In the past few months, two public faces of the SBC survivor community—Duane Rollins and Jennifer Lyell—died unexpectedly from the toll that abuse and post-disclosure vitriol took on their bodies. Jen passed away days before the 2025 SBC annual meeting began. The injustice she and Duane suffered is compounded by fact that, while they bore the toll of abuse for their whole lives, the institution that protected their abusers is allowed to carry on as usual.

I’m sharing this again, 3 years later (with edits), on the first day of the 2025 annual meeting. I wanted to attend with friends in this community and scream their names outside, at best to shame and convict leaders, and at least to make sure that their deaths cannot be ignored. Since I am unable to be in Dallas, this is my way of shouting to the members of the Southern Baptist Convention and the survivors of its abuse.

Survivors and advocates: I am with you in every ounce of my spirit, in rage, in sorrow, and in solidarity.

SBC messengers and leaders: Say their names. Jen and Duane. They deserved so much more from so-called Christians. Every survivor deserves better than this. As far as I’m concerned, SBC leaders, their blood is on your hands. Do better or shut it down.

—

(May, 2022)

I am not a survivor of sexual abuse in the SBC. But I was born into an SBC church. I grew up in conservative Evangelical homeschool culture that arguably spun off of the SBC’s conservative resurgence. I attended a Christian college whose president is a former SBC pastor and have almost exclusively been employed in Evangelical-tied-to-Baptist spaces. This world is one that I know intuitively. It has woven together nearly every fiber of my being.

More importantly, I have walked with survivors of abuse since I was 14 years old. The horrifying stories confided in me over the years were mostly crimes committed by clergy or within a church community. Before I understood relationships, sex, or consent, I knew that evil men hurt people that I loved in ways that shook their core sense of self and worth. For over half of my life, I’ve watched too many precious friends, male and female, barely survive their abuse. And now, 3 years after writing this originally, I’ve watched two SBC survivors succumb to the toll that abuse took on their bodies. I am not a prominent voice, I have nothing to offer to the discourse but my experience—but I cannot stay silent.

For decades now, the destruction suffered by an incalculable number of people under SBC leadership could have been stopped. But it wasn’t, because men loved power and wealth and the status quo more than the lives of the innocent. So, decades later, we are once again at a moment of reckoning. Decades later, the stories we know are only a drop in the bucket of an ocean of injustices that the Southern Baptist Convention has yet to face.

Little girls in this world were told to be meek and silent. We were praised for how well we listened and showed hospitality and read our Bibles. We were told to have a quiet, cheerful countenance, no matter how we felt, so that the world would always see Christ in our smiles. We were told to be obedient to the authorities in our lives or risk our very souls. We fell in line to stay alive.

The problem with forcing little girls to fall in line is that little girls grow up. We watch the lines get moved and blurred. And not all of us continued to buy this idea of blind, joyful submission.

Because when you told those little girls to listen and smile, we did – and we realized your smiles were just as fake as ours.

When you told those little girls to take notes in church, we did – and we remembered the clanging cymbals of your lofty words against your hateful hearts.

When you told those little girls to serve, we did – and we smelled the inbred stench of self-congratulation in your potlucks and church dinners while real people starved outside your doors.

When you told those little girls to read their Bibles and know Christ, we did – and we discovered Jesus. Jesus, who seeks and loves the vulnerable, who empowers the humble, who rescues the world instead of condemning it. Jesus, who was nowhere to be found in your committees and boards and seminaries that preyed on the weak and disregarded the marginalized.

These men hide their greed and lust and passion for power behind their manufactured spiritual authority. Institutions like the Southern Baptist Convention have allowed themselves to become a self-propelled machine of praise and pride, with issues like abuse and racism seen as glitches, not the fuel that keeps it running.

For many of us, it is far easier to stay in the system, to continue the cycles of performative godliness, to convince ourselves that attending church twice a week and hosting a Bible Study and donating to the generic concept of “missions” is what it means to love God and love others. And indeed, none of those are bad. But we’ve been told that comfortably serving God within the system is enough by people who don’t want us to look deeper and discover that the system is broken.

