My first exposure to your writing was in The Understory, which was a beautiful gift during the summer of 2024 as I was grieving the simultaneous Alzheimer’s diagnoses of both my parents. So I wasn’t familiar with your work in 2011, but I was definitely familiar with the female Christian Blogosphere. I was a bleary-eyed momma with a kindergartener, preschooler, and infant, increasingly unsettled and disenfranchised with the church we had attended for a decade (Mars Hill), lonely, battling depression, and constantly looping an internal dialogue with words like “worthless” and “failure.” I don’t even remember all the blogs I tried to read, but I consumed them voraciously, with their confident instruction on household schedules, organization, getting fit, feeding a family nutritiously on a shoestring budget, serving our husbands, etc. etc. The women writing those blogs seemed to have their stuff figured out, and I was desperate for the secret to a well-ordered life. Maybe some of the advice helped me, but it certainly didn’t make me feel any less broken. No amount of meal planning or organization could make me whole.
Now I recognize that what I needed then wasn’t formulas for improvement or an idealized picture of feminine domesticity. It was so much more complicated, deeper, richer, messier, more beautiful, more painful, more meaningful (like the reality of the gospel).
I can’t cover my journey in a comment here, but time spent in the “not knowing” has led me to be comfortable in my own skin, confident that I am loved by God and am exactly where I need to be.
So, THANK YOU to you and your fellow writers who aren’t content with easy answers, who live in the tension and ask questions that “disturb the universe.” You are doing beautiful, important work, and are a lifeline to those of us navigating authentic faith between the extremes.
Well, as one of the unnamed women referenced in the "six friends" anecdote that the writer of the CT article references, I do have some thoughts. (And boy, total aside but are people ever missing the point of the fact that three of the six of us ended up divorced - the indictment when that aside is included always seems to find itself at the feet of the women's spirituality, rather than the sins of the men they divorced and the culture that enabled/rewarded them! Same old story...but Jen's name is always click-bait for the evangelical crowd and they will never be finished punishing her or willfully misunderstanding/representing most of us.)
This is definitely something I feel "in process" about. But I don't know, Lore. I struggle with the notion of being "glad" that something that empowered women, that gave a lot of us our voice, that gave us relationships and camaraderie and a sense of belonging, however conditional it turned out to be (trust me, I know that one all too well!) ended. It seems to me that there is no end to the spaces that exist like that for men throughout the ages and, however imperfect and messy that season was for a lot of us, it was also a moment in time that brought a lot of goodness too. I mean, I find it absolutely BONKERS that anyone could talk about the Christian lady blogosphere without talking about Rachel Held Evans in that era and the way that she led well in that space, platforming and shining a spotlight on so many voices that had been silenced and marginalized in the church. We would be missing even more voices in publishing and platforms without that season. The erasure in the article about the larger context and voices of that moment in time feels maddening.
I still remember how furious I felt with a writer published an editorial critiquing the fact that women were writing online without ecclesiastical oversight - I mean, talk about missing it! We were online precisely BECAUSE we had so little ecclesiastical support. We had been driven to the marketplace or the Internet, not out of a desire for fame and riches (usually) but because it was the only outlet we had. Ah, I have too many thoughts! This is for the someday-coffee we always hope to share but no, to be honest, I don't share your feeling of gladness the Christian women's blogosphere moment ended.
(And boy, total aside but are people ever missing the point of the fact that three of the six of us ended up divorced - the indictment when that aside is included always seems to find itself at the feet of the women's spirituality, rather than the sins of the men they divorced)--well if this right here doesn't land right on my doorstep, pounding on my door, I don't know what does.
I've been adjacent to this community for many, many years. My now ex-husband, was a part of the machine driving the Evangelical bus down the road. I had an interesting view from where I sat. He worked for one of "the big 5"....and therefore I had a front row seat to all of this being described. I can say, I never quite fit in any of it. I didn't grow up in this world and frankly it confused me from the onset. That it is not to say it was "all bad" .... it most certainly was not. He worked on project for RHE, and Jen and a lot of the other names we all know. I only met RHE once. She spent a full day in our home for some marketing a long time ago. I have nothing but good thoughts of her.
Of course there was some head scratching stuff, to. I was much younger then and I suppose a part of me wanted to be taken a bit more seriously, not just "Julie, the wife of _____."
Well I'm not the wife of him anymore and now I find myself very disoriented. I have long been a writer who loves the art of using words to make sense of all the dualities we living among here. It's been "a hobby" I guess, although I don't love the sound of that.
