The Dobbs ruling is a culmination, and just the beginning — At the 2022 Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) annual meeting last week, church messengers (delegates) attended sessions that rolled out a strategic response to the looming end of Roe. Life begins at conception, most seemed to agree, and so steps must be taken to protect the “pre-born.” Those steps, as outlined…

The charge of sharing space with other reporters — I spent last week three time zones away from home, staying up way too late working, waking up too early (jet lag), and living on tacos and pizza like a college kid. Not only did it become evident that I fail at self-care without the obligation to tend to my…

A worldview that bestows men authority and headship also enabled abuse and coverup — A pastor, later convicted of sex crimes against two minors, had been described as merely a “woman squeezer.” As sexual abuse survivors came forward, they were attacked openly by church leaders and within internal emails, called: “Whore.” Adulteress. Bitter, jealous woman. Such response to allegations of sexual abuse and personal…

There’s no good way to tell children about another school shooting or much reason to believe our policymakers will help prevent the next one — This year will mark the decade anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary mass shooting. I remember because my daughter turned ten this year, and she was a baby in her stroller with me when I rolled up to a protest in Washington, D.C. in the days after the unbearable tragedy…

The anxious rhythms of end of life care — For months I’d been begging staff at my parents’ nursing home to help me get a cognitive assessment for both. I needed a word — is dementia appropriate? — for the drift I saw in my mom, my father’s conversational loops. Once I got them settled in at a nursing…

Old evangelical media offers a primer for the attack on Roe — In 2007, the now-defunct San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival awarded Best of Festival to a documentary called The Monstrous Regiment of Women, a film that simultaneously asserted that women leading families or nations is antithetical to the Bible, vilified feminists (as Marxists and destroyers of the home), and called…

Am I building a spreadsheet of medical appointments and notes to remind myself later that I did my best? — My parents have been experiencing a precipitous decline in health since last summer. Surely, some of it was decline that I missed during time apart before Covid vaccines allowed us to begin visiting again. …

From young-earth creationism to Tucker Carlson, the gathering of homeschool families offered a view of the world — and homeschooling — that is filled with anxiety over the left — I first learned about the Great Homeschool Convention’s turn through my area in Ohio from a homeschooling family member. …

The actor’s eerie ability to transform concerns me — Like many be-flannelled 90s teens, I felt a deep link to My So-Called Life’s Angela Chase, if only in my desire for her — anyone — to snag broody and vacant Jordan Catalano. Enough of us steamed after the show’s vulnerable mess that culture writer Danielle Nussbaum dubbed our sliver…