Every 9-11 for the past 20 years, I weep when I remember the smoke coming from the Pentagon with the sound of fighter jets and helicopters swirling above. I remember the live footage of the towers falling that morning while standing across a crowded room from a young woman who had a loved one inside one of them. I never saw her again, but I will always wonder if her relative survived. I will never forget her face. I will also remember an interfaith prayer service an hour or so later. I was in uniform, and I remember opening my eyes during prayer to see my hands tremble in anger. I will always remember that day and the 2,977 civilians who died.

I also recall how things changed immediately after 9-11. The ROTC upperclassmen and the Army instructors began talking about “going to war.” As we held deactivated M16s and wore camouflage fatigues, the tone and intensity of the weekly role-playing scenarios in a nearby park became more dark and serious. I suddenly began hearing dehumanizing language towards foreigners. One course instructor led a close combat drill where he told the assembled cadets what to do when encountering an unconscious enemy combatant. He instructed us cadets to “kick the guy in the nuts as hard as you can to see if he’s still alive. If he moves, double tap him in the head.” No one spoke up. I didn’t.

Double tap means to shoot the incapacitated enemy combatant twice. To be clear, this was only a drill. Yet, a veteran of past failed wars was instructing officers of future failed wars to commit a war crime, a summary execution that would be at odds with the Geneva convention and the “rules based international order” for which we claim to fight. Weeks later I was injured running with the Army Ten Miler Team. I was kicked out of the program.

Every 9-11, I imagine what life would have been like without that injury and how I would have acted in the field of combat. Every 9-11, I feel such mixed feelings: I deeply regret not serving. Yet, on 9-12, I will always remember what has happened since.

While I couldn’t serve because of my injury, as a citizen and taxpayer in this democracy, I still do have blood on my hands. Every 9-12, I remember the 244,000 civilians who died in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan alone. Even the right-leaning Cato Institute calls this number an underestimation. This also doesn’t include the destabilization and destruction we directly caused in many other countries, especially Syria, Libya, and Yemen. In all theaters of this endless and sprawling war, a conservative estimate brings the total civilian death count to 335,000 innocent men, women, and children. The true civilian cost of the amorphous “War on Terror” is much higher. While most Americans suffered the mild inconvenience of increased TSA checkpoint scrutiny as a result of 9-11, our military interventions abroad have caused the displacement of 38 million civilians. This forced movement of civilians is larger than that of all wars since 1900 with the exception of World War 2. Was it worth it? What was gained? 

Every 9-12, I remember how that the well-meaning “never forget” sentiment I hear incessantly the day before does a lot of forgetting. At some point in last 20 years, “never forget” became synonymous with collective amnesia and indifference. Not caring about all subsequent civilian deaths is a disservice to the 2,977 civilian victims in our country whose memory was cynically invoked as a causus belli for America’s longest, costliest, and most counterproductive war.

In fact, “never forget” seems to forget the fact that most of the families of the 9-11 victims couldn’t rely on their own government and took matters into their own hands: today 2,000 of these families are still in court to expose our “ally” Saudi Arabia’s involvement in 9-11. “Never forget” really means a gradual forgetting of our values, our Constitution, and our civil liberties at home. Abroad, “never forget” hides a slow forgetting of the universal morality to which we once aspired as a country. Our high water mark was in 1945 when we helped establish the “rules based international order,” which we’ve abandoned over the decades in favor of the solipsism of that befalls all empires. The towers were not the only thing to fall on 9-11.

Some might ask, how can you connect the loss of civilian life at home to the loss of civilian life abroad? How can I not? How can I not see the intrinsic worth of all civilian life beyond arbitrary political, racial, cultural, or geographic boundaries? Furthermore, if I am really a follower of Christ, aren’t I supposed to extend empathy beyond my biology and nationality? Isn’t that the point of the parable of the Good Samaritan?

I can connect state abuses abroad and state abuses at home because of the least common denominator of racism. We wildly devalue and even ignore the body count from state violence at home and abroad because we see these victims as less-than-human. That very discounting or downplaying of another’s humanity is the very core of racism.