I now sit in this strange place of necessity. Necessity to support my kids because the man who helped drive that bus and the bus of many other's to "scale bigger", left us with next to nothing. I have two kids, one with significant special needs who is still very young. I'm the primary parent and now somehow need to become the primary breadwinner. This not at all for pitty....I guess as a way to say that I'm having to "put myself out there" a bit more in the hopes that I can somehow turn a hobby into something that can support us.
Anyway, not really sure where I'm going with all of this except to say that I love conversations that drive us to think. And maybe gain an extra eye that we didn't have before.
This is really helpful to read. I hadn’t thought about it from an empowerment perspective, maybe because you and I were on different sides of that conversation at that point. I think my experience of it was less empowerment of women and more seeing women subjugated and subjugating. Obviously you saw that too, but you were pressing out of the ceiling of it, writing Jesus Feminist, etc. I think I was still very much on the floor of it, fresh out of full-quiver, fundamentalism and straight into patriarchal neo-reformedism. So it felt like trading one master for another. Does that make sense? Obviously, I’m forever thankful for you and others, especially Rachel—whose omission from the article surprised me too, but I think you were the ones who were empowering, not the women’s blogosphere as I experienced it, which was really the men’s blogosphere where they occasionally let the women who would parrot them come out to play. That’s a distinction I should have included.
100% agree re the sins of the men who were divorced.
(And boy, total aside but are people ever missing the point of the fact that three of the six of us ended up divorced - the indictment when that aside is included always seems to find itself at the feet of the women's spirituality, rather than the sins of the men they divorced)--well if this right here doesn't land right on my doorstep, pounding on my door, I don't know what does.
I've been adjacent to this community for many, many years. My now ex-husband, was a part of the machine driving the Evangelical bus down the road. I had an interesting view from where I sat. He worked for one of "the big 5"....and therefore I had a front row seat to all of this being described. I can say, I never quite fit in any of it. I didn't grow up in this world and frankly it confused me from the onset. That it is not to say it was "all bad" .... it most certainly was not. He worked on project for RHE, and Jen and a lot of the other names we all know. I only met RHE once. She spent a full day in our home for some marketing a long time ago. I have nothing but good thoughts of her.
Of course there was some head scratching stuff, to. I was much younger then and I suppose a part of me wanted to be taken a bit more seriously, not just "Julie, the wife of _____."
Well I'm not the wife of him anymore and now I find myself very disoriented. I have long been a writer who loves the art of using words to make sense of all the dualities we living among here. It's been "a hobby" I guess, although I don't love the sound of that.
I now sit in this strange place of necessity. Necessity to support my kids because the man who helped drive that bus and the bus of many other's to "scale bigger", left us with next to nothing. I have two kids, one with significant special needs who is still very young. I'm the primary parent and now somehow need to become the primary breadwinner. This not at all for pitty....I guess as a way to say that I'm having to "put myself out there" a bit more in the hopes that I can somehow turn a hobby into something that can support us.
Anyway, not really sure where I'm going with all of this except to say that I love conversations that drive us to think. And maybe gain an extra eye that we didn't have before.
I bounced in and out of a lot of online spaces from 2005-2017 trying to become a writer. All I ever wanted to do for a career was write books but I didn't know how to do it while trying to put a husband through law school, so I landed in public relations and marketing for a day job. In that world I attended many women's blogging conferences. I'll never forget attending my first one in San Francisco, summer of 2007. The entire three days was the most bizarre subculture I'd ever stumbled across. Heather Armstrong, aka Dooce, got into an argument during her keynote address with another female blogger over something that started on Twitter. In the back of the room I whispered to the other attendees, "Who is Dooce? and...sorry...but...what is Twitter?" There was a social hierarchy in the room that I longed to be part of and also wanted nothing to do with.
Over the years, attending various Christian conferences, I felt that same push and pull--always leaving with a desire to be one of the important ones in the room while feeling deeply uncomfortable with what it seemed to take to get there.
There's a lot more I could say, and Lore you know pieces of my story, but I suppose one observation that feels worth celebrating is this: I've watched a handful of female Christian writers press pause on their online work to become pastors, including myself. Twenty years ago, many of us didn't even know there might be space for us in ministry. We pursued online creative work because it was all we though possible in our evangelical spaces. As time passed, as the Spirit worked, as our understanding of gender roles perhaps softened...we received the invitation to preach to our local people. I still love writing on Substack. I still hope to publish a book someday. But I don't feel the angst I felt 10 years ago to fit a mold in order to achieve my "dream." And it feels important to say that I am SO, SO grateful for writers like yourself, Emily Freeman, and others who lovingly minister to me so that I can minister to others. Thank you for not being a persona or a brand or an influencer but a pastoral presence in this space.
