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  • Home
  • Come out! Be free!
  • Who I am
  • What I post
  • Books
    • Return to Your Rest: A Spirit-to-spirit Journey
    • We Confess! The Civil War, the South, and the Church
    • The Elijah Blessing: An Undivided Heart
    • The Esther Blessing: Grace to Reign in Life
    • What About Women: A Spirit-to-spirit Exposé
  • Connect
Key Truths

Healing from toxic church – seeking what is precious, and truly God

Bullying/mobbing: Beige wooden peg "people" grouped on dark concrete so that it appears a whole crowd is against one

Sabotage, coerce, shame: Bullying in the church

  • Post published:June 4, 2025
  • Post category:Healing from Toxic Church
  • Post last modified:June 8, 2025

It’s agonizing to be bullied – and it can happen to an adult, in the church. Supposedly godly people, seeking to control, plot to sabotage, coerce, shame.

Continue ReadingSabotage, coerce, shame: Bullying in the church
Plantation house parlor, still richly decorated in antebellum style when photo was taken in 2021.

Sisters uncover cruelty hidden in plain sight

  • Post published:March 23, 2025
  • Post category:From: We Confess!
  • Post last modified:May 28, 2025

Decades ago, Sarah and Angelina Grimké told the truth with compassion and courage. Still today, the sisters can help us uncover cruelty hidden in plain sight.

Continue ReadingSisters uncover cruelty hidden in plain sight
Print from 1882: A farmer with horse and wooden plow, is tilling a field - and apparently without knowing it, has turned up a human skull.

Isn’t it time to leave the past behind?

  • Post published:February 8, 2025
  • Post category:From: We Confess!
  • Post last modified:May 23, 2025

God wants to lift from our shoulders staggering burdens that generations have needlessly carried. He wants to show us the way to send away the past that binds.

Continue ReadingIsn’t it time to leave the past behind?
Celebrity! An appealing haze of sparkles, bubbles and baubles obscures whoever and whatever might actually be in the picture.

Celebrity culture in the church

  • Post published:May 11, 2023
  • Post category:Healing from Toxic Church/My Story
  • Post last modified:June 8, 2025

It’s so enticing, and so much a part of the US evangelical church culture. Yet the lure of celebrity can deceive us into agreeing with much that is not God.

Continue ReadingCelebrity culture in the church
Rejection: Unsmiling woman wearing dressy top and beaded necklace, giving thumbs down

When church leaders bully people and reject God

  • Post published:May 30, 2022
  • Post category:Healing from Toxic Church/My Story
  • Post last modified:June 8, 2025

The day I realized what I had been seeing for years, it broke my heart: church leaders bullying people, rejecting God, leading their followers to do the same.

Continue ReadingWhen church leaders bully people and reject God
From cover of Return to Your Rest: new growth on a tree, with slender green leaves

The blessing of rest

  • Post published:January 21, 2022
  • Post category:From: Return to Your Rest/My Story
  • Post last modified:March 12, 2025

Real rest is so different from what I had thought. It’s so much more expansive, and desirable, and enjoyable. And it’s so very vital. Thing is, I desperately needed real rest long before I knew I needed it. I had no clue how rest-deprived I was.

Continue ReadingThe blessing of rest
"We are better than this!" says a sign held high by a blonde woman in a cream coat and pink gloves. She stands near the rear of a crowd that has gathered under gray skies and leafless trees. Some others hold signs we cannot read.

Four questions – about Trump, Evangelicals, self-deception and the Civil War

  • Post published:January 6, 2021
  • Post category:From: We Confess!/Healing from Toxic Church
  • Post last modified:May 21, 2025

A true story from the past it seems important to tell. Four questions about the present it seems important to ask.

Continue ReadingFour questions – about Trump, Evangelicals, self-deception and the Civil War
Twin waterfalls flowing as one, in a lush green setting at Ricketts Glen State Park, Benton, Pennsylvania

The great righteousness-justice divide

  • Post published:October 24, 2020
  • Post category:From: We Confess!/Healing from Toxic Church
  • Post last modified:May 21, 2025

Ultimately, collectively, the church quenched the Spirit’s voice in order to embrace the society’s values. The church began to preach - and to try to live - a righteousness unencumbered with justice. But. God.

Continue ReadingThe great righteousness-justice divide
Closeup of cannon from the cover of my book, We Confess! The Civil War, the South, and the Church

Tell us about past events

  • Post published:June 6, 2020
  • Post category:From: We Confess!
  • Post last modified:August 1, 2024

What one bewildered, battered woman found, and dared to write, before patterns from the past began to replay in the present in such a visible, alarming way.

Continue ReadingTell us about past events
One man following another man at sunset by the sea

When Christian leaders omit the obvious

  • Post published:December 21, 2019
  • Post category:Knowing and Going with God
  • Post last modified:June 8, 2025

Even a cursory look at all levels of leadership in US churches, denominations, networks and ministries reveals that what should be foundational is often absent. Many leaders do not know how to follow God.

Continue ReadingWhen Christian leaders omit the obvious
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Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version (NIV) 2011.

  • Home
  • Come out! Be free!
  • Who I am
  • What I post
  • Books
    • Return to Your Rest: A Spirit-to-spirit Journey
    • We Confess! The Civil War, the South, and the Church
    • The Elijah Blessing: An Undivided Heart
    • The Esther Blessing: Grace to Reign in Life
    • What About Women: A Spirit-to-spirit Exposé
  • Connect
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