The first week of January 2020, I wrote this post
but stopped short of publishing it.

The first week of June 2020, God reminded me
it still sat, waiting to be posted.
He let me know, “It’s time.”

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I’ve done something I had to fight through to do. I reformatted the Kindle version of the book that has cost me by far the most – to write, to publish, to own as mine. Just mentioning the title has gotten me shut down and shut out more times than I can count.

One Christian counselor asked for a copy of the book, and after perusing it, suggested I not tell anyone about it. Many have agreed with her, and usually not as gently. Many have shamed me for writing about a past that my church culture does not want to see. Others have shamed me because, in their view, I didn’t challenge the church culture enough.

I do not see perfectly. Not even close. But I want to see. I’m learning to see. And I will not choose to unsee profound mistreatment of people and profound dishonoring of God.

So, humbling my soul once again, I made the changes needed and published the updated e-book. I did it because I had waked up with a sense of urgency at the dawn of the year. The urgency seemed to be from God. I don’t understand why it would be. The Lord knows my self-published title and its self-publishing author have been largely rendered invisible.

But understand it or not, I believe the Lord was urging. And I believe this message matters, and its timeliness is even more apparent now than when I first began to say it.

Here are more thoughts on that, published January 2020 as the “Author’s Note” in the reformatted e-book.

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Tell us about past events,
so that we can reflect on them
and understand their consequences.
– Isaiah 41:22 CJB

We Confess! The Civil War, the South, and the Church brings to light a tragic past with profound parallels in the present.

I wrote and published We Confess in 2011, the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. Just six years earlier, I had resigned from a ministry position in the Southern Baptist Convention, battered by the abuse I experienced there. A year after that, I’d walked away from the denomination where I had been active my entire life.

Desperate to understand what I had seen and experienced, I began to research the history that ultimately made its way into this book. I was appalled by the breadth, the depth and the enormity of the issues hidden in plain sight – issues the white church in the Deep South had not addressed.

I came to view the Civil War anniversary as a four-year window of opportunity, a time for us to look again at a past that has never been resolved; to see, to confess and to turn.

I still had much to learn, much to unlearn. And yet, We Confess is something of a miracle book. For one thing, it’s astonishing how very much I saw in such a short time. But more, it’s astonishing that I found the strength to say it.

I wrote We Confess while living in the geographical center of the former Confederacy, with huge pressure from all sides to abandon the project. When I did press in to finish and publish it, I became anathema, one to be shunned. Even the few who had encouraged me as I wrote, who had actively helped to hone the message, disappeared after the book was published, when the cost of speaking up became clear.

If you read We Confess, you’ll see how and when the type of Silencing that I’ve experienced came to characterize this church culture. You may also see ways an unresolved past is repeating itself in your family, your church, your life.

I hope you’ll also see the bigger picture. For, today, this work is relevant in ways I could not have foreseen when I wrote it.

Shortly after the Civil War anniversary ended in 2015, political events in the US took a dramatic turn. The nation’s evangelical white church culture has placed itself squarely in the midst of that drama. Across the US, people who name Jesus as Lord have resolutely championed much that defies what they would say they believe, much that batters other people in Jesus’ name.

Bewildered, many have asked, “Where did that come from?”

We Confess offers answers that 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.

As these current events unfold, another stark reminder comes to light: The choice not to confess, not to turn, is serious. It results in a new hardening, a new re-enacting.

We Confess tells about past events, so that you can reflect on them and understand their consequences. So you can choose a different way.

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We Confess! The Civil War, the South, and the Church

The newly formatted Kindle version contains a few corrections and updates, the biggest of which are this Author’s Note and an updated author bio. I also changed the language in a few places to clarify that the sexual issues addressed in We Confess focus on sexual abuse by people in power.

Otherwise, this is my cry as I originally sounded it.

See also

• The Civil War, the South and the church
• The great righteousness-justice divide
• Can we talk about shame?
• How do I tell you?
• This “good Christian girl” is a woman now
• Four questions – about Trump, Evangelicals, self-deception and the Civil War