Pastors, professors, leaders in the SBC: I have spent my entire short life hearing you say that the Bible is the inerrant word of God; that reading and teaching from Scripture is the most important thing for every Christian; that we must all live a Biblical lifestyle. Do you take your own advice? Or do the Bible’s words fall on deaf ears and hardened hearts?

When Paul writes, “Live as children of the light…Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them,” what does that even mean to you?

When Christ said, “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea,” did it never occur to you that He could be addressing your repeated choice to silence the children who were abused under your care?

Will you ever have the guts to acknowledge it, repent, and change, or will you dismiss me as “emotional,” “woke,” “out of context,” “liberal,” “misguided,” or whatever the boogeyman of the day may be?

Christ had harsh words for the institutional leaders of his day who emphasized their financial gains over what matters to the heart of God. He said, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness.”

You say you love Jesus, but do you listen when Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me”?

Leaders of the SBC, you’ve had your chance for decades to do what was right by your own beliefs regarding countless men and women who have suffered abuse under your institution. You still, every day, have the opportunity to change your actions, your mindset, your institutional structure, and your heart towards the wounded in your care. To this very day, you still have fought to keep the evils perpetuated by this institution in the dark. But the Light of the World calls you to “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.”

If you say you love Jesus, keep His commandments and pursue justice for every vulnerable member of your community. All you have to show for your work right now are whitewashed tombs. But regardless of your decisions, the light has come. The light is shining on your corruption. Your evils are being exposed.

Because the little ones you tried to silence are silent no more.

I would thank you for teaching me to love the things that fly.

Airplanes, butterflies, clouds, balloons -anything that floats to the sky.

If I could have said goodbye, I would tell you that I know you tried.

You hurt me, yes, but you never lied.

Your love was bigger than you could hold.

You felt so much, but you thought you were cold.

I know you believed fortune only favors the bold.

If I could have said goodbye,

I'd ask you why you never asked why -

Why you, with your huge lion's heart, could only be safe

Living within the extreme of a place?

Why you only could be "all-in" to save face?

If I could have said goodbye,

I'd tell you that it was okay to cry

Over everything and nothing; yes, it's really fine.

One last "I love you" before you died

Would comfort me, if I could have said "goodbye."

Then, about two years ago, the four-part docuseries Shiny Happy People came out on Prime Video. It focused on the Duggar family, famous for their reality tv series “19 Kids and Counting” and now infamous for the heinous crimes of their eldest son Josh, and their involvement in the Institute of Basic Life Principles (IBLP). I devoured it in one sitting because I love cult documentaries.

This one was a lot less fun. I nearly threw up by the end.

This documentary wasn’t just about a fringe group with a fascinating and heartbreaking arc. This was my world. Everything I grew up involved in and being taught was flashing before my eyes on the screen. Even the parts that I had considered less extreme than IBLP or a similar later iteration, Vision Forum, were still right there on the screen. My high school extracurriculars. My volunteer work. My college. All of it fit under one umbrella (joke intended for those who know) to show how interconnected every aspect of my fundamentalist homeschooling upbringing had been. It didn’t help that I was 2 weeks postpartum when it came out and already in a mentally precarious state. So much of my trauma was laid bare for me and broke my brain.

It’s been two years since this happened, and I’m not sure I could have begun talking about the experience until now. I’ve tried to continue working through these things in therapy, I’ve tried to detach from everything that attempted to fit me inside of a suffocating box, and I’ve tried to be a voice for truth and justice within my own home and in the religious community at large. (The latter has not gone so well for me.)

But on November 6, 2024, when I woke up to the news that the country had elected a convicted rapist and felon who was supported by religious apologists within the fundamentalist Christian world, something inside of me shifted. The forces and ideology that I’d run from (or tried to fight against) had just been brought into all 3 elected segments of the USA’s national political administration. And since January 20 of this year, I have been hit with a barrage of names and ideas that I knew once on the fringes now taking charge in the mainstream.

Our current societal moment as a nation has me at a loss. I know so many names, so many ideas, and so many groups, though most of them would not recognize me. I sang “Amazing Grace” in an elevator to Michael Farris and compared Vegemite to pickles with Ken Ham. I’ve been to the Duggars’ house (where Jim Bob told my group that crashed a wedding afterparty, “As we like to say around here, what’s a few more?”). And apparently, I ate salad with Martha Peace.