“You never reach a point of certainty, a point of mastery where you can say, ‘Right now, I understand how this is done.’ That’s why so many talented people stop writing. It’s hard to tolerate this not knowing.”
I believe it is in the “not knowing” that our real work is done, both in the world and in us. I believe staying in that space will protect us from needing, wanting, or having a “personal brand.” I believe it will protect us from feigning belonging in places where no one belongs and it will keep us from finding identity in places that will fail us and hurt others along the way.
________
This washed over me when I read it. The whole piece! I have wrestled (for years) with my deep sense of uncertainty and marveled at all the women around me who seemed so confident and *together* and whole. It’s kept me silent in so many ways. It’s kept me from the work. I thought certainty was a prerequisite and so nothing ever added up for me personally.
I come from my own disordered and chaotic world and eventually landed in the Reformed and conservative spaces where I found order and *certainty* and so I am grateful for what you wrote here. Me too.
Admittedly, my universe has been disturbed for so long that sometimes I’d like to go back to that time and space when I felt less wobbly…when I was pretending that I had life figured out.
A while back Emily Freeman posed the question, “what are you craving that has nothing to do with food?” My immediate thought was “the wisdom of integrated elders.” Writers who are old enough to have gathered their thoughts offline, slowly.
There are things I miss about a type of blog culture, but not this part of it. (Though I do appreciate the 2010s bloggers on the weird edges who helped me feel less alone when I was deconstructing and we didn’t call it that. :))
Sitting in the ‘I don’t know’ is of itself uncomfortable. Then you have all the people who are still trying to cover themselves in the ‘blanket of absolute certainty’ that they purchased from the people who write of absolute certainty, and they can’t decipher how I don’t just buy a blanket. We used to be ‘in the ministry’ biz, and I remember when a teen came to us with a complex theological question, and we answered ‘I don’t know, but we could look into it together.’ The adults (those with not only blankets, but invested in a sweat suits, sneakers, earrings, all the bling, matchy matchy certainty covering their smooshy core of not certain at all) almost rotated their heads completely around, owl like. Uh… if you don’t know… we HIRED you cause you’re trained to be CERTAIN. Cause asking questions is the height of blasphemy to the Church of Certainty. We’ve finally settled into the uncertainty, and after searching for others who are also uncertain… are doing it ourselves. The Church of Certainty has seeped into everywhere here, and that are certain about everything, sealed and shut. There is no curiosity that can puncture it. I’d rather now be authentically uncertain and searching, exploring than under cover Certain.
It really is uncomfortable. I'm there right now around some things and it's hard. Really hard. But I wouldn't trade it to be back in the church of certainty =)
I have no interest in the Church of Certainty. I wish I could find a place called Community, however. But I won’t sacrifice true connection for community… and the Church of Certainty is devoid of true community.
Trying to find the next right place I belong in society is doing the wrong next right thing. And exhausting. Sitting in the “I don’t know” it really does grow us, doesn’t it? I’m trying to find rest in that place.
This is remarkable work, Lori. The clarity with which you name both the beauty and the fracture of that era, and the way it shaped so many women, feels deeply needed. What stays with me is your commitment to the long, slow work of integrating a life…without chasing belonging in rooms that were never meant to hold it. Thank you for giving language to what so many sensed but couldn’t articulate.
I have been writing for more than 40 years. I began by typing manuscripts and mailing them in a self addressed stamped envelopes that awaited an editor’s response. When I first began blogging in 2006, I had about four readers. My first book was published by a tiny publisher that went bankrupt during the financial crash in 2008. I was not a platformable brand, but I didn’t know how to be in this world without writing. I kept going, persisting mostly in the shadows for all these years.
With the rise of the blogosphere, I found more readers, but I also learned I was:
Too old
Too ethnic
Too opinionated
Too “unpretty”
Too interested in theology
Too damaged by spiritual abuse
Too weird
Generally too much
If I hadn’t come of age as a writer in the days of self addressed, stamped envelopes mailed to editors, I am not sure I would still be writing. Those messages frim the Christian blogosphere are loud and very convincing. I will say that same blogosphere connected me to some wonderful and thoughtful people like you, but it also functioned as a combination Hunger Games and middle school cafeteria.
