Excerpts from her substack, The Cottage August 29, 2025
I converted to evangelicalism in the 1970s as a teenager in Arizona. I chose the church; I chose to join. Evangelicalism wasn’t something forced on me or inherited. For various reasons in my young life, the choice made sense. And American evangelicalism itself was somewhat different in those days. Most of the really bad stuff was yet to come. There was ... a Jesus-y cultural post-hippie hangover with radical movements like Sojourners, Evangelicals for Social Action, and evangelical feminism. And there was an extraordinary crossover in theological worlds with liberation theology. In other words, I was under the impression that evangelicalism was a deep personal commitment to love Jesus for the sake of making the world a more just and beautiful place for all of God’s children. In many ways, the eighties confounded me. To a recent convert (and one living in California to boot), the Moral Majority didn’t make any sense. I thought that Jim Wallis was the norm and Jerry Falwell was the aberration.
In those last three decades many more have left. If you are one of them, maybe I just want you to know that you’ll be alright. More than alright, I hope. That you’ll prosper and that you will find your spiritual center and true vocation. I don’t want to save you (no more savior complexes for me!), but I’m happy to just stand at the edge of your journey as (perhaps) a guide or companion or cheerleader. Keep on, keep on. I’m glad when my words help. There’s also some sort of urgency I feel these days — to resist revenge and retribution again.
The rise of MAGA and Trump are entwined with evangelicalism. Project 2025 was deeply alarming (and has proved disastrous). When Trump won that second time, I literally wailed, “I’ve spent thirty years escaping these people and now they’ll destroy all that I’ve come to love.” And so, I find myself increasingly surrounded by a world of evangelical political desires made manifest, the worst possible of incarnations. There would be no Reformation of the evangelical movement that I witnessed go astray; instead, America itself would become captive to a Deformation of both generous faith and inclusive democracy. All that I feared evangelicalism was(and what I feared was terrible), it has turned out to be. Perhaps even worse than I feared.
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