My point is, I know this world. It is my world. I am not known in it, which is frankly more than fine by me. But as hard as I’ve tried to leave it behind, it now has overtaken our nation. I’ve observed this realm for quite literally my entire life. I exist because of it. But as an observer, not a primary actor, what can I bring other than “I know him” or “I went to their house”? I don’t mean this as a way to fish for compliments about how valuable my experience is. I’m genuinely just wrestling with how shocking it is to continue seeing my little fringe world on the main stage.

I want to be a voice to help my fellow Americans understand what’s happening behind the scenes of this absurd moment. I still speak fluent fundie. But is that my job as the observer? And does it help, or does it unnecessarily center myself?

But sometimes, I come up with my own terms to match my quirky & vivid imagination. One of these is “ghostwriter.” (Probably most closely related to fawn or flight, but really a unique blend of them all.)

My self-appointed position in the world is to be the ghostwriter. I find myself helping people write their stories while silenced by my own role.

Others see the result and say oh, what a beautiful story! How courageous you are to embark on this journey all alone.

And all the while, I am invisibly behind them, the fueler, the funder, the friend - the ghostwriter.

Like a stubbornly placed splinter is the lifelong thought that I have nothing interesting or important of myself to offer. So I offer myself instead to the stories of others.

Lacking a sense of self, boundaries, and personhood is very normal for any survivor of abusive or high-control environments (hello 🙋🏼‍♀️). It was only recently that I could name her, this ghostwriter. And it was only then that she began to tell me her own stories.

I wanted to talk about the tears in my eyes

And how lucky I am that they are only of sadness for the blue and white and red and green tears I see falling in the Holy Land

And not falling on the bodies of my babies

And—

I wanted to write about my preconceived notions of history being destroyed while helplessly watching my tax dollars rip apart families and bodies and schools and mosques and the third oldest church in the world, funded and fueled by the man I voted for to preserve human decency

And I wanted to pray and cry and boycott and paint my entire soul in watermelons and keffiyehs to show every ounce of my support, support not for murderers or against any race, but support for the dignity and lives of humans whose siblings I pray with every week, made just as divinely in the image of God as Christ himself

But there was work to do and dinner to eat and toys to pick up and there wasn’t enough time.

I wanted to drink a whole cup of coffee

I wanted to read some books about history and healing

I wanted to recharge my soul

Not enough time

Not enough time

Not enough time

Lunch?

Brush my hair?

Protest?

Breathe?

There’s not enough time

Not enough time

Not enough.

“God, I thank You that I am not like other men—fundamentalists, homophobes, sexists, or even as this abuser. I’m on a task force to reform my denomination; I donate to the church building fund every year.”

And the abuser, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but wept and beat his chest, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’

I tell you, this man walked away forgiven rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

The West is about rationale, logic, and syllogisms. The East, while no less intellectual, leaves room for mysteries, journeys, and the unknown of the universe - especially the unknown of God.  

That may be the reason I’ve struggled so deeply to summarize my experience with walking away from God as I was given Him in the West, and coming to find Him as I believe He truly is in the East. There are so many buzzwords, dogmas, and concepts that share similar terminology, but are borne out of a different mindset entirely. It’s why the Reformers couldn’t reconcile with the Orthodox, though both sides tried. (Source 1 / Source 2) It’s why attempted discussions between East and West regarding the fall of man, sin, death, resurrection, sanctification, and so forth end up talking right past one another. 

I’m still learning and growing. I have no authority, no expertise, and no formal training. I only know as I have read, discussed with my priest, and experienced. However, many people have asked—and I have promised—to give a rundown of how I got from where I was to where I am today. This is my story and my experience as I can most honestly and succinctly relate it; take it as you will and with no expectation that it speaks for any or all Orthodox converts.

—

Part 1: Packing up and Deconstruction

Hell is what pushed me away from Christ. Hell is what made me want to stop being a Christian. And hell, amazingly, brought me back to Jesus.

Everyone in the Exvangelical world or deconstruction movement or whatever it's being branded today–the ones who were raised Evangelical Christian, believed sincerely, invested deeply, and then left when they had nothing else to give–all have different traumas. We have our different reasons for why we left. We have different sources of hurt, and they’re nuanced and complex and messy. I'm frankly not sure if any one of us could give you a simple answer of why we left. 

