2023 went by in a blur! Here’s a summary of my writing and advocacy from the last year:
• I started off the year by writing about Martin Luther King Jr.’s interactions with children during the Civil Rights Movement. While reading about the subject, I discovered that, during the 1963 Children’s March in Birmingham, Alabama, around ten thousand children were arrested and jailed for protesting segregation in the United States.
• In February, I wrote an article for Religion Dispatches about homeschool alumna Lila Rose and her promotion of the dangerous myth that queer people are more likely to be sexual abusers of children than other people. Contrary to this myth, the truth is that “study after study has found that queer people do not, in fact, harm children at higher rates than other people. Instead, a very different picture emerges of the average abuser, who, it turns out, is a religious adult male in a heterosexual marriage; in fact, 80 percent to 96 percent identify as heterosexual.” Also in February, I spoke to author and journalist Sarah Stankorb about child liberation theology for an interview on her Substack and about good child protection policies for a blogpost. Lastly, I had the privilege of interviewing Hallie Ray Ziebert on my personal website. Ziebert, the eldest child of Dr. Brian D. Ray (a prominent figure and leader in the evangelical homeschooling movement), told me she was physically abused by her parents. You can read the interview here.
• In March, the print version of my new book on child liberation theology, The Kingdom of Children, was released for pre-order! March also marked the 10-year anniversary of the founding of Homeschoolers Anonymous, so I wrote a reflection on the anniversary. Finally, I had the opportunity to write for Religion Dispatches about the evangelical Christian homeschool speech and debate leagues I participated in as a teenager and which are still highly popular today.
• In May, I was invited to speak for the Secular Coalition for Arizona’s “Who’s Grooming Who” series about how the Right perverts and weaponizes child protection. You can read the speech transcript here.
• Throughout June, I did many things: I interviewed Reverend Benjamin Perry about his new book Cry, Baby and why children have a right to feel, I created a survival guide for homeschool alumni who have recently left home for the first time, I was invited to a live Zoom conversation on child liberation theology hosted by the survivor advocacy organization CFCtoo, and I was interviewed by journalist Jennifer Cohn about Michael Farris and his Christofascist agenda.
• I wrote two pieces for my personal website in July: one about the nuts and bolts of child liberation theology and the other about the unseen children in the Bible. Additionally, my writings on child protection policies were cited by CFCtoo in an article about the dangers of inadequate policies.
• August saw me on the front page of the Washington Post! I was cited by journalists Emma Brown and Peter Jamison in their Washington Post article on Michael Farris and parental rights, “The Christian home-schooler who made ‘parental rights’ a GOP rallying cry.” A quotation from me ended up on the front page, as you can see below:
Also in August, I wrote an article about how advocates of corporal punishment scare and threaten parents into spanking their children. Lastly, Sarah Stankorb referenced my work with Homeschoolers Anonymous in her new book, Disobedient Women: How a Small Group of Faithful Women Exposed Abuse, Brought Down Powerful Pastors, and Ignited an Evangelical Reckoning.
• I had the pleasure of appearing on the Veterans of Culture Wars podcast in October to talk about The Kingdom of Children and child liberation theology. One question in particular that stood out to me from the interview was this: “Did Fred Rogers have a personal theology of child liberation?” As I explained to the hosts, I do think so, because I think child liberation theology is not about abstract ideas but rather the simple yet radical act of treating children humanly and justly—something Mr. Rogers took seriously. You can read more about and listen to the episode here.
• My new book, The Kingdom of Children, was officially published on November 14, 2023! Additionally in November, I was interviewed by several journalists on a variety of subjects: I spoke to Kathryn Post from Religion News Service about my book and child liberation theology and I spoke to Rick Pidcock from Baptist News Global about the “After School Satan Club” controversy and how scaring and threatening children with eternal hellfire is commonplace in evangelicalism. My work on child liberation theology was also cited by author and journalist Nadra Nittle in her new book, bell hooks’ Spiritual Vision: Buddhist, Christian, and Feminist.
• In December, I wrote my seventh article for Religion Dispatches about how the Right has redefined and weaponized children’s rights. I also wrote an article for my personal website about the dismal state of the child protection policies used by homeschool co-ops and organizations.
Thank you to everyone you read, listened to, and interacted with my work in 2023! Your engagement is greatly appreciated. Here’s to the new year!