By Dustin Staggs

Purity culture has an influence outside of religious circles, hurting the physical and mental well-being of evangelical women like Taylor Goff, whose journey from emotional trauma to being diagnosed with vulvodynia reveals the overlooked complexities of pelvic pain care. 

Taylor Goff, 26, sits outside Trailside Coffee Company in Springdale, drinking her “Just Peachy” smoothie—words that could be used to describe Goff herself: just peachy.

The unseasonably warm February air makes it feel more like spring, with the temperature being 70 degrees outside. Engrossed in her work, Goff taps away on her laptop, as she organizes a women’s health panel event for her church.

From her bag, Goff retrieves two books that serve as her guides for researching and navigating the complex yet crucial topics often shrouded in silence. With an earnest smile, she hands me the first book, “Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life” by Emily Nagoski. The cover has a depiction of a woman’s open purse that coyly hints at its deeper meanings. Its sequel, “Come Together: The Science (and Art!) of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections,” follows suit, both delving into territories rarely discussed in religious circles. And yet, here Goff sits, ready to discuss what may be considered taboo with her religious peers. 

At the office of her therapy clinic, similar books that dive into these topics fill her shelves. Since her grad school days, Goff has conducted extensive research on women who face pelvic pain and knows of numerous studies that show a correlation between that pain and evangelical Christianity.

While one in seven women in the United States is affected by chronic pelvic pain, Sheila Wray Gregoire, an author who has written countless books on Christian marriages and has done her own research on the faith’s effects, found that 22.6% of evangelical women reported pain from vaginismus or another form of dyspareunia.

Goff herself reflects this statistic after she was diagnosed in 2020 with vulvodynia, a type of long-term pain around the vulva.

While a majority of the studies and statistics online show the large number of women dealing with these physical conditions that affect their daily lives, the studies don’t account for all gender identities and could be higher.

A few days before I met with Goff, she had convened her second meeting with her own orchestrated pelvic pain therapy group. This therapy group focuses not only on the physical journey of pelvic pain but also the emotional toll of it, which marks a significant step in challenging social taboos about sex and addressing the often-overlooked struggles faced by women. The group is the first of its kind in Arkansas. 

Growing up in a Southern Baptist household in Shreveport, Louisiana, Taylor Goff’s upbringing was marked by the pressures of conformity and the weight of unrealistic expectations. Subjected to emotional abuse by those meant to protect her, Goff said she found herself in a constant battle to assert her identity and protect her younger siblings from the same fate. 

“You’re not even worth hitting,” echoes the haunting voice of her parental figure.

Still, beneath the wounds of cruel words, there is a deeper, more insidious impact—one that stretches beyond emotional suffering and into physical health.

Indeed, research indicates that the effects of emotional abuse and persistent stress can show as a wide range of physical symptoms, including but not limited to chronic pain issues such as pelvic discomfort. Many people face emotional trauma at some time in their life. While we typically think of trauma as a mental or emotional condition, it may also appear physically in the body. Statistics show that the stress from the emotional trauma can be stored in the pelvic floor. 

However, that adversity Goff faced in her upbringing only drove her to help other children growing up in similar environments. Mandated therapy sessions during her parents’ divorce left her disillusioned with a system that seemed to diagnose without truly understanding or helping. Fueled by her own traumatic experiences, Goff went on to pursue a degree in psychology at Harding University to be a child therapist, determined to be the advocate she never had. 

“I’ve gone through all of this chaos,” she reflects, “and I’d love to help people feel less alone and not just a diagnosis.” Her path seemed clear, focused on early prevention and guiding young minds through the maze of emotional turmoil.

Goff, through all her trials, also found solace in her relationship with Judah Goff, whom she met the second day of English class her freshman year of high school and later married in 2019. “Thank goodness for assigned seating,” she said. 

Both being raised with similar religious ideologies, Taylor and Judah continued their spiritual journey through their years at Harding University, a private, residential coeducational liberal arts university affiliated with the Church of Christ, adhering to their beliefs and saving themselves for marriage.

In Goff’s religious upbringing, sex was rarely discussed, and if ever brought up, it was a concept filled with fear and negative connotations. Goff was constantly pressured and ridiculed by her parental figures with the idea that she would become a high school dropout and teen mom. Yet, the adults in her life scrutinizing her never went as far to discuss sex education. It was only when Goff got married that she had to look up on the internet where condoms were located.

However, amidst the joy of planning their wedding during Goff’s junior year of college, tragedy struck with the death of her father. What was meant to be a moment of celebration became one also enveloped in mourning.

