NEW TITLE ANNOUNCEMENT

Writing is weird - and wonderful ...

Hi Readers,

I wanted to take this monthly newsletter space to share an exciting book update and also just a few reflections about this strange and wonderful and scary writing life.

I’m writing this to you at 8:15 p.m. on a Saturday night in a suburban Minneapolis Panera restaurant, which I’ve chosen as a sort of subversive commentary on the frequency of this restaurant being used as a meeting spot for the sort of Evangelical pastors and leaders whose theology and social views and hypocrisy I frequently lament.

I tried to find an online link explaining why Panera is such a hotspot for retrograde gender views and fundamentalist Christianity, but alas, I couldn’t find one. Is this mostly a Midwest/Southern/suburban thing? I actually live in the city but none of our coffee shops are open past like 5 p.m., and I prefer to write at night …

This is the face of a woman who just submitted her second full-length book manuscript!

Thanks, Panera!

This is for you, Pastor Mark Driscoll!

I just spent the last hour or so re-reading the 80,000-ish words I’ve been writing since I signed my contract in August, and I finally just had to hit <send> to my editor. The good news is that she has already seen the first four chapters, and the publisher still wants the book! We’ve already done some significant shifting of things around, and I know we are in good shape.

In fact, the team at Broadleaf Books is so excited about this book that we’re pushing the publication date forward even sooner than expected, and I have a couple of exciting pieces of news to share.

First, we have a new title - attempting to share more pointedly about this book in just a few words:

DISCIPLES OF WHITE JESUS

The Radicalization of American Boyhood

Like so many things in this wild writing life, the new title came after a few days of literally and figuratively banging my head on the table. I first got a note from my editor during a research trip to Phoenix that our original title, OUR BOYS, was just a bit too prolific and already used in too many places, and she also wanted to find something a bit sharper.

The team at my publisher and me (and my husband, who watched me sit at my computer and stare straight ahead, unblinking, for a few hours one night) spent lots of time and energy and brainstorming, including several Notes entries in my phone, coming up with new ideas. Finally, this one hit - and I knew it was the right one.

Also a shout/out to my writer friend and bestselling author

Sarah Stankorb

, who responded to my frantic brainstorming messages and helped dislodge my myopia into new ideas, especially around the subtitle.

I’ve been sharing this new title here and there, and it feels really right. Here’s a few sentences that help share why …

… when I told people I was writing about boys and men and religion and radicalization, invariably, from New York City to the rural Midwest to Phoenix to South Carolina, they’d look at me with a little twinkle in their eye, and they’d ask: “Are you going to talk about White Jesus?”

As an ordained pastor with a master’s degree in divinity from a Christian seminary, talking about Jesus was kind of one of my specialties. But these folks weren’t asking me for a sermon, or for an explanation of a Bible verse, or even for a prayer. They wanted me to distinguish between the theological and historical brown-skinned Middle Eastern and Jewish Jesus, and the Jesus who is a creation of white American Christianity, a progenitor of the Christian industrial complex that brought us megachurches and celebrity preachers and New York Times bestsellers and the Prosperity Gospel and Donald Trump. White Jesus is to Jesus Christ as Instagram momfluencers and babies are to actual mothers and children. One is a brand meant to sell and control and influence and manipulate and create division and hierarchy. The other is complicated, humble, incarnate, vulnerable, persecuted, redeemed. …

In addition to the new title, we have a new publication date:

MARCH 25, 2025

Oddly enough, this happens to be my 40th birthday. And what a way to celebrate.

(If you’re been reading this newsletter awhile, you might remember that it’s also my mom’s birthday. So it really feels like a special day to launch this book).

Over the next few months, I’ll be sharing a cover reveal (SO EXCITING) and pre-order links. Rest assured, I will share them a lot …

What else can I share with you in the 33 minutes before Panera closes for the night?