Mixed feelings on this. Really wish there was a very sliiiight incentive for being nuanced, perhaps more than currently exists. But what I mean when I say that is, I'd really like to make minimum wage. (Oops, did I just say that out loud? Not sorry.) It might make you chuckle to know that though I started blogging in 2012, I was never included in the club. Always a weirdo, I suppose... hahaha (Also I like the new brand!)
The bestseller books are not the nuanced middle path. They are (mostly) the conservative women at the top. You’re right that it’s not incentivized to be nuanced.
I have been reading your writing since way back then - THANK YOU! I appreciate your transparency and vulnerability and SAYING it like it is! It's always been about the money! damn skippy it has!
Thank you for writing this! I had no idea that your family of origin was so dysfunctional and unhealthy! It’s amazing that you are here to tell (or your preferred method-writing) the tale. It sounds as if you’ve done a great deal of work to begin to process the “dirty vs clean laundry”.
As a lifelong mainline Christian, the whole white Evangelical Industrial Complex (Skye Jethani term) has seemed like a saccharine based money making scheme from its inception. I’ve watched this organism (from the outside) grow, metastasize, and swallow institutions and individuals. As a mainliner, “pluralism” has been a sacred part of our culture. It’s as lauded as if it’s Jesus’ 3rd Commandment, instead of being just one way to model Jesus’ 2nd Commandment-Love Thy Neighbor.
As kids, in church and our families, we were trained to remain silent when we saw our neighbors delve into questionable beliefs and practices under the guise of white Evangelical Christianity. I have maintained that silence, until Trump descended the gold leafed escalator in 2015 and the white Evangelical Industrial Complex seemed to have a collective orgasm at finding their man. The successive iterations of proper “Biblical” thought coming from the Theobros, their arm ornament counterpart female mouthpieces (like Megan B) have been disgusting to watch. The continued drift away from anything resembling Christianity has been appalling at best.
Reading some of the social media posts of prominent white female Evangelical voices from the early 2000s until now has been sickening. Yes, it’s all about the money, proximity to power, and status. The potency of Jesus, his walk, his words, his death, and his resurrection have been tossed aside into feeding the big “Eva” machine.
I grieve for the deception and the lies many in that subculture have been spoon fed for the past 50 years. As I’ve stated in previous posts, much of it is antithetical to what I’ve learned in my own Christian journey. While I still embrace pluralism, I’m standing up and saying clearly “This is nuts! It’s spiritual abuse and it’s far afield from what I know to be the Word of God.”.
Thank you again for this post. I’m attaching a piece from Catherine Sanderson on moral rebels. At this time, we need more of us.
Both the current crop of Theobros and the female arm ornament mouthpieces serve a purpose in the white Evangelical Industrial Complex and Christian Nationalism. My belief is they do not serve God’s purpose. In fact, quite the opposite.
Oh my gosh, girl, chef's kiss on this post! Your Madeleine L’Engle quote had me flashing back to YEARS ago (I want to say very early aughts?) when Rob Bell was starting to produce his "Nooma" series. I specifically remember multiple people in my circle having issues with him because he was posing all these questions, while avoiding pat answers/solutions to those questions. This was viewed as highly dangerous because - as I was told - he wasn't actually leading anyone anywhere. Basically, as Madeleine said, he was "disturbing everyone's universe" and then leaving those poor souls dangling out in the abyss.
I remember wondering why questions were inherently problematic. I certainly had questions, although back then I would have traded my questions in an instant for absolute certainty (first born, rule-follower, recovering people-pleaser here), to your point, perhaps because I would have (finally) been able to find a place where I felt I belonged (still hasn't happened).
However, disruption of my known universe and the freak out of not-knowing that followed allowed me to learn how to hold sacred space for mystery (and an even slower/glacial spiritual evolution as a result), and also how normal and ok that is, which has changed my life. I wouldn't trade that for gorgeously gift-wrapped certainty. There's more I could say about all that, I'll just leave you with my massive appreciation for your beautiful words here! xx
My first exposure to your writing was in The Understory, which was a beautiful gift during the summer of 2024 as I was grieving the simultaneous Alzheimer’s diagnoses of both my parents. So I wasn’t familiar with your work in 2011, but I was definitely familiar with the female Christian Blogosphere. I was a bleary-eyed momma with a kindergartener, preschooler, and infant, increasingly unsettled and disenfranchised with the church we had attended for a decade (Mars Hill), lonely, battling depression, and constantly looping an internal dialogue with words like “worthless” and “failure.” I don’t even remember all the blogs I tried to read, but I consumed them voraciously, with their confident instruction on household schedules, organization, getting fit, feeding a family nutritiously on a shoestring budget, serving our husbands, etc. etc. The women writing those blogs seemed to have their stuff figured out, and I was desperate for the secret to a well-ordered life. Maybe some of the advice helped me, but it certainly didn’t make me feel any less broken. No amount of meal planning or organization could make me whole.