Their shared journey took another unexpected turn shortly after they were married.

Intimacy became a battleground; each attempt at the consummation of their marriage for a week was marred by excruciating pain for Goff—a pain she describes as akin to hitting a wall or enduring a tear deep within.

Three months in, Goff confided in her first gynecologist to find the root of this constant pain, who chalked it up to stress and her waiting till the age of 21 to have sex. The doctor prescribed her the recommendation of drinking wine and to just relax.

It wasn’t until the Goffs relocated to Bentonville in April 2020 and consulted a new gynecologist in November that the gravity of Goff’s condition was finally acknowledged.

During the examination, the mere touch of the swab test to find trigger points of the pain evoked instantaneous tears from Goff. The gynecologist then diagnosed her with vulvodynia.

Sarah Grace M., 23, also a woman who grew up Southern Baptist, was diagnosed with vaginismus, which mirrors Goff’s journey of a struggle to find an understanding of her condition.

From a young age, Sarah Grace had struggled with pelvic issues, enduring the excruciating pain of ovarian cysts that plagued her adolescence. The journey into womanhood was blighted by obstacles, from the inability to use tampons to the agonizing discomfort of gynecological exams. Yet, her concerns were often dismissed, emblematic of a broader societal narrative that expects women to endure pain silently under the guise of resilience. 

“I feel like it’s very common for gynecologists and women’s health physicians to not exactly listen to your concerns because women are expected to just be able to deal with pain because we go through childbirth and we have periods and all these things,” Sarah Grace said. “And so it’s almost always been dismissed.”

Marie, 27, grew up in a non-denominational Christian household in Nebraska and was diagnosed with vestibulodynia. 

Similar to Sarah Grace who has chosen to keep her last name anonymous, Marie isn’t her real name. Despite the frequency of pelvic pain issues among women, a lack of awareness and discussion contributes to a culture of silence and isolation. Their anonymity is a sad reminder of the critical need for destigmatization and open communication about pelvic pain issues. 

Like similar women in her position, Marie grew up in a purity culture and waited until they were married to have sex. It was after a month of experiencing pain, which she describes as being stabbed repeatedly over and over with a knife that was on fire, that she went to see her primary physician to be referred to a gynecologist. Her appointment wasn’t until three months later.

Because Marie had heard that the beginning of sexual intimacy was a painful act for women, she thought the excruciating pain might have been normal at first. Marie too struggled with her early years of using tampons and thought the painful endurance was one every woman encountered. Like Sarah Grace, she didn’t even think it was a pain that would need consultation.

With these studies showing that evangelical women under 40 had a 22% incidence of chronic pelvic pain, far greater than the overall population, which was estimated to be between 1 and 17% as recently as 2020, we have to wonder: why is the number so much higher for this community of women? 

With our knowledge of how stress affects the pelvic floor, how much stress is being placed within the confines of our holy buildings?

For individuals raised in evangelical communities, it begins to become clear that the messaging of purity culture may have unintentionally contributed to the prevalence of chronic pelvic pain among young women. The emphasis on maintaining sexual purity as well as the connection of sexual identity with spiritual identity in evangelical doctrines created a society filled with anxiety and confusion about identity. This anxiety and the obligation to maintain a strict ideal of purity frequently became all-consuming, leaving little opportunity for a healthy exploration of one’s sexuality within the confines of faith. 

While many well-meaning members of the Christian community attempt to transmit these lessons in hopes of protecting young women, the unintended effects result in a suffocating environment in which young women feel even more alienated and vulnerable. The gap between intent and outcome highlight the difficulty of addressing these delicate problems in religious contexts. Society’s lack of conversation surrounding sexual topics and complications such as these only contribute to this outcome. 

After being diagnosed with vulvodynia, Taylor Goff began the only solution she could to navigate the pain: pelvic floor physical therapy. 

The process, which helps train the vaginal canal to alleviate the pain, was an isolating one for Goff, as it is for most women.

Sarah Grace M. also found the process of pelvic pain therapy to be an isolating one that was hard to maintain as an option to address her condition of vaginismus. 

“Doing pelvic floor therapy, it’s kind of like a giant circle of being in pain and trying to get your body used to it,” Sarah Grace said.

Vaginismus, characterized by frequent spasms and tightening of muscles beyond the vaginal canal, necessitates techniques like dilators and internal stretching in pelvic floor therapy to alleviate discomfort and teach the body to tolerate it. 