Here’s a few photos from my final book research trip, to Phoenix/Scottsdale:

And here’s a few lines about my experience visiting the aforementioned Pastor Mark Driscoll’s new church. He figures fairly prominently in the fourth chapter of the book, so I figured I’d better see him for myself, even though he had long ago blocked me on X (Twitter):

While Driscoll’s early sermons and books at least sound like the work of a true convert, a zealous believer with real intentions to help people meet the Jesus he thought he knew (even if the Jesus he describes is inaccurately violent, angry, and hyper-masculine) the Driscoll I encountered in Scottsdale in 2024 was cynical, faithless, and concerned most with promoting himself and proving his own prosperous bona fides, sliding Jesus in as a sort of side dish to his main course of misogyny, anger, and self-congratulatory remarks. While I didn't see too many traditional “churchy” elements at Trinity, and the worship space was devoid of worshipful or holy spaces marked by crosses or stained glass or holy water, I did see lots of mini-altars to Driscoll himself. Numerous digital signs and flatscreen TVs flashed ways to buy Driscoll’s course material and visit his website. You could also buy his latest books outside the worship center, one entitled War, or t-shirts emblazoned with eagles’ wings motifs and the words “More Fathers,” or “Real Men.” The bookcase with items for sale did not appear to contain any Bibles, or any books written by anyone other than Driscoll himself and his wife, Grace. During his nearly hour-long sermon, which was followed by zero time for communion or musical worship, Driscoll at one point enumerated his son’s reasons for dropping out of Arizona State University, in what appeared to be a cursory plaudit to fire up his audience’s appetite for conservative culture wars.

“He couldn’t do the pronoun thing,” Driscoll said of his son, referring to the practice of listing your pronouns after your name, then going on to share an anecdote about how one of his son’s professors had assigned the class a reading from communist political theorist Karl Marx, who Driscoll called “a mass murderer.” For the record, the German-born Marx was dead 37 years before the Russian Revolution, and while I suppose you could make an argument pinning mass murder in the Soviet Union and Communist China on the communist system, the more accurate blame belongs to dictators Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin, both of whom continue to be lionized and admired in authoritarian Russia and China. But Driscoll wasn't there to critique authoritarian strongmen, of course. He’d rather falsely accuse a political theorist who never killed anyone.

Whew. Much more to say on that … in the book …

What’s Next?

There’s so much more ahead. As I said, we are pushing the timeline for publication, so the next few weeks and month will be full of intense editing and preparation for publication. I have a long list of items that need to be done that are not exactly writing-related, but important nonetheless for people to find the book, like taking new author headshots (maybe after the sun comes out in MN!), revamping my website a bit, and all kinds of other ideas I’ve been contemplating by watching the (incredibly impressive) book launch efforts of other authors, especially

lyz

and

Jo Piazza

— (order their books, This American Ex-Wife and The Sicilian Inheritance (preorder that one)!

I’m also - because life seems to get busy in bunches - about to add on two new ministry responsibilities to my plate at a couple of local churches here in Minneapolis. I am really, really excited and grateful for these new opportunities and to put myself to work as a pastor directly in the local church. More information on those upcoming changes soon. Pray for me!

And, gratefully, work around my first book, Red State Christians, is ongoing. Especially because this is an election year and (as I write this) Donald Trump continues his unfettered romp toward the GOP nomination, step-in-step with leading Christian Nationalists. I am really looking forward to speaking to all sorts of groups this spring and summer, in places like North Carolina, Texas, and of course, all over Minnesota.

If your church or organization would like to learn more about how to understand and fight back against Christian Nationalism, especially through a theological lens, please hit REPLY to this email to find out more about what I do as a speaker, both online and in-person. This work is incredibly important to me and central to my current calling in ministry.

Other than that, I’m watching lots of youth basketball games, trying to figure out how to let my little boys grow up without totally losing my mind, enjoying time with friends and family, and awaiting SPRING in Minnesota (though winter hasn’t exactly lived up to billing this year). I cannot express to you all fully how much this Substack community means and has meant to me in this journey. Writing can feel lonely and weird, and I’m reminded of stories from other moms and writers, like when

lyz

wrote about taking her kids to swim lessons the night her nationally acclaimed new book came out — and how

Erin Khar

wrote about the whiplash that ensues when returning to wipe kitchen countertops after immersing yourself in the world of a writing project. I’m always trying (and sometimes failing) to find that balance of craft and passion and life and ministry and human existence. You all here at Substack help me put those two worlds together, by reading my writing each and every week, and helping me sort it all out. I’m so glad we are here together. More to come soon.

Angela

P.S. …

A Few Notes:

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