In Polite Company

My office, including the typing table I used as a kid, repurposed as a movable desk for podcast interviews. The word most often applied to me as a kid was “shy.” Teachers thought I was shy. Heck, my graduate school adviser, mistaking my vocal disorder for nerves, called me “shy.” Hearing the word from the world-renowned religion scholar’s mouth, I looked down at my shoes. I thought, finally, I’d made a passing stab at “intellectual.” Oh, well.

One mystery I’ve long wondered about is the number of organizations that do such harm while branding themselves as “ministries.” Deploying a faith-based mission can, operationally, give a group extra latitude, especially when not officially attached to or sanctioned by a church or denomination that could have oversight. While other organizations might stick to industry best-practices, many so-called ministries follow a set of directives they claim are “biblical” or godly.

I am so excited to share that I will be co-hosting a LIVE conversation with Marissa Franks Burt, co-author of The Myth of Good Christian Parenting, tomorrow, Friday, August 14, at 12 pm Eastern (9 am Pacific).

If you live in Minneapolis, Washington, D.C., Cincinnati, Boston, Grand Rapids, Chicagoor will be attending Wild Goose, please get your calendar ready, because I have some exciting events to announce. At these events, I will also be in conversation with a truly extraordinary group of fellow writers and thinkers. It has been a long few months of promoting a book that people cannot yet read.

I suspect Joel Webbon is jealous. The Douglas Wilson acolyte used to get plenty of rage clicks for straight-faced suggestions that women’s right to vote should be repealed. And now Doug Wilson is somehow charming his way (with the promise of even more rage clicks) into a bevy of mainstream interview chairs, infuriating and dismaying normal Americans with his anti-suffrage stance.

It’s an increasingly common phenomenon: children of evangelical parents going no-contact as adults. Having been raised in high-control churches, with ample shame around sexuality in general (and damnation of LGBTQ identities in particular), they are also exhausted by their parents’ Right-wing politics. Growing numbers of adults raised in such environments find the key to their mental health is completely severing ties with the people who raised them.

I was 18 years old, sprawled on my dorm room floor one Saturday night, praying. My roommate and most of the building were out at weekend parties. I had a candle lit—one against dorm rules. It is probably a measure of my desperation to set a spiritual mood, that as a consummate rule follower, I’d taken this drastic step. During my first year of college, a number of spiritual challenges collided.

Monday, CNN published an interview with Jeffrey Epstein survivor Roza Gilles, whose unredacted name was released by the Department of Justice, inside a tranche of Epstein records. As she told CNN’s MJ Lee, “It was so wrong for the government not to protect me.” Years ago, when Gilles was 18, the model from Uzbekistan was already in thousands of dollars of debt (for her visa and rent) to the modeling agency that had recruited her. Epstein hired her to be his weekend receptionist.

As a bonus for paid subscribers, I’m starting to do a monthly(ish) Ask Me Anything, and you all did not disappoint. There’s a range here—a little for everyone. 1. Don’t you worry about getting sued? (I’m guessing this was prompted by Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s recent Q&A with me on her Substack.) I suppose I did say ask me anything… 2. What is your enneagram or astrological sign? Wondering if these traits come up in your work. 3. Did any of your research for Damned If She Does hit you on a personal level?

At a recent CPAC USA event, Isabel Brown told her audience that it is high time to encourage their children to “grow up and have the courage to get married and have kids—more kids than they can afford before they think they’re ready.” At Turning Point USA’s Women’s Leadership Summit, Erika Kirk advised that her audience fall in love, get married, and “have more kids than you can afford.” It’s a line often attributed to her late husband, Charlie Kirk.