READ: Faith Leaders Gather in Houston in Response to Gun Violence

Our indifference to civilian deaths caused by the US abroad is directly tied to the same racism that emboldens police to indiscriminately shoot minorities at a higher rate. For me it is impossible to just mourn the tragedy of 1,000 or so yearly victims of state violence here while not also mourning the 16,750 civilians who have died every year, year after year, for the past 20 years because of the very same state’s violence abroad. It’s connected. Does morality stop at the water’s edge or some arbitrary boarder? What sort of morality would that be?

On 9-12, I remember my utter surprise at how dozens of even my “liberal” friends – many who have Black Lives Matters signs on their suburban front yards – have directly dismissed my concern about the dead civilians abroad and my insistence upon their full humanity.

“Those civilian casualties are different,” one allegedly “woke” white friend said. “They were not our citizens,” he insisted.

How is a dark skinned victim of state violence at home any different than a dark skinned victim of state violence abroad? Do foreign families weep for their loss any less than American families? Isn’t it the same racism that has led to indifference of the state’s violence at home and the same state’s violence abroad? Both our empire abroad and police abuses at home have direct antecedents in the concept of settler colonialism, marked by slavery of Africans and genocide of native peoples (both of which required the prerequisite of racism to allow perpetrators see the victims as “less than human”).

How – for example – is the Haditha massacre (where Marines killed 24 unarmed innocent civilians in cold blood) any less evil than similar state violence at home? It’s the same shoot-first/questions-later approach. It’s the same dehumanization process that precedes most acts of human violence. Does it matter what passport an innocent civilian holds?

On 9-12, I remember that we have responded to the very real trauma of 9-11 with the civilian equivalent of nearly six 9-11’s per year, every year, for the past 20 years. Why do so many ration their tears, mourning only 0.8% of the total civilian casualties because of the arbitrary fact they held American citizenship? And given how an average of 15,750 more dark-skinned civilians have died each year for the past 20 years abroad than die from state violence at home, why do many on the left resist adding a robust anti-war and anti-imperial element to a broader anti-racist coalition, just as MLK Jr. called for in his almost universally condemned  “Beyond Vietnam” speech? Perhaps the centrist war hawk Democrat is the modern equivalent of MLK Jr.’s “white moderate?” 

King made a moral and financial link between the misdeeds of empire abroad and their intimate connection to the misdeeds of empire at home. He knew that dollars diverted abroad are directly related to the same as dollars denied at home. MLK Jr. saw the internal moral rot that befalls all empires. He was literate in what Jesus preached, that to be a follower of Christ means you no longer have an “other” in your politics and morality.

He knew that love and empathy ought not stop at the parochial and arbitrary boundary of a tribe, a race, or a nation state. The Jesus who informed King’s politics was clear about extending empathy towards those outside of his tribe and re-humanizing those who have been deemed to be “less than” human. Just as the FBI hounded and harassed MLK Jr. before his death, Jesus was of course also targeted by the empire of his day for his radical message that inverted the script of the normal human tendency towards intertribal barbarism. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they need all the help they can get.

On 9-12, after I mourn both our 2,977 victims and the at least 100 times more civilians who died abroad than died here on 9-11, I remember the $5.4 to $6.4 trillion spent on the longest, costliest, and most counterproductive war in American history. (This could pay for the spending of even the most radical left-wing domestic proposals out there today, yet both Republicans and centrist Democrats call for brutal austerity.)

Isn’t there a moral difference between the deficits spent abroad in military defeats and the ongoing cost of 800 plus military bases worldwide compared to deficits that could be spent investing in people, their infrastructure, their healthcare, and their education? If a nation’s budget is a moral document, our moral priorities are laid bare.

Trillions are spent abroad in an endless succession of military defeats while our bridges collapse, tent cities of homeless swell, and 17 million children suffer food insecurity. While 40% of US aid to Afghanistan is now in the hands of criminals, warlords, drug lords, and insurgents, our government bails out banks, defense contractors, and “corporate citizens” first.

In the words of King, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” I would only argue that “defense” might not be an accurate way to describe what happened in the ensuing two decades.

On 9-12, I remember the strategic incompetence of the “experts” of our bipartisan foreign policy establishment who rotate through the revolving door between the Pentagon, industry-funded “think tanks,” defense contractors, and oil and gas corporations. This conflict was designed – legally and strategically – to combat terrorism (an ancient tactic that will always exist as long as nation states do) instead of any one state actor. It was meant from day one to have its center nowhere and circumference everywhere, an embodiment the same Military Industrial Complex nightmare feared by President Dwight Eisenhower. After an awkward soul-searching decade of America not having an external enemy after the unanticipated implosion of the USSR, 9-11 gave the “defense” establishment exactly what was needed: justification for permanent war mobilization. The War on Terror metastasized into a War of Terror.

