Journal of a Recalcitrant is a place for the thoughts that don’t quite fit anywhere else. Some of them will be about writing and fiction. Others will wander into religion, history, politics, philosophy, books I’m reading, or whatever subject has managed to occupy too much of my attention that week. There probably won’t be much consistency beyond the person doing the writing.
I chose recalcitrant deliberately. I’ve never been particularly good at accepting an answer simply because it’s the answer I was given. That tendency has occasionally been useful and occasionally made my life considerably more complicated. Either way, questioning inherited assumptions—my own included—has become a fairly permanent part of how I understand the world.
This isn’t meant to be a collection of declarations from someone who has everything figured out. Quite the opposite. I’m interested in the process of changing my mind, discovering where I was wrong, revisiting ideas I thought I had abandoned, and occasionally becoming more convinced of something after trying very hard not to be. If there’s a unifying idea here, it’s probably that uncertainty is more interesting than certainty pretending to be wisdom.
Mostly, this is a journal in the oldest sense of the word: a record of what I’m thinking about while I’m thinking about it. Some entries may eventually become essays. Some may influence a novel. Others may exist simply because I wanted somewhere to put the thought before it disappeared. Consider this the margin beside the fiction—the place where I get to argue with books, ideas, institutions, myself, and, every now and then, anyone unfortunate enough to be reading along.
Faith deconstruction is often portrayed as rebellion, bad teaching, church hurt, or an excuse to sin. But deconstruction is rarely so simple. It is an open-ended process of questioning the beliefs, authorities, and assumptions that once held a worldview together—and asking whether they can still carry the weight of reality.
Read PostThe Bible has a hell of a lot to say about poverty, wealth, exploitation, and the people society leaves behind. So why does American evangelicalism treat sexual morality as public policy while relegating poverty to private charity? From Luke and James to modern church politics, the problem may not be that Christians refuse to help the poor. It may be that they defend the systems that keep producing them.
Read PostPurity culture taught a generation of evangelicals that sex outside marriage made them dirty, damaged, and less desirable. From abstinence-only education to marital obligation and sexual shame, here’s what purity culture got wrong—and why a human being was never a rose to begin with.
Read PostMy father asked me to forgive him while he was dying. I couldn’t. What followed was a confrontation not only with a lifetime of abuse, but with the Christianity that taught me forgiveness was an obligation owed to the person who hurt me. This is about fathers and gods, death and grief, and what happens when “I’m sorry” is no longer enough.
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