Samantha at Defeating the Dragons is a terrific writer and thinker whose blog has quickly gained a lot of attention from a variety of angles — including from the mainstream white evangelical world. The quality of her writing is a credit to the Master’s program at Liberty University, even if Liberty might not be pleased with the incisive honesty she directs toward the evangelical world to which it belongs.
Her post today, though, won’t just make Liberty et. al. a bit uncomfortable. This is the one subject — the one deviation from the long list of acceptable “stances” — that often causes them to cut all ties, to sever all connections, and to speak of a person, if at all, only in the past tense.
If you’re not from that world — from the American evangelical world of Independent Baptists and Liberty University — then I’m not sure I can communicate to you how courageous this is: “ordeal of the bitter waters, part one.”
My heart was in my throat, my fingers floating over the refresh button on my twitter feed. I was curled up under a gigantic down-alternative comforter, huddled under the half-tent I’d made on the floor of my bathroom. Hours went by as I watched what was happening– the strikes, the interruptions. In the last few minutes I joined with thousands of other voices shouting and screaming, a cacophonous din stretching over the internet, across twitter mentions and live feeds. Together, we watched the underhanded attempt at deceiving an entire country of watching people.
The next day, we celebrated. We declared “We Do Not Sit.” We’d spent the night standing. It didn’t matter that we all knew what would happen, that all of that would swiftly be overturned, and the voices screaming into the night would be silenced. We’d stood. For that single day, it was . . . almost enough.
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I’m pro-abortion. Pro-reproductive rights. Pro-choice.
She is not alone. A third of church-going, Bible-reading white evangelicals are pro-choice.
But one is not allowed to speak of this. One is not allowed to explain why, to make the case, to question the assumptions, to speak of any possibility other than the One Official Stance that is the only “stance” tolerated by the tribe.
Samantha knows this. She knows this is the big taboo and she knows what it will mean to have violated it — the doors that will be closed, the friends that will be lost, the writing opportunities that will be revoked, the invitations rescinded.
Some will condemn, others will seek to punish, many will simply turn away for fear of any association that might get them condemned or punished.
She already knows this, she’s already had some small foretaste of it:
And then, one day, someone asked me if I could drive them to Richmond so they could sit outside the abortion clinic.
I squirmed. “I . . . I’m sorry. I can’t.”
She nodded affably. “Too much work that weekend?”
Do I say anything? Do I just let her think that? That would be the easiest thing. “Actually . . . I don’t really agree with that.”
“With what?” She stopped, turned to face me, her stance becoming aggressive.
“With sitting outside the abortion clinic. Oh, I know you don’t do anything crazy,” I rushed to add. “But I’m not comfortable with the whole thing.”
“Oh.”
She defriended me on Facebook. When I saw her around campus, she wouldn’t look me in the eye.
They don’t like to look you in the eye. The tribal gatekeepers will escort you from the premises, wordlessly, and all those prior connections will be disconnected, but they probably won’t ever look you in the eye. That would involve an impermissible conversation requiring too many unutterable words.
Defeating the Dragons probably just lost some readers.
For my part, it just gained a big fan. I’m looking forward to “part two.”