Every 9-12, I remember the lies from the Pentagon of multiple administrations who knew from as early as the second half of the Bush administration that the war was not winnable. I remember Obama’s continuation of this delusion, the surge, and his drastic escalation of drone warfare based on legal gray zones, the same sort of creative legal carve outs created during the Bush administration. I remember the distraction and destruction that was the second Iraq war, and the directly-related destabilization of regimes like Syria.

I remember Fallujah, white phosphorus being used around civilians, and Abu Ghraib. And, I will especially remember that nearly 20 years ago, just months after 9-11, the Taliban tried to broker a deal with the Bush administration to hand over Osama bin Laden, an offer which was quickly rejected outright. As I write this the Taliban has rejected an attempt by the US to give the civilian evacuation effort more time. While that is tragic, I can’t ignore the tragedy that the best time to negotiate with the Taliban – when we had all the cards after bombing started – was in 2001. Such negotiation was attempted but rejected by the US. Any student of history should not be surprised that every empire is susceptible to the fatal flaw of hubris.

The founders and framers based their cautious optimism for our Republic on the assumption of highly educated public. That is nearly impossible when our corporate media has been distracting and entertaining us instead of informing us. (No, liberals, while Fox is egregious, it’s not just Fox). Your favorite columnist and TV show personality has been feeding you the Pentagon’s propaganda instead of speaking truth to power. If history is any guide, in a decade or so another crisis will be used as a justification to maintain and expand the budget of a military that already outspends the next ten countries combined yet still can’t manage to decisively end a conflict on favorable terms since 1945. The very amnesia behind “never forget” will make the repetition of history inevitable.

Big flags cast big shadows. We must have the moral imagination to illuminate these shadows. In the last 20 yeas we have become much more similar to the Roman Empire described in the gospels than we are to the radical moral vision of Jesus, whose ministry had everything to do with the social injustice caused by Rome and it’s collusion with the religious establishment of his day. At ballgames and commemorative events many politicians parrot the platitude that we are “one nation under God,” without stopping to wonder which God? The one who commanded us to love the other before he was executed by the empire of his day? Or Mars, the Roman god of war and empire? Or Baal? Or mammon? Or power? Or the U.S. flag? Or Trump? Why are those who like to call us a “Christian nation” the very same people who are so very un-Christ like in their politics and morality?

If we only see the victims on our side of an arbitrary tribal, geographic, or political boundary, our morality is closer to the Neanderthals than a species who may have prematurely named itself Homo sapiens sapiens, or wise wise human. There is no “other” in the politics of someone who really follows what Jesus preached. We must re-humanize the dehumanized “other.” We must tear the veil that surrounds the tribe and practice empathy where it is difficult to do so. We must question and confront the inherited human impulses towards parochial tribalism, narrow self interest, and intertribal brutalism.

Jesus was tortured and executed by the empire of his day for this very message. This irony seems to be especially lost on mainstream Christians in this country who – of all things – overwhelmingly support the use of state torture. They were joined by the “New Atheists” who also helped sell the war and its related human rights atrocities. Should we at all be surprised when the injustices abroad are mirrored at home? It’s the same racism, it’s the same state, it’s the same tax dollars, it’s the same myopic morality, it’s the same voters, it’s the same apathy and indifference, so where is the same outrage? Racially-motivated state violence towards innocent civilian life must be called out no matter where it happens.

I have more than enough tears to shed for civilian victims on both sides of arbitrary imaginary lines. This 9-11, let us shed a tear for our own victims. On 9-12, let us also mourn those whom we have victimized in the past 20 year quagmire. On 9-12, let us remember our amnesia. I hope you will join me in a boundless morality that doesn’t stop at the ocean’s shore. A morality that illuminates the shadows cast by big flags. A morality overflowing with empathy. A morality that emulates Christ instead of many emulating the “Christians” who often seem so Christ-illiterate. A morality that doesn’t ration its tears domestically or close its eyes abroad.