Religious trauma is messy because it fills every part of your thinking, every part of physical life, and yet, there's nothing usually that you can demonstrate externally as your proof that you have religious trauma. It just doesn't work that way. For me, the trauma came from teachings on hell. I was so, so afraid of hell. I don't even think it was any one thing that someone said or did that made me fear it. I wasn't living in a home where I was constantly shouted out that I would be sent to hell for doing something wrong (as many I know were). I wasn't in fire and brimstone churches that only ever talked about the world’s eternal condemnation (as many I know were). It was the culture. It was the environment. Everything about the way of life I was raised in taught me fear hell. There were nuanced terms for it all. Had I truly repented? Was I truly part of the elect? Had I submitted myself, had I surrendered myself, had I prayed not just a prayer of “Jesus come into my heart,” but had I truly prayed, and earnestly believed, that I was a broken, broken, broken sinner? It haunted me because I couldn't ever be sure, and everyone had a different answer for how you could in fact be sure (which didn't help). The only thing I could do was try to trust that if this was all true, I had with all sincerity tried to love Jesus, tried to believe in him, and tried to do what he said. 

But at the end of the day, it felt like a prison. I felt like I was being held captive by a Divine overlord who was more than happy at the slightest misstep to throw me into an eternal garbage bin and let the incinerators torture me forever. That was the version of God that I was handed, and I cannot tell you where exactly he came from.

After a while, once in my early 20s, I knew that that wasn't enough. I knew enough people who genuinely didn't believe that there was an afterlife of any kind, and seemed much happier, despite the fact that I was always told I had more peace in my heart because I knew Jesus. They seemed happy and free, and I felt devastatingly trapped. 

And so, alongside social, political, personal, and spiritual circumstances that are an entirely different story, I built up the courage to ask earnestly and truly sit on my questions. I still remember the scene vividly: I was standing in my room in Dongguan, China, when I dared to say out loud, “If I knew for a fact that hell wasn’t real, what would compel me to Christianity?”

The words echoed off of the tile walls and faded into a deafening silence. In that moment, a simple question led to a seismic shift within me. Over time, as I probed these questions further, I realized I came up empty. I had no answer, I had no reason that I believed. There is nothing that drew me to the God that I was given, apart from this terror that he was going to burn me alive (or dead, I guess) if I didn't stick by him.

All emotional encounters, all reflective discussions and readings, all the work I’d done with Christian organizations weren't sufficient anymore. The only thing that compelled me at all really were the scraps of stories that stuck with me about Jesus. But even still, it didn't make sense that the supposedly loving, compassionate God of the universe who made himself man, to truly be God with us, was really just there to be punished through murder by his father God because I was so bad that someone had to suffer. 

I never asked for the sins of Adam and Eve. I raged about this a lot, actually. I never asked to carry the actions of Eve. I couldn't carry the actions of my own parents! I knew that I wasn’t responsible for what they did, yet somehow I was supposed to be responsible and bear the burden and sin and condemnation of the very first humans that ever existed. That made no sense after I started examining it. How does it make sense for God to hate me so much that he would make me and every single human in this world full of potential, full of the opportunity to love and the opportunity to hate, full of the opportunity to do evil and the opportunity to do what's right? It didn't seem possible this God was the Jesus that I read about. So I kept searching. I didn't want to give up right away; I didn't want to just be done. I wanted an answer that actually made sense. 

I explored, and I probed, and I asked questions. I pulled and pushed and I went every different direction, so long as it was moving away from the God of anger that I was so desperate to be free from. And that answer kept eluding me. 

It wasn’t in conservative Anglicanism. It wasn’t in progressive branches. It wasn’t in mainline Protestantism. It wasn’t in Catholicism. I just couldn’t find God to make sense in any of these places. Yet I still wasn't satisfied to leave Christianity altogether. The story of Jesus was one that just wouldn’t let me go. I had all but given up and accepted that I was simply going to have to live in a sort of solitary Christianity for the rest of my life, accepting the tension of being an “agnostic Christian on a good day” as I put it to some.

