How White Evangelicals Think

I’ve had another incredibly busy week, so I am short changing you again (although not really since all my content is FREE :) )—no article.

But I did have an amazing conversation with psychologist Dave Verhaagen to mark the one year birthday of my book, The Missionary Kids.1 His book, How White Evangelicals Think, was kind of the final piece of the puzzle as I thought through my book’s argument.

As I have said so many times before—Our current political crisis in America is fundamentally a religious crisis.

It is driven by the fearful, defensive posture and the authoritarian-friendly culture of white evangelicalism. White evangelicals also happen to be the political bloc that combines 1) high overall percentage of the electorate 2) reliable participation 3) immovable loyalty to a single party. No other bloc combines those three elements. And no other bloc has so stalwartly empowered Donald Trump and his movement. And I’m not talking ultra-fringy Christian nationalist elements and movements, I am talking about mainstream white evangelicalism.

So, if you want to understand where we are as a country, you MUST understand the mindset of white evangelicals. Dave’s book—and mine—help you do that. His book is one of the most insightful elucidations of the inner workings of that culture and why white evangelicals have voted they way they have. READ IT! and if you haven’t read my book, read that too!

(Despite my facial expression in the thumbnail, I was completely sober during this conversation).

The last year has been quite a journey. Books aren’t like social media posts or articles or videos or podcasts. They usually go out into the world quietly, and you as the author are mostly left wondering what the impact has been. There are hints like book sales, reviews on Amazon, and a few other metrics. But mostly you are in the dark about what the book has actually meant to the overall conversation to which it contributes. And that is often a slow-burn kind of thing. Some books catch on years after publication (although most slink away into the dark night. This is an incredibly tough, discouraging business).

As you know, because I am morbidly transparent, I have been discouraged at many points over the past year, mainly because the indications of “success” that I had defined for myself have not always panned out. But I’ve also learned and discovered how much I don’t know about have success manifests in this world. Some of the benchmarks I had set out in reality either weren’t ever realistic or pretty meaningless when you get right down to it.

What has happened is a gradual realization over time that this book means a great deal to a significant number of people, the people I wrote it for in the first place. I hear regularly from missionary kids of all ages and persuasions—and even some missionaries—that the book helped them understand themselves and their experience, made them think, connected a lot of dots, led them to further healing, opened up necessary conversations in their families, or simply made them feel seen for the first time.

I’ve even heard from people for whom the book made them question everything, the entire religious framework in which they were raised. And I gotta say—given my main motivation in writing this book was to contribute in some way to the fight for our democracy—if that is true for even a few people, it’s all been worth it to me, the hundreds of hours of basically free labor, the awkwardness that exists between me and some of my loved ones, the loss of belonging in the culture that raised me, the frustration of the book being ignored by people who really should pay attention, those who need to pay attention (I’m looking at you, Christianity Today, not to mention basically every major religion reporter).

I’d do it all again a million times over. At the end of the day, I believe writing this book is one of the reasons I was put on this earth. It has employed my entire journey, personal and professional, used all my gifts, integrated the breadth of who I am. I am deeply, deeply grateful to everyone who has bought it, read it, listened to it, heard its message, shared it, promoted it, shouted it from the rooftops. You are all part of it, too.

Grace and peace, friends. Go well. Godspeed.