This is the higher path to which Jesus pointed, a morality that isn’t afraid of crossing imaginary lines on maps or in our hearts.

In “the war of northern aggression” – as many of my teachers called it – the  steeple that I used to play in was used as a lookout by Confederate troops. The adjacent building where I attended Sunday School was used in 1898 as the rallying point for a violent white mob as well as the repository for the weapons used during their violent coup d’etat. They murdered dozens if not hundreds of African Americans in a successful effort to re-establish white supremacy. (This was part of the same backlash to Reconstruction that inspired most Confederate monuments across the south.) I often wonder how many of that violent mob worshiped in the same church I did. I wonder how many were submerged in the same baptismal. I wonder how many thought God was on their side.

On Sundays, we received not only communion but also confirmation that our community was on the good team in the culture wars. Most of the role models I looked up to and people I knew are now part of Trump’s loyal base, the 81% of white evangelical Christians who voted for him. They see Trump as flawed, but like King Cyrus in the book of Isaiah, his rough edges are forgiven because he’s doing “God’s work.”

The first time I thought about Christian Resistance was in my fundamentalist days. I came across a family secret when I found a book, written by a Catholic nun who helped to smuggle contraband into Dachau for the Catholic prisoners there. I was shocked to read that my deceased great grandfather was the accountant at Dachau, Nazi Germany’s first concentration camp. Apparently he aided the nun for a brief period, which I suspect had something to do with the removal of his name from a war crimes indictment after the war. 

How could I – an American and a Christian – be related to a Nazi war criminal? I spent years talking to family members, visiting concentration camps, digging through Army war crimes trial documents, and reading about the rise and fall of the Third Reich. I became an amateur scholar of fascist movements as I studied my ancestor’s involvement. Could it happen here, or is America uniquely safe from fascism?

I disagree with direct comparisons between the Shoah (or Holocaust) and any other historical event. The atrocities from 1941 to 1945 are unparalleled in their unimaginable scope and scale. However, I believe it is fair and necessary to make a comparison between the disintegration of German democracy to our precarious democracy today. The analogy makes itself when Trump openly floats the idea of postponing an election. Democracy is under attack. Fragile norms are being shredded and strong institutions weakened. Hate is on the rise: what used to be subtly dog-whistled is now being shouted at the bully pulpit. We are one Tweet away from the president encouraging well-armed supporters to take matters into their own hands. If this seems unlikely, recall that a heavily armed group used the threat of violence to halt legislative business in the Michigan state legislature without being confronted by the police. Imagine what such unchallenged militias could do before, during, and after election day. Our laws, institutions, and norms are more fragile than they appear.

In confronting my ancestor’s involvement in the Third Reich I slowly began to realize that certain factors can lead any democracy into fascism. I also stumbled upon a paradox that is surprisingly relevant to saving our democracy today. On one hand, in Germany the Christian church utterly failed to confront the Nazis. Yet, on the other hand, many of those rare Germans who did resist were directly inspired by their Christian faith. What does one make of that paradox? How can the same faith lead some to courageous resistance yet so many others to complicity, compliance, and complacency?  This same paradox is familiar to any student of American history: how is the same faith that perpetuated slavery and white supremacy also the same faith that inspired both the abolition and Civil Rights movements? Are both sides following the same Jewish rabbi? 

READ: The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump

This paradox has troubled me even more over the past few years. People with whom I used to worship – white evangelical Christians – are suspiciously silent as migrant children are ripped from their parents’ arms and put in cages. Non violent protesters are being detained and “disappeared” off the street without cause, explanation, or due process. Recently, Trump used the military to clear out a peaceful protest in Washington, DC – using methods prohibited under international law – in order to stage a cynical photo op in front of a church he does not attend, holding a Bible whose teachings he does not follow. Where is the Christian outrage against the government tyranny that we were warned about from the pulpit over the past few decades?  With a few exceptions, the response from mainstream American Christianity has been silence.

Despite my dour view of our civic predicament, I cling to a hope that just enough Christians might be Christ-like in this 11th hour of American democracy to make some difference. I cling to this hope because, while studying those brave few who resisted the Third Reich, I saw that frequently their resistance was based on their faith. How can we learn from this and amplify such resistance? 