Going to physical therapy, Sarah Grace did find the people at the clinic to be nice and helpful with her condition. However, with her insurance only covering a certain amount of her sessions and her busy schedule as a nursing student, she wasn’t able to keep up with the treatment. 

While the treatment can be helpful for some conditions, especially with women after they give birth and helping with incontinence with older women, Sarah Grace said the demands of it weren’t peaceful for her as a college student.

Hannah Bohl, a pelvic floor physical therapist based in Bentonville, offers a perspective on the physical aspect of women’s journey, particularly those navigating pelvic pain and related conditions within her nine years of practice. 

In physical therapy, Bohl focuses not only on the treatment of muscular issues but also the recalibration of the nervous system to adapt to stressors, along with retraining breathing patterns to support pelvic floor function. 

The pelvic floor needs to be able to support, Bohl said. It needs to be a sump pump, as she calls it, because the pelvic floor helps carry fluid from the lower half of the body up. It’s a stabilization, Bohl explains. The pelvic floor helps attenuate all of the forces from the top to the bottom of our body. 

Bohl also works with pelvic pain incontinence, postpartum, antepartum, and people who have gut disorders, such as irritable bowel syndrome. While physical therapy can’t necessarily change the systemic issues, it can change how the body adapts to them.

Knowing that it’s more than a physical component for these women to address, it becomes clear that addressing the emotional aspect of pelvic pain management is also critical for overall healing. While physical treatment focuses on muscle difficulties and pelvic floor function, Bohl also highlights the importance of mental health therapy in women’s journey to overcome chronic pelvic pain. 

Talk therapy with a psychologist or psychiatrist can be beneficial for those dealing with pelvic pain, since it provides complete care for both the body and the mind. Cognitive behavioral therapy, a kind of talk therapy, is especially effective since it focuses on identifying and addressing harmful thought patterns, thus encouraging a healthy mentality. 

“I recommend that every woman who has chronic pelvic pain, or really even chronic in a sense of older than a month, have a mental health therapist on their team, because it is so impactful and it is such a part of a woman’s identity,” Bohl said.

Mental health professionals and talk therapy relieves stress by helping create a secure environment for women to recover and cope with the emotional elements of their pain.

Bohl compares the necessity to a game of baseball, saying, “It almost be like a center fielder not having a right fielder or a left fielder. You just can’t do it, you can’t have a full out field if you’re missing team members.”

Despite the persistence in pursuing a natural method of pain relief, Marie reached a breaking point by the end of the year, feeling unable to cope with the solution of expensive numbing agents and dilators any longer.

In the majority of women’s cases, born with these diagnoses rather than developed from birth control and other secondary factors, surgery becomes the only viable treatment option. Grateful that her physician recommended surgery as a last resort, Marie decided to proceed with the procedure after exhausting all other avenues without success.

Two years after her diagnosis, Marie had a vestibulectomy, which surgically removed the painful tissue around the vulva. While the recovery and down time for her was extensive, Marie said the results were helpful. She said her condition is less sensitive without the tissue but she still suffers from limited pain and it’s more from the muscles contracting in preparation for potential pain. 

“My pathology report came back and it said that there was evidence of chronic inflammation,” Marie said. “Which for me was just kind of a validation of I did the right thing.” 

On the battlefield of intimacy, both partners in the relationship are affected. There are even stories online of husbands leaving their wives because of their inability to engage in sexual intimacy, Goff tells me. 

But for Taylor and Judah Goff, both coming from a place of hurt and wanting to find solutions, they sought a marriage counselor to help navigate the conversations that needed to be had.

Judah admits to feeling like he wasn’t as supportive as he could have been for Taylor in the beginning. 

“I just wouldn’t have the mental capacity to really understand. I don’t know why,” Judah said. “A lot of the times that’s something that kind of goes with the purity culture is just like men, you aren’t taught to have feelings or to have emotions, or anything like that. It’s just like, you can be angry or horny, and that’s it.”

Judah says it was a process of coming to terms with Taylor’s situation and understanding how to talk about it.

The Department of Rehabilitation Science and Health Technology Oslo Metropolitan University in Oslo, Norway, conducted a study in 2023 on heterosexual couples with vulvodynia. They concluded that couples with vulvodynia have difficulty communicating with their spouses, health providers, and their social networks. This reinforces avoidance and endurance behavior, causing pain and dysfunction over time, along with instilling emotions of helplessness and loneliness. In couples with vulvodynia, social expectations about male and female sexuality lead to feelings of guilt and humiliation for both partners.

Their findings suggested that heterosexual couples living with vulvodynia, as well as health professionals treating them, should be assisted in communicating more effectively in order to break the cycle of detrimental avoidance.