Now I recognize that what I needed then wasn’t formulas for improvement or an idealized picture of feminine domesticity. It was so much more complicated, deeper, richer, messier, more beautiful, more painful, more meaningful (like the reality of the gospel).
I can’t cover my journey in a comment here, but time spent in the “not knowing” has led me to be comfortable in my own skin, confident that I am loved by God and am exactly where I need to be.
So, THANK YOU to you and your fellow writers who aren’t content with easy answers, who live in the tension and ask questions that “disturb the universe.” You are doing beautiful, important work, and are a lifeline to those of us navigating authentic faith between the extremes.
Well, as one of the unnamed women referenced in the "six friends" anecdote that the writer of the CT article references, I do have some thoughts. (And boy, total aside but are people ever missing the point of the fact that three of the six of us ended up divorced - the indictment when that aside is included always seems to find itself at the feet of the women's spirituality, rather than the sins of the men they divorced and the culture that enabled/rewarded them! Same old story...but Jen's name is always click-bait for the evangelical crowd and they will never be finished punishing her or willfully misunderstanding/representing most of us.)
This is definitely something I feel "in process" about. But I don't know, Lore. I struggle with the notion of being "glad" that something that empowered women, that gave a lot of us our voice, that gave us relationships and camaraderie and a sense of belonging, however conditional it turned out to be (trust me, I know that one all too well!) ended. It seems to me that there is no end to the spaces that exist like that for men throughout the ages and, however imperfect and messy that season was for a lot of us, it was also a moment in time that brought a lot of goodness too. I mean, I find it absolutely BONKERS that anyone could talk about the Christian lady blogosphere without talking about Rachel Held Evans in that era and the way that she led well in that space, platforming and shining a spotlight on so many voices that had been silenced and marginalized in the church. We would be missing even more voices in publishing and platforms without that season. The erasure in the article about the larger context and voices of that moment in time feels maddening.
I still remember how furious I felt with a writer published an editorial critiquing the fact that women were writing online without ecclesiastical oversight - I mean, talk about missing it! We were online precisely BECAUSE we had so little ecclesiastical support. We had been driven to the marketplace or the Internet, not out of a desire for fame and riches (usually) but because it was the only outlet we had. Ah, I have too many thoughts! This is for the someday-coffee we always hope to share but no, to be honest, I don't share your feeling of gladness the Christian women's blogosphere moment ended.
(And boy, total aside but are people ever missing the point of the fact that three of the six of us ended up divorced - the indictment when that aside is included always seems to find itself at the feet of the women's spirituality, rather than the sins of the men they divorced)--well if this right here doesn't land right on my doorstep, pounding on my door, I don't know what does.
I've been adjacent to this community for many, many years. My now ex-husband, was a part of the machine driving the Evangelical bus down the road. I had an interesting view from where I sat. He worked for one of "the big 5"....and therefore I had a front row seat to all of this being described. I can say, I never quite fit in any of it. I didn't grow up in this world and frankly it confused me from the onset. That it is not to say it was "all bad" .... it most certainly was not. He worked on project for RHE, and Jen and a lot of the other names we all know. I only met RHE once. She spent a full day in our home for some marketing a long time ago. I have nothing but good thoughts of her.
Of course there was some head scratching stuff, to. I was much younger then and I suppose a part of me wanted to be taken a bit more seriously, not just "Julie, the wife of _____."
Well I'm not the wife of him anymore and now I find myself very disoriented. I have long been a writer who loves the art of using words to make sense of all the dualities we living among here. It's been "a hobby" I guess, although I don't love the sound of that.
I now sit in this strange place of necessity. Necessity to support my kids because the man who helped drive that bus and the bus of many other's to "scale bigger", left us with next to nothing. I have two kids, one with significant special needs who is still very young. I'm the primary parent and now somehow need to become the primary breadwinner. This not at all for pitty....I guess as a way to say that I'm having to "put myself out there" a bit more in the hopes that I can somehow turn a hobby into something that can support us.