And then one of my dearest friends, Josephine, asked me if I'd ever heard of the icon and story of the Harrowing of Hell. She told me about this in conjunction with telling me that she had started exploring the East and the Orthodox Church. So I began to probe, and I began to ask questions, and I began to seek out more and more about this Orthodox Church, and their view of hell and their view of God. I dug and asked, why did Jesus come down? What is sin? What does it mean to be a human? What is the Bible? What does it mean to be saved? Is there a Jesus here that makes more sense than the one I was given?

—

Part 2: Coming Home and Reconstruction

I want to be careful in outlining any theology of the Orthodox Church, even though I know that's what a lot of people who have asked about my conversion really don't understand. There are plenty of articles, books, podcasts, and YouTube videos from those far more studied, experienced, and knowledgeable than myself. I will share some of those at the end of this post for those who want to dig or understand more. 

I'm not here to make a defense of Orthodoxy. But I am here to tell you my story of how I came to it. 

So, first and foremost, the thing that pushed me away from Christ that I said led me back: What is hell? 

I couldn't stay with the Jesus who was part of a master plan that consisted of basically being a get out of Hell free card. There was no love in that. But when my friend sent me the icon of the Harrowing of Hell (or Harrowing of Hades), that idea got turned on its head for me. In that story long recognized by both Western and Eastern Christian tradition, it tells of Christ's descent into Hades, the place of the dead controlled by Death itself, after his crucifixion. There is a place for His work even among the dead, not only after His resurrection. The Gospel of Nicodemus narrates the story of Christ bursting open the gates of hell, breaking them down, flooding the place with his radiant glory, setting the captives there free and bringing them with him into eternal life. (You can listen & read it here, if you’re interested.)

In different depictions of the harrowing of Hades, Christ is either looking straight forward or looking down, stretching his hands out to rescue those captive to Death. What particularly struck me was that this compassionate stance is always directed towards Adam and Eve, the first human beings and first to taste death. His victorious rescue reaches back to the very beginning of humanity. They look sorrowful; he has compassion, and he is lifting them out of the grave. He is literally defeating death as he pulls them out from it.

This symbolism, particularly combined with my aforementioned anger at the concept that I was destined to carry the sins of the very first humans in the world, moves me in ways that I still cannot fully express. It is a sense of completion, of wholeness, of love, and of resolution. It is the idea that the son of God actually loved mankind. Not just to the point of death for anyone who believes correctly after his resurrection, but to the point of entering the place of death and rescuing the original, first humans from it; to restore them to life by willingly giving up his.

The question of hell then is not so much about an angry God waiting to throw everyone into lifelong torture. It is much more centered on the participation with, or rejection of, the life of Christ. I’ll outline that below. But there is room even in eternity, even if a soul goes to the place of the dead after bodily death, for God’s grace and redemption to be extended. It’s why Orthodox pray for the souls of the dead. How far His salvation reaches is hotly and widely debated, but the room for mystery and post-death redemption in and of itself provided huge relief for me. The Harrowing of Hades provided my first real glimpse into that possibility.

Another stumbling block for me—if you’ll pardon my expression—was how sin and repentance had been presented to me. But I learned that in the Orthodox tradition, sin is not an individual burden. Sin is the brokenness of the world that came to be through the introduction of death. So to struggle with sin and to say, “Forgive me, a sinner,” was not to say, “Forgive me, currently evil broken person.” It rather meant, “Forgive me for participating in the death of the world; forgive me for allowing myself to be part of the brokenness that faces every single person.” 

Repentance likewise is not the act of wailing and gnashing your teeth and asking an enraged God to consider maybe possibly forgiving you. To the East, repentance includes changing your ways; acting in harmony with God to bring life to the world. That necessarily includes asking forgiveness when a wrong has been committed, but that isn’t the beginning and end of it. Repentance is an ongoing, life-long process of experiencing life and our humanity as it was meant to be. 

Aside from pieces that began healing those past wounds, something that made it easy to embrace “high-church” Christianity was the tangibility of liturgy. It has structure, it is predictable, and it engages every one of my five senses—something my ADHD brain desperately needed after struggling to sit attentively through church services that primarily address your thoughts. In an Orthodox Divine Liturgy, we see and touch the icons. We eat the Holy Mystery of communion. We stand and sit and at times process through or around the church. We smell the incense. We hear, speak, and sing different pieces of the liturgy. This worship incorporates all of my human senses as well as causing me to think on the beauty and majesty that is the Incarnation of Christ. God made us as physical beings, not brains in a jar, and worship that incorporates every part of us just makes sense to me.