When I wonder “what would Jesus do?” to confront fascism, I can think of no better example than Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was an otherwise run-of-the-mill theologian who became radicalized by his literal reading of the gospels to the point where he joined the “antifa” (i.e. anti-fascist) movement of his day. Just days after Hitler came to power, he went on radio warning that the new Führer would be a Verführer (“misleader” or “seducer”). He was central to the Confessing Church, which opposed the regime and its attempt to “Make Germany Great Again.” He even joined a plot against Hitler, knowingly risking his life. He was caught, imprisoned, and hanged just weeks before the end of the war. He paid the ultimate “cost of discipleship” and practiced what he called “costly grace.”

Much has been written about Bonhoeffer, but I can distill it into a simple Tweet-length sentence: Bonhoeffer took seriously what Jesus preached on the Sermon on the Mount. He was a fundamentalist in the one area Jesus said it matters. It was Bonhoeffer’s Christ-like example that helped me find a deeper meaning in Christ’s teachings than I ever knew as I walked out of the baptismal decades ago at First Baptist Church.

Today we live in dark times. Just as Bonhoeffer faced evil all around him, we face compliance, complicity, and complacency all around us, especially in evangelical circles. But that’s why it is so important to think about Christ’s unique message. The gospel according to Jesus is the opposite of the gospel according to Trump. Where Jesus preached confrontation with power, Trump calls for blind obedience to power and admiration of foreign dictators. Jesus warned about the corrosive nature of wealth; Trump worships at that altar. Jesus pointed towards a higher power and authority above and beyond Caesar; Trump and his frail ego demand unquestioning worship of him as Caesar. Jesus commanded his followers to love the least amongst us, to love the unlovable, and embrace the other; the gospel according to Trump channels fear, hatred, envy, and resentment towards the least amongst us, calling us to hate the other, and mock the weak. As Jesus said, you can not “serve two masters.” You can’t follow Trump and Jesus, you have to choose. You either build bridges or you build walls. 

Today it takes little imagination to see things getting worse before they get better. Even if Trump is defeated in November (an uncertain outcome), he could still cause immeasurable and permanent harm to our democracy in the months before his departure. There is also ample work to do if he loses: many of Trump’s abuses are built upon a framework that existed for decades prior. There has never been a better time to imagine a Christian Resistance. What does it look like? What does it call us to do? What could it accomplish?  At the national level, there are groups like Red Letter Christians and Christians Against Hate who are doing the hard work. But what about in our small daily spheres of influence? Can a little “grain of mustard seed” do anything to stop evil?

I believe we can move a mountain. I’m not saying you have to physically stand up to Nazis like clergy did at the 2017 “Unite the Right“ rally in Charlottesville, VA. I am saying our civic responsibility is larger than casting a vote. Maybe it means not being a bystander. Maybe it means disobeying an immoral order from those with power or protecting someone without. Maybe it means loving someone cast aside as “less than” by our hyper-individualistic and materialistic society. Maybe it means loving someone who had been on the receiving end of hate. Perhaps it simply means having difficult conversations in your daily life, or re-humanizing someone that society has dehumanized. If at any point you need inspiration, Jesus was no stranger to difficult conversations and radical empathy.

Christian Resistance will look different for each person, but what unifies it is the teachings of Jesus that so profoundly influenced Bonhoeffer. To be a real Christian is to carry the cross of being Christ-like. Like Bonhoeffer, we must be prepared to let love move us in bold, radical ways in the uncertain times ahead. 

“I think we need to do a better job speaking to our values, wherever they come from. We’ve left a values void. As an individual — as a citizen — I need to do a better job speaking up about how my religious and philosophical values inform my civil values. I think … “

Before I could finish, I was interrupted by someone who had just lost a state senate seat. “No, Obama showed us that what we are doing is working. He won twice.”

I was so flabbergasted I couldn’t respond. Her perception was a world away from the facts on the ground. In the same time period where Obama “won twice,” the GOP won more than 1,000 state House and Senate seats, a reality that will have implications for decades from now even if we can reverse this tide.

What I wanted to say that night was that the Left has left a huge void that has been filled for decades by so-called “values voters.” We’ve completely ceded the high ground of religious and “values-based” language to white, conservative, evangelical Christians.

