The Story

Yep. I spent the 80s and 90s, my childhood and teen years, ensconced in conservative evangelical communities of New Jersey’s Philadelphia suburbs. Church every Sunday and every Wednesday evening. Christian schools from Monday to Friday. Summer Bible clubs. Youth groups. Flags. Republican politics. Reaganomics. Patriotic songs. And I was happy there, in the warm embrace of Christian nationalism. I mingled with kind and decent people, and several close friends. And there was family, my parents and two younger sisters, who loved me (and still do) as I loved them (and still do).

Eventually, though, I passed through what we in the Christian right might call a fiery crucible: four years studying English literature at a college in the Anabaptist tradition, seven years living in communist China, two years teaching Mandarin at a Quaker school in Philadelphia, years of reading forbidden books, asking forbidden questions, brewing beer and playing jazz piano

Along the way, I met people, some like me, from a Christian nationalist background, many others from well beyond its inner sanctum. A lot of these people we’d say were the wrong sort. But I talked with them. I drank coffee with them. I argued with them. I laughed with them. I listened to them and I learned from them. I thought and rethought and considered and reconsidered my life in the Christian nationalist realm. And somewhere in the midst of all that, I left that life behind.

One of those people I met (among the expatriate community of southwest China) was my best friend and wife, Renée. Together we’ve raised two boys – now more men than boys – and relocated to her home town of Melbourne, Australia, living at the entrance to the picturesque Yarra Valley.

The pieces you read here will tell these stories, and I hope many of you find some resonance with them – enough to share your stories as well.