Perhaps the last piece of the Orthodox framework (as I understand it) that convinced me the East was safe was how they believe that we humans are actually good. Not that we are sinless, perfect, or incapable of doing wrong. But the Orthodox teach that life and our humanity in its most real form is the synergy of our choices moving us towards God and becoming like Him. This idea is called Theosis, similar to, but not quite the same as the concept of sanctification in Protestantism. It combines the ideas that God’s grace is given to us where we are, exercising humility is central, and we also play a role in choosing whether or not we act on that grace where we are. As I understand it, the goal of the Orthodox life is not to be the holiest and the best at fasting, the best at praying, or the best at giving to charity. It is rather to quietly, simply, and reverently follow God in those ways as we are best capable, and trust that He knows our intentions when we fail externally. While we live our lives trying to be as close to Christ's example and life as we can, there is an understanding that God's grace meets us when we can't or when we don't know better. 

I chuckle now at all of the arguments I see online about whether we are saved through faith alone vs through faith and works—typically expressed in “but the book of Ephesians!” Vs. “but the book of James!” Such a distinction to my understanding is not even present in the Orthodox Church. Salvation is a simple understanding that God loves us, and that we in turn need to draw near to him and love him. This mindset accepts that actions demonstrate our heart, that our actions are a part of our faith, and that ultimately God knows our hearts and God is compassionate. God’s grace, in whatever form, extent, or method He chooses, is what wins the day. We are not responsible for knowing how far or to whom it extends; only to continually be sure that we seek it in earnest for our own sakes.

—

Conclusion

This is the tale of one new, learning, and growing convert into Eastern Orthodoxy. And this is only my experience with finding the Orthodox Church; Daniel’s has been entirely its own aside from us coming to and agreeing together that we would become Orthodox. I hope these pieces of my story for the past 4 years give a bit of clarity for those who are curious. 

I will not be engaging in online debates regarding what I said here, other than perhaps points of correction regarding Orthodox theology. I spent 25 years of my life learning and believing the ins and outs of Protestantism; I am well aware of the arguments against non-Protestant Christianity. I also know that some people who have left Christianity altogether may still not understand how I could stay in it. Please know I understand that this is my responsibility to maintain well and with integrity. I have not turned a blind eye to discrimination, abuse, and greed within Christian communities by choosing to stay a Christian. I believe the Orthodox Church is bigger and stronger than when those evils do occur, and that I can trust her endurance even when her people will inevitably fail.

If you have questions, I’m frankly not a good resource for answering them. I’ll give you contact info for a priest who would be happy to engage with your curiosity or skepticism.

Below are resources, as promised, that I have found helpful over time as I learn and try to understand the Orthodox Church. Most of them were the first books, podcasts, or videos I encountered through this process. I hope they serve anyone who has further curiosities well. 

Thank you for listening to my feeble attempt at grasping and summarizing this large but beautiful piece of my story. It means a lot.

—

Resources:

Becoming Orthodox by Fr. Peter Gillquist — the first book I read about the Orthodox Church, from the perspective of an Evangelical convert 

Bite-sized videos addressing the basics of Orthodoxy: Welcome to the Orthodox Church 

The Harrowing of Hell as read by Fr. Andrew Damick

Blog post by my dear friend Josephine’s priest, a convert himself: http://fromprotestanttoorthodox.blogspot.com/2006/03/this-will-be-only-post-on-this-blog.html

YouTube: The Orthodox Perspective on Original Sin

Info & excerpts re: the Reformers and the Patriarch’s communications: source 1 || source 2

A podcast on understanding the struggles of scrupulosity and fear of hell in the church

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My words have the ability to shout truth over rampant evil. And yet, so many times, they feel like they shout truth into nothing but an empty void. If a tree falls in the forest but nobody is there to hear it—if a woman is baring her soul to her people but nobody listens—did either really make a sound?