“If you’ve been shamed to talk about sex, then how is that switch supposed to flip once you start having sex?” Taylor Goff said. “There’s no magic switch. But also, if you’ve been shamed for even asking for full sex education, why would you ask your doctor? Why would you ask a parent? Why would you ask a friend?”

Before her surgery, Marie’s journey through the challenges of her condition reflects an emotional and psychological toll on both herself and her husband. The early months of their marriage, with the inability to consummate their relationship, Marie plunged into a deep sense of despair and self-blame. Marie said she categorizes those first four months as the worst months of her life. Being a state away from family who probably still wouldn’t have been able to comprehend their issue, and even the newlyweds they knew weren’t dealing with similar issues, Marie and her husband felt alone in their pain. 

During these trialing four months, she said she grappled with suicidal thoughts, feeling as though she had trapped her husband in a marriage devoid of the intimacy they both yearned for.

“I got so close as to grabbing a bottle of pills and debated taking them,” Marie said. “Because I was just so alone, and I felt so ashamed of my body not working, of not being able to have that part of the relationship with my husband that we both had looked forward to and we know is supposed to be this beautiful, wonderful thing. And it’s not.” 

Feeling this tremendous guilt, Marie constantly asked herself what was wrong with her body. She felt that her husband would be better off without her, and death was that option. 

Getting her diagnosis came as a relief to Marie, making her feel certain that it was something out of her control and nothing she was doing to herself, and that there were others who faced the same struggle. She said it still took personal therapy to put in the work of building up her self-worth and working through those feelings. 

Marie said that her husband unintentionally also put a lot of pressure on her, especially after the diagnosis and receiving their forms of treatment. 

As their therapist puts it, Marie’s husband took on a “taskmaster” role and was reminding Marie of all things she alone should be doing because of her diagnosis, such as using her dilators and creams. This kind of demand only contributes to the kind of isolation Marie felt with her diagnosis.

The lack of open dialogue and societal awareness surrounding sexual health, especially in religious circles, further compounded their struggles, highlighting the urgent need for comprehensive sex education and communication tools for both men and women. Most men, similar to Judah Goff and Marie’s husband, have never been taught about these kinds of situations in our sex education and don’t have the tools to discuss them. 

Marie said her husband would sometimes try not to assert that mentally-damaging pressure but would therefore bottle up those feelings. Another issue men in our society are still learning how to handle. 

“But then that often led to him having those feelings kind of exploding out at different times,” Marie said. “Most of our arguments, if they would not start off about intimacy or sex, but then they would always lead to intimacy or sex because those feelings were still there. He just didn’t want to express them because he knows how hard it is for me.”

Similar to Taylor and Judah, Marie and her husband found couples therapy to be a solution to healthily navigating these conversations of intimacy.  

Going into graduate school, Goff began to deviate from courses geared towards child therapy and started taking more sexual health courses and training later after graduating. While attending Harding University, Goff also trial ran her first pelvic-pain group.

In a paper for her group therapy class, Goff wrote, “The function of this group is to provide a safe and confidential environment where people with vulvovaginal pain and pelvic floor dysfunction can thrive without feeling isolated.”

The group’s needs were to experience a sense of community and to feel as if they were no longer alone in their pain. While the lack of conversation in our society may make them feel alone in their pain, there are countless others with similar experiences. 

Today, Goff continues to explore the connection between mental health and pelvic pain with her six-week curriculum. With her available space, she is only able to have group therapy with four women at a time per week and hopes to eventually find a larger space to help more women with her pelvic pain group.

This fall, Goff will start her Ph.D. in Clinical Sexology at the International Institute of Clinical Sexology. 

The Goffs continue their relationship with the church, and even though Taylor said it’s taken a lot of deconstruction and changing to a Lutheran denomination, she feels she’s found a safe space within her current church where she’s able to discuss topics such as these.  During her panel at her Christian women’s health conference, the “Wonderfully Made Symposium,” she plans to discuss similar sexual topics and how to navigate conversations about relationships with partners.  

The motto of Goff’s church is “change church,” because Goff said church shouldn’t look the same as it did in her childhood and should never look the same from week to week. Goff finds that the church she goes to now doesn’t chalk up the complexities of life to being taboo, but rather discussions to be had together. 

Goff explains how, when you’ve conditioned your life within the church, it’s natural for the body to protect itself with the messages you’ve heard. While some people are born with these pelvic conditions, our society reflects the inability of people to have these conversations around them. 

