Throughout 2013, I sorta celebrated the 10th full year of this blog by posting daily re-runs from the slacktivist archives. That was fun, but now it’s time for something new: Today’s Daily Blog of the Day.
Kicking off a feature like this, you’ve gotta start with something good, so here goes:
Samantha Field is smart, insightful and courageously honest. And she’s a terrific writer. You couldn’t ask for a better native guide to the exotic foreign world of white Southern Christian fundamentalism:
I grew up in the deep American South – so “deep” in the South, in fact, that to describe it as quaint or redneck or backwoods–y would be hilarious, and most rednecks think of my hometown as backward. Let’s just say, that until the mid-’90s, whoever got elected as mayor also happened to be the grand dragon of the KKK. This is the 90s – when we were listening to the Backstreet Boys and not the Beatles.
That, on its own, would give a girl an interesting perspective on life. But, compound growing up in one of the poorest, most racist communities I’ve ever known with being raised in an Independent Fundamental Baptist Church, and, well… to this day I’m still encountering ideas and perspectives that continuously upend everything I’ve ever thought was true.
Happily, she also just put together a nice year-in-review post collecting some of her blog’s highlights from 2013, which also provides a good introduction to anyone who’s unfamiliar with Defeating the Dragons. If you’re unfamiliar with Field and her blog, you’ll want to correct that ASAP.
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