Growing up Southern Baptist, where the church hosted “prayer breakfasts” with politicians and had massive Fourth of July celebrations, I saw the ascendancy of the Religious Right in the 80s and 90s. I never once heard a counternarrative. What if I and others had heard a counternarrative? What if more people has spoken up about the fundamentally political message of Jesus Christ, who preached radical bold empathy and commanded his followers to love the unlovable?

What is so odd is that many politicians on the Left are highly religious. Yet, so many politicians on the Left don’t express their religious values publicly. I know this silence comes from a good place. It comes from a more cosmopolitan worldview and also from civic values that honor what Jefferson called a “wall of separation” between church and state. But,we’ve left this “values” void to be filled by those with fundamentally un-Christlike values. While the institutions of church and state obviously should be kept separate (for the benefit of both church and state), that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about how our religious or philosophical values inform our political values.

Because of this void, we’re now faced with the fact that 81 percent of evangelicals voted for Trump, a thrice married racist and probably the most un-Christlike personality imaginable. He’s almost a cartoonish caricature of the exact type of person Jesus railed against. But something that night made me want to speak up.

READ: When Worship is Resistance: Hymn for the 81%

Like George W. Bush, my favorite political philosopher is Jesus Christ. Even though I departed from my Southern Baptist upbringing, I still think about the amazing teachings and parables of Jesus. Yet, Jesus informs my civic values in a much different way than Bush. Jesus called for a bold, radical, preemptive empathy that the world needs badly right now. He called for us to love the unlovable. So after that night, I decided to run an experiment and have difficult conversations. I decided to speak up and write.

To the surprise of many of my liberal friends in our very conservative valley, I got articles published in the “conservative” paper quoting Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. I had theological debates about the true meaning of the parable of the Good Samaritan with the editor of that same paper, a man who many of my liberal friends only had disdain for. I might not have changed his mind, but I did walk across a cultural bridge. I refused to cede the high ground of “values” to those who seem to have an abridged Bible that doesn’t include what Jesus actually said. Then the more liberal weekly magazine published the same article.

So I aimed a bit higher. At the statewide level in the Montana Post, I outed Congressman Greg Gianforte (the same guy who famously sucker-punched a journalist) and many other Montana politicians for giving money to a white supremacist in my town. But I went further than just saying that giving money to a white supremacist is bad (that used to be a given just a few years ago). I also said that a so-called Christian is being “un-Christlike” for supporting hate. Then, in another article, I went a step further and explained that everything I need to know about Congressman Gianforte I learned in Sunday School. Now, my spirituality is vastly different than Gianforte’s fundamentalism. I didn’t change his mind. Yet, I was approached by many people who thanked me for not leaving the values void to be filled by people who think the world was created just over 5,000 years ago, that immigrant families should be separated, and their kids locked in cages.

I’ve since moved to Oregon, but I’m sharing this because I learned a lot about my fellow citizens and myself when I decided to have difficult conversations. Democracy is the ultimate DIY project.

I can bear witness that a bit of effort to speak to your values and to have some uncomfortable conversations will transform you and others. Once I spoke up, a few of my friends and relatives were influenced to speak up in their own lives. I can’t measure the outcome of these conversations, but I do wonder what would be the net result of only a few thousand people making “what would Jesus do” arguments in the public sphere.

Maybe this so-called Christian nation could actually be slightly more Christlike. Maybe we could change a few minds. All it takes is to increase the 19 percent of evangelicals who didn’t vote for Trump by just a few percentage points. Perhaps it is what Jesus called “faith like a grain of mustard seed” which can grow to move mountains.

But I was even more shocked by the transformation in my life after I spoke up. A few friends from across the country would see my posts on social media and would reach out to me. I had many profound conversations with a friend from North Carolina who had a similar upbringing to me, but with whom I had until then avoided speaking about religion. But she turned me on to a national community of ex-fundamentalists who share my distaste for fundamentalism, yet share a love for what Jesus preached. Before I spoke up, I felt utterly alone and confused (e.g. why do I always feel such a strong need to speak up against hypocritical Christians who are being so un-Christlike). But once I spoke up, I found my community. (If you are a recovering fundamentalist, stop what you’re doing and check out both the Liturgists podcast and Red Letter Christians.)

Democracy isn’t only based on voting every two or four years. Rather, it’s based on difficult conversations in between. If we don’t fill the “values voters void,” someone else will. It’s time to save the message of Christ from the Religious Right. Enough is enough.