I have had so many words for so very long and have said bits of them here and there. But every time I open a blank page to write or type out anything cohesive, the gaslighting comes in. The doubt creeps back. “Why waste your time if nobody will listen? Why bother if your unjust experiences are only met with superficial placations?”

“We want to hear you,” they say. “We want to know what God has done in your life. Your concerns are valid to us.”

Okay, so why did nobody listen and care for me when I was 14 and a peer in my community died suddenly and violently? The adults in my life then cared more about training young girls to be godly homemakers than knowing us as actual humans.

Why did nobody do anything when I was 15 and visibly being stalked, harassed, and assaulted by an adult man? Oh, right, because you were all busy arguing about free will and predestination and splitting our tiny community in half over it.

When I was 16, and my friend told me that sometimes she wanted to pull a knife out of the drawer and plunge it into her chest, there was nobody safe for her or me to tell. You all cared more to shout about Charles Finney and Voddie Baucham and whatever other theological influences you thought should shape the direction of our tiny fundamentalist house churches.

In my junior year of high school, I told a stranger at summer camp in deep shame that I struggled with lust – aka, I masturbated sometimes. They confided back that they also did, and it felt like a one in a million chance for us to connect. It was the first time I didn’t feel like a perverted freak. And it would take until I was 25 years old to learn, outside of a religious context, that nearly every human on the planet masturbates, especially as a kid. Anything remotely sexual was treated as the absolute farthest pit of hell, the worst scum a sinner could scrape up, the deepest scars inflicted onto Jesus’ very body when He came to carry the punishment of sinners like me.

Nobody wanted to hear me then.

How about the multiple suicide attempts within my dorm every year of my college experience? Did you want to listen then? No, you hid and raged and pushed the problem out the door in secret, trying to cover up that anyone in our tiny pressure cooker of a campus could ever possibly struggle with their mental health. You placated us with false hope, saying you’d “look into it” or “create a task force” and then did absolutely nothing further. You looked past the bandages on women’s wrists from literally wanting to die, and you instead told them that their outfits didn’t match dress code.

And then, when I addressed this in my senior testimony, you tried to silence me. It wasn’t a “positive focus” on what God had done over my time at PHC, and a testimony was no place to air my grievances, you said.

Except it was my only opportunity to ever address my peers at-large, and it needed to be said. And so, so many people thanked me for saying it.

How about the time you yelled at me and my friends for being liars and thieves that harmed your ministry’s Christian witness? That time you put cameras into our workspaces without warning or consent? And this all despite yourself being the chief liar, grifter, and thief of the whole organization. We protested and you told us it was to protect the integrity of the ministry. Why, then, did you fire most of the people who you were surveilling, and why did the rest of us quit?

Do you really think I expect to be listened to after all of this?

But I’m not done…

How about the concentration of men who in the last 3 years have publicly “grieved” over the abuse that has occurred in their churches while continuing to cover up new situations? Why do so many of you feel offended that we’re not satisfied when you know that what you’re doing is superficial nothingness? You don’t follow the law, you don’t report to proper authorities, you report the abuses you find convenient as a scapegoat for those you don’t want to see, and you see yourselves as superior to all others in managing the active and rampant abuse & cover-up crisis. Why in the name of all that is holy, a holiness which you try to gatekeep, do you think that I would believe you now?

I have spent my life in earnestness trying to love and emulate the God I know is just, merciful, and good. I have spent time away from Him when these people broke my faith. I have come back when I found the Jesus I loved in new, more real spaces. But I have, my whole life, been as sincere as possible. I see you all as humans and have only ever try to appeal to that humanity that lurks behind walls of religious foolishness.

And you all, you don’t want to hear it. You only want your safe topics and approved problems. There is a mold that our humanity must fit into, otherwise, you ignore us. We can be upset about a controversial song in a worship set, but don’t bring up the unexpected death that just happened in our family. We can protest chapel attendance requirements, but don’t we dare tread on dress code and alcohol policies. We can report curse words being said or lewd conversations, but not sexual assault. We can talk about things within certain bounds, but don’t you dare make us uncomfortable.

But if our words do make you uncomfortable, don’t worry, I know you’ll just ignore us anyway.

And that is why I wonder, though there are things that must be said, if I should even bother to write them.