Anyway, not really sure where I'm going with all of this except to say that I love conversations that drive us to think. And maybe gain an extra eye that we didn't have before.
This is really helpful to read. I hadn’t thought about it from an empowerment perspective, maybe because you and I were on different sides of that conversation at that point. I think my experience of it was less empowerment of women and more seeing women subjugated and subjugating. Obviously you saw that too, but you were pressing out of the ceiling of it, writing Jesus Feminist, etc. I think I was still very much on the floor of it, fresh out of full-quiver, fundamentalism and straight into patriarchal neo-reformedism. So it felt like trading one master for another. Does that make sense? Obviously, I’m forever thankful for you and others, especially Rachel—whose omission from the article surprised me too, but I think you were the ones who were empowering, not the women’s blogosphere as I experienced it, which was really the men’s blogosphere where they occasionally let the women who would parrot them come out to play. That’s a distinction I should have included.
100% agree re the sins of the men who were divorced.
Also 100% plan on coffee someday. XOXO
(And boy, total aside but are people ever missing the point of the fact that three of the six of us ended up divorced - the indictment when that aside is included always seems to find itself at the feet of the women's spirituality, rather than the sins of the men they divorced)--well if this right here doesn't land right on my doorstep, pounding on my door, I don't know what does.
I've been adjacent to this community for many, many years. My now ex-husband, was a part of the machine driving the Evangelical bus down the road. I had an interesting view from where I sat. He worked for one of "the big 5"....and therefore I had a front row seat to all of this being described. I can say, I never quite fit in any of it. I didn't grow up in this world and frankly it confused me from the onset. That it is not to say it was "all bad" .... it most certainly was not. He worked on project for RHE, and Jen and a lot of the other names we all know. I only met RHE once. She spent a full day in our home for some marketing a long time ago. I have nothing but good thoughts of her.
Of course there was some head scratching stuff, to. I was much younger then and I suppose a part of me wanted to be taken a bit more seriously, not just "Julie, the wife of _____."
Well I'm not the wife of him anymore and now I find myself very disoriented. I have long been a writer who loves the art of using words to make sense of all the dualities we living among here. It's been "a hobby" I guess, although I don't love the sound of that.
I now sit in this strange place of necessity. Necessity to support my kids because the man who helped drive that bus and the bus of many other's to "scale bigger", left us with next to nothing. I have two kids, one with significant special needs who is still very young. I'm the primary parent and now somehow need to become the primary breadwinner. This not at all for pitty....I guess as a way to say that I'm having to "put myself out there" a bit more in the hopes that I can somehow turn a hobby into something that can support us.
Anyway, not really sure where I'm going with all of this except to say that I love conversations that drive us to think. And maybe gain an extra eye that we didn't have before.
I bounced in and out of a lot of online spaces from 2005-2017 trying to become a writer. All I ever wanted to do for a career was write books but I didn't know how to do it while trying to put a husband through law school, so I landed in public relations and marketing for a day job. In that world I attended many women's blogging conferences. I'll never forget attending my first one in San Francisco, summer of 2007. The entire three days was the most bizarre subculture I'd ever stumbled across. Heather Armstrong, aka Dooce, got into an argument during her keynote address with another female blogger over something that started on Twitter. In the back of the room I whispered to the other attendees, "Who is Dooce? and...sorry...but...what is Twitter?" There was a social hierarchy in the room that I longed to be part of and also wanted nothing to do with.
Over the years, attending various Christian conferences, I felt that same push and pull--always leaving with a desire to be one of the important ones in the room while feeling deeply uncomfortable with what it seemed to take to get there.
There's a lot more I could say, and Lore you know pieces of my story, but I suppose one observation that feels worth celebrating is this: I've watched a handful of female Christian writers press pause on their online work to become pastors, including myself. Twenty years ago, many of us didn't even know there might be space for us in ministry. We pursued online creative work because it was all we though possible in our evangelical spaces. As time passed, as the Spirit worked, as our understanding of gender roles perhaps softened...we received the invitation to preach to our local people. I still love writing on Substack. I still hope to publish a book someday. But I don't feel the angst I felt 10 years ago to fit a mold in order to achieve my "dream." And it feels important to say that I am SO, SO grateful for writers like yourself, Emily Freeman, and others who lovingly minister to me so that I can minister to others. Thank you for not being a persona or a brand or an influencer but a pastoral presence in this space.
