To Josh Duggar, from a secular academic, on staying Christian

Let’s do some thought experiments career-wise. Say you are received into the Coptic Orthodox Church. First, this is great for you because their confessions are stricter than the Latins; apparently, you have to get yourself a ‘father of confession’ to keep track of your confessions to make sure that you’re doing well. But second, you’re suddenly well-positioned to start thinking in deep solidarity with Coptic Christians in Egypt, mostly because you’d be a Coptic Christian yourself. This of course also means that you couldn’t be an American exceptionalist like you were when you were a Protestant because you’d actually have to be looking out for the interests of your brothers and sisters in Egypt, not your own. It means that you’d have to join in their struggle for Egyptian self-determination and quest for healthy co-existence with their Muslim neighbors, which might inspire you to fight for the rights of Muslims in the United States as well.

Or let’s say that you feel like your best reality television days are still ahead of you. In that case, you could very well consider the Armenian Apostolic Church. Technically, although the Kardashians currently worship at an evangelical church in Southern California, they are supposed to belong to this church; how else could Kanye and Kim Kardashian West baptize their daughter North at St James’ Cathedral in Jerusalem with Kourtney as godmother? Think of the possibilities. Were you to be received into this church, you’d have the chance to keep up with the Kardashians as you call together for redress for the Armenian Genocide, and from there, you could develop a meaningful career calling for an end to things like war, ethnic cleansing, and borders that divide families from each other. With a mentality like that, you could even become an activist for immigration reform in the Americas, if not also for #BlackLivesMatter, indigenous territorial sovereignty, and recognition of Palestinian statehood, if you carried the implications far enough. (#KimyeHermeneutic FTW)