inlet glisten and scintillate on the water like the stars did in the inky sky. I was held. I was kept. I felt peaceful, held above the water and under the heavens, safe in God's holy presence as I enjoyed a moment of awe watching Jupiter shine so brightly as she migrated up over the horizon and across the sky on the first day of summer.

I wasn't ready to leave that place of holiness when I returned, and I haven't wanted to think about violence, deception, or cruelty. I needed time to remember that amidst it all and even in our trials, we are kept and held by God. My name is inscribed on His palm, my times are in His hands, and I am held by Him.

I've also thought lately that people like Bruce Ware and his message are passing away like all of us. I tend to fear with urgency to spare Christian women from the harm that some suffer in the gender war when I see little change. Tim Keller died only a few weeks ago. Time slips into the future -- us with it while our times rest in His hands. This present world is passing away, and a new time will come as we pass out of this life. There will be new sermons and new victories. There will be new still nights of awe and some with new terror. New arrows, different from these today, will fly by day. Yet we are kept and held and borne up as God.

I'm not yet done bathing in and exhaling after much-needed rest in peace and joy. I needed to remember so that tomorrow, I will not forget.

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Following Bruce Ware's Primrose Path to Domestic Abuse (Part III: CBMW and Bruce Ware are no different than Shiny Happy People)

We've considered when Gender Role Evangelist Bruce Ware relied on cruelty to win ideological debates. 

All's fair in Christian love and culture war these days, right? 

Some of that I understand in light of the dominating milieu that CBMW created to help them win their war. We've also considered some possible negative progressions and consequences that stem from his definition of women as the indirect image of God. 

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Following Bruce Ware's Primrose Path to Domestic Abuse (Part II: Turing Violence Against Women into God's Gender Justice )

Read Part I HERE.

Wife beating became the last straw issue that drove me out of the #ShinyHappyPeople Church (#SHPC) I'd once attended. I had no idea who Gothard was when we joined, but I knew when we left.

Over time, I would learn that the ideology demanded that:

• Wives obediently submit with a quiet and gentle spirit to any maltreatment their husbands dished out

  • The same went for sex, too. Whatever, whenever he wanted.

• All marital discord be assigned to the wife as the root cause.

• tWife beating always be considered a breach of duty or neglect on the part of the wife

• Wives "just let love cover her husband's sin against her" so that her properly yielded submission could magically convict/cure/rehabilitate her husband. (That's the wonder-working power of submission if you get it right. If you didn't get results, you weren't doing it right.)

• Husbands were never held accountable because if a wife does her job right (sex and submission and supper), the Bible (per Bill Gothard) guarantees the system to work.

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Following Bruce Ware's Primrose Path to Domestic Abuse (Part I: Ideas that fed those Shiny Happy People)

When the reporter, Peter Smith, contacted me to ask questions about my relationships with Bruce Ware and Russell Moore and my thoughts about them, I told him that I had no reason to believe that either of them had any clue about who I was. (Earlier that year, I'd earned the badge of honor through a dishonest public denouncement for criticizing their teachings in a lecture earlier in 2008.) 

He assured me that both men "knew exactly who I was," sharing deeply personal insults about me that were too derogatory for him to repeat. He was sure that one of them knew me in real life because of the nature of his comments. I assured him I'd only ever reviewed their teachings and had never met either man.

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Concerning Shiny Happy People, Two Weeks Later

I started watching the Amazon docuseries about the Duggar Family entitled Shiny Happy People two weeks ago today. 

I could not get through the second episode in one sitting, wept, and had to come bad to it the next day. I then spent the better part of the next two days bursting into tears multiple times, and I could barely function because of it. 

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Mess with the Bull and You'll Get the Horns: The Dominating Behavioral Context of CBMW

(Complementarianism) Patriarchy is about Power

On the 15^th Anniversary of my Cancelling

Thirty years ago, I joined a Quiverfull Movement church without even knowing that there was such a thing because it seemed like a regular Evangelical church. Young Evangelical women today face even more pressure to conform to Quiverfull standards than I did, and I get frustrated that people think it’s all about babies. The lifestyle undoubtedly involves children, but it focuses on ways of controlling people and circumstances. I grieve today because I’d hoped to be a better agent of more potent, meaningful change. 

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Complicated Forgiveness: Colliding with Organizations that Cancel You

On the Fifteenth Anniversary of my Cancelling

A Companion Post to Mess with the Bulls and You'll Get the Horns: The Dominating Behavioral Context of CBMW

I remember my exit counselor talking to me after a month to consider that many of the leaders in cults like the one I'd left are trapped and bound in the system more deeply than I ever was. I bristled at the suggestion at the time, but in time, it would help me get past the trauma and see my former leaders with compassion. (Read more on this much-misunderstood topic HERE.)

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Might "Social Justice" Look Like This?

I believe that God gave me the most precious and powerful gifts of kindness, life, liberty, and love.  Because they were so freely given to me, I want to share that bounty and blessing with others.  We are fallible creatures in an unfair world, and I want to comfort others with the same comfort that God showed to me through so many people, Christian and otherwise.  There is plenty of God's great love to go around for all of us.

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Another (Non-Theobro) Christian Scholar on Social Justice

When I read the new 2022 Frankfurt Declaration last week, I could not help but think back to this essay I read almost three years ago. As I noted in an earlier post, I am not a student of the areas of study that concern themselves with Critical Race Theory, so I am grateful that Kelly Hamren agreed to allow me to repost her commentary here. She was homeschooled and went on to eventually become a graduate student at Liberty University. After completing her studies, she served for eleven years in the English Department at Liberty, moving from Instructor to Assistant Professor. She later earned a PhD in Literature and Criticism from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

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The Piety of the Theobros and the Bully Pulpit of 2022 Frankfurt Declaration

A few days ago, I took notice of a new term used to describe today's Alpha Males of Calvinism:  Theobros. They're a special breed of New Calvinist who spends a lot of time on Twitter, telling women, men, and the rest of us lesser life forms that we aren't the right kind of Christian as if they are the New Gnostics. Sometimes, I feel betrayed because the late RC Sproul, Sr's work helped me profoundly on my thirty-three-year-long journey out of the cruel madness of Word of Faith. Little did I know that he was a rare example of loving grace and compassion amongst the larger group of New Calvinists (in both the media and in churches). 

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The Equivocation Problem with Social Justice that the Theobros Make Worse

Featuring Rosato's Harriet Tubman Mural

Most regular people understand the term "social justice" in terms of common vernacular in the US -- through the simple meaning of the words themselves. In society, especially in America, our government aspires to grant each citizen rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We've spent our whole history working to make those liberties equally available to all her citizens. To most people, most Christians included, "social justice" means just that. It is the aspiration to see all people in society treated fairly and justly. Unless someone's taken particular classes in college or read specific literature that offers a different definition, most people understand these simple words in only that context. 

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Answering Scot McKnight's Question: "What Made Josh Butler's TGC Article Different?"

This week, I listened to two podcasts about the controversy that ensued concerning Josh Butler's book excerpt that appeared on The Gospel Coalition (TGC) website on March 1.  A friend gave me a link to the Preventing Grace Podcast, claiming that they expressed some of the same ideas that I did, asking that people would extend mercy to the author.  While I did not find Butler's material to be that difficult in light of other teachings, I became quite triggered by the hosts' straw man mischaracterizations of Butler's critics, along with their claims that his writing was beautiful.  (Apparently, we prudish, small-minded people who cry "misogyny" at every turn only look for material to use to destroy those with a different view.)  The following day, I listened to a podcast that posed questions I'd already been thinking about because of my thoughts from the previous day.

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