I read this quote from Jenny Offill recently,
“You never reach a point of certainty, a point of mastery where you can say, ‘Right now, I understand how this is done.’ That’s why so many talented people stop writing. It’s hard to tolerate this not knowing.”
I believe it is in the “not knowing” that our real work is done, both in the world and in us. I believe staying in that space will protect us from needing, wanting, or having a “personal brand.” I believe it will protect us from feigning belonging in places where no one belongs and it will keep us from finding identity in places that will fail us and hurt others along the way.
________
This washed over me when I read it. The whole piece! I have wrestled (for years) with my deep sense of uncertainty and marveled at all the women around me who seemed so confident and *together* and whole. It’s kept me silent in so many ways. It’s kept me from the work. I thought certainty was a prerequisite and so nothing ever added up for me personally.
I come from my own disordered and chaotic world and eventually landed in the Reformed and conservative spaces where I found order and *certainty* and so I am grateful for what you wrote here. Me too.
Admittedly, my universe has been disturbed for so long that sometimes I’d like to go back to that time and space when I felt less wobbly…when I was pretending that I had life figured out.
I resonate with what you've said here, Jen. Thank you.
What a masterful piece of writing. Wow and thank you.
A while back Emily Freeman posed the question, “what are you craving that has nothing to do with food?” My immediate thought was “the wisdom of integrated elders.” Writers who are old enough to have gathered their thoughts offline, slowly.
There are things I miss about a type of blog culture, but not this part of it. (Though I do appreciate the 2010s bloggers on the weird edges who helped me feel less alone when I was deconstructing and we didn’t call it that. :))
I love Emily's questions =) I want that wisdom too.
Sitting in the ‘I don’t know’ is of itself uncomfortable. Then you have all the people who are still trying to cover themselves in the ‘blanket of absolute certainty’ that they purchased from the people who write of absolute certainty, and they can’t decipher how I don’t just buy a blanket. We used to be ‘in the ministry’ biz, and I remember when a teen came to us with a complex theological question, and we answered ‘I don’t know, but we could look into it together.’ The adults (those with not only blankets, but invested in a sweat suits, sneakers, earrings, all the bling, matchy matchy certainty covering their smooshy core of not certain at all) almost rotated their heads completely around, owl like. Uh… if you don’t know… we HIRED you cause you’re trained to be CERTAIN. Cause asking questions is the height of blasphemy to the Church of Certainty. We’ve finally settled into the uncertainty, and after searching for others who are also uncertain… are doing it ourselves. The Church of Certainty has seeped into everywhere here, and that are certain about everything, sealed and shut. There is no curiosity that can puncture it. I’d rather now be authentically uncertain and searching, exploring than under cover Certain.
It really is uncomfortable. I'm there right now around some things and it's hard. Really hard. But I wouldn't trade it to be back in the church of certainty =)
I have no interest in the Church of Certainty. I wish I could find a place called Community, however. But I won’t sacrifice true connection for community… and the Church of Certainty is devoid of true community.
Trying to find the next right place I belong in society is doing the wrong next right thing. And exhausting. Sitting in the “I don’t know” it really does grow us, doesn’t it? I’m trying to find rest in that place.
This is remarkable work, Lori. The clarity with which you name both the beauty and the fracture of that era, and the way it shaped so many women, feels deeply needed. What stays with me is your commitment to the long, slow work of integrating a life…without chasing belonging in rooms that were never meant to hold it. Thank you for giving language to what so many sensed but couldn’t articulate.
Thank you, Jason.
Me too!
I have been writing for more than 40 years. I began by typing manuscripts and mailing them in a self addressed stamped envelopes that awaited an editor’s response. When I first began blogging in 2006, I had about four readers. My first book was published by a tiny publisher that went bankrupt during the financial crash in 2008. I was not a platformable brand, but I didn’t know how to be in this world without writing. I kept going, persisting mostly in the shadows for all these years.
With the rise of the blogosphere, I found more readers, but I also learned I was:
Too old
Too ethnic
Too opinionated
Too “unpretty”
Too interested in theology
Too damaged by spiritual abuse
Too weird
Generally too much
If I hadn’t come of age as a writer in the days of self addressed, stamped envelopes mailed to editors, I am not sure I would still be writing. Those messages frim the Christian blogosphere are loud and very convincing. I will say that same blogosphere connected me to some wonderful and thoughtful people like you, but it also functioned as a combination Hunger Games and middle school cafeteria.
I'm glad you're still writing =) And I'm glad we're out of the Hunger Games arenas ;)
Mixed feelings on this. Really wish there was a very sliiiight incentive for being nuanced, perhaps more than currently exists. But what I mean when I say that is, I'd really like to make minimum wage. (Oops, did I just say that out loud? Not sorry.) It might make you chuckle to know that though I started blogging in 2012, I was never included in the club. Always a weirdo, I suppose... hahaha (Also I like the new brand!)
I think if we want to make more than minimum wage, we're in the wrong field ;) The moniker of starving artist exists for a reason =)
The bestseller books are not the nuanced middle path. They are (mostly) the conservative women at the top. You’re right that it’s not incentivized to be nuanced.
I have been reading your writing since way back then - THANK YOU! I appreciate your transparency and vulnerability and SAYING it like it is! It's always been about the money! damn skippy it has!
Wow! Thank you for sticking around! I'm always surprised when people say they've been around here that long =)
Thank you for your story
Thank you for writing this! I had no idea that your family of origin was so dysfunctional and unhealthy! It’s amazing that you are here to tell (or your preferred method-writing) the tale. It sounds as if you’ve done a great deal of work to begin to process the “dirty vs clean laundry”.
As a lifelong mainline Christian, the whole white Evangelical Industrial Complex (Skye Jethani term) has seemed like a saccharine based money making scheme from its inception. I’ve watched this organism (from the outside) grow, metastasize, and swallow institutions and individuals. As a mainliner, “pluralism” has been a sacred part of our culture. It’s as lauded as if it’s Jesus’ 3rd Commandment, instead of being just one way to model Jesus’ 2nd Commandment-Love Thy Neighbor.
As kids, in church and our families, we were trained to remain silent when we saw our neighbors delve into questionable beliefs and practices under the guise of white Evangelical Christianity. I have maintained that silence, until Trump descended the gold leafed escalator in 2015 and the white Evangelical Industrial Complex seemed to have a collective orgasm at finding their man. The successive iterations of proper “Biblical” thought coming from the Theobros, their arm ornament counterpart female mouthpieces (like Megan B) have been disgusting to watch. The continued drift away from anything resembling Christianity has been appalling at best.
Reading some of the social media posts of prominent white female Evangelical voices from the early 2000s until now has been sickening. Yes, it’s all about the money, proximity to power, and status. The potency of Jesus, his walk, his words, his death, and his resurrection have been tossed aside into feeding the big “Eva” machine.
I grieve for the deception and the lies many in that subculture have been spoon fed for the past 50 years. As I’ve stated in previous posts, much of it is antithetical to what I’ve learned in my own Christian journey. While I still embrace pluralism, I’m standing up and saying clearly “This is nuts! It’s spiritual abuse and it’s far afield from what I know to be the Word of God.”.
Thank you again for this post. I’m attaching a piece from Catherine Sanderson on moral rebels. At this time, we need more of us.
Thanks for that Sanderson piece, looking forward to reading it.
Both the current crop of Theobros and the female arm ornament mouthpieces serve a purpose in the white Evangelical Industrial Complex and Christian Nationalism. My belief is they do not serve God’s purpose. In fact, quite the opposite.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/why-some-people-are-willing-to-challenge-bad-behavior-despite-personal-risk
Oh my gosh, girl, chef's kiss on this post! Your Madeleine L’Engle quote had me flashing back to YEARS ago (I want to say very early aughts?) when Rob Bell was starting to produce his "Nooma" series. I specifically remember multiple people in my circle having issues with him because he was posing all these questions, while avoiding pat answers/solutions to those questions. This was viewed as highly dangerous because - as I was told - he wasn't actually leading anyone anywhere. Basically, as Madeleine said, he was "disturbing everyone's universe" and then leaving those poor souls dangling out in the abyss.
I remember wondering why questions were inherently problematic. I certainly had questions, although back then I would have traded my questions in an instant for absolute certainty (first born, rule-follower, recovering people-pleaser here), to your point, perhaps because I would have (finally) been able to find a place where I felt I belonged (still hasn't happened).
However, disruption of my known universe and the freak out of not-knowing that followed allowed me to learn how to hold sacred space for mystery (and an even slower/glacial spiritual evolution as a result), and also how normal and ok that is, which has changed my life. I wouldn't trade that for gorgeously gift-wrapped certainty. There's more I could say about all that, I'll just leave you with my massive appreciation for your beautiful words here! xx
Same =) I mean, you know same =) XOXO