“If you’re taught to never talk about sex, you’re never taught to talk about issues with sex,” Goff said. “So when something’s wrong, who do you turn to?”

The post Shame and Silence: The hidden struggles of women battling pelvic pain appeared first on Hill Magazine.

As Kathy McGregor became officially ordained as a deacon in 2021, she was filled with hope at the prospect of being able to visit with people whom she had come to know and love: the men on Arkansas’ death row. She forged these friendships through her program The Prison Story Project, which amplifies stories which are “arguably the most locked up” with staged performances of participants’ writing. The project’s first performance of the men’s stories took place in a “small aisle between cages” holding the eleven participating men in 2016. Shortly after, the state announced it was executing eight men, two at a time over 10 days. Four of those men were writers for the project, and only two of them received last-minute stays of execution. After the state completed the executions, for reasons unknown McGregor was denied access to the remaining men on death row. She had highlighted the humanity of these prisoners through her work, and she was devastated. 

When she finally had the chance to talk to one of her friends on the row, he begged her to return and continue the project. He suggested that she become the men’s spiritual advisor, and then she would have to be allowed back into the prison. Taken aback, she said “Kenny, I’d have to go to seminary and that would take four years!” Kenny, 45 at the time and having been on death row since he was 19, said “Kathy, you don’t get to talk to me about time.” And that is when McGregor made the decision to attend seminary and become a deacon. 

“She was like ‘see you in a couple of years,’ and she went and did that,” Jane Blunschi, the project’s current creative writing director, laughs. The longer Blunschi has known McGregor, the more she admires her, describing her as someone who is definitely “for the people” with “a personality and heart that is bigger than Dallas.” 

McGregor has never shied away from helping others. In 2005, she drove down to New Orleans to aid those affected by Hurricane Katrina. She has acted as a union organizer for nurses, meeting with political campaigners and legislators to discuss mandating safer staffing ratios and to stop unsafe floating for nurses between departments less familiar to them. McGregor has years of experience as both a hospice and a parish nurse. When McGregor sees a need, she faces it head-on, never giving up on doing the right thing, Blunschi said.  

Healing Through Storytelling

There is one aspect of McGregor’s life she said she has never been able to separate from any other: storytelling. She understands what it is like to be overlooked and to have your voice minimized. She was born in Montgomery, Alabama, but moved to Memphis when she was very young. Having experienced abuse during her childhood, McGregor never felt like she had a voice until she attended the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, Tennessee, in 1981. The festival ignited her journey to becoming a professional storyteller, and she said it was “like a missing puzzle piece of (her) life had just been found.” 

“I cherished being heard so much that I wanted to make sure that what (people) heard from me was healing and thoughtful and wise, and so then I resonated with folktales that demonstrated the power of healing and gave hope,” McGregor said. 

Standing on a stage in Memphis, McGregor looks out toward the crowd as her lips form the words to one of her favorite folktales. She tells the crowd about a poor farmer and wife who discover a magical box. It triples anything they put in the box and gives it back to them, but all the couple ever put in it was greed. McGregor didn’t know it, but the story would stay with her “in the marrow of her bones” until she needed it, she said.

Storytelling proved to be a valuable tool for McGregor in end-of-life care during her time as a hospice nurse. One of the most important attributes of storytelling is understanding it enough to know when to just listen, she said. Before walking into each patient’s room, she would stop at the door and make sure she was gathered and that her “feet were on the floor.” At the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, McGregor was the only HIV/AIDS hospice nurse in Shelby County, Tennessee. The work took a toll on her mental health, and she suffered extreme burnout. “I couldn’t understand how if I felt so called to hospice nursing, how could God allow this to happen to me?” she said. 

As she drove one day to her hospital-mandated therapy appointment amid her recovery, her favorite story about the couple and the magical box suddenly “hits (her) like a ton of bricks.” She grips the steering wheel and jerks her car to the side of the road. She takes deep breaths as she realizes that similar to the couple, she had been putting all the wrong things into hospice nursing and she was getting all the wrong things in return, she said. While never hesitant to give, McGregor does not receive well. She recognized that she had been giving so much to her patients that she had not left a way to replenish herself and needed to adjust her boundaries. 

The story had been lying in wait to heal her. 

“Sometimes stories lay dormant in your bones until you actually need them, and they can be really powerful stories,” McGregor said. 

She grounded herself with a repertoire of stories that fit how she was feeling. McGregor began extensively researching burnout, thinking “if this is happening to me, I bet it’s happening to other people.” Her research led her to create a company called “HealThy Self,” which used storytelling as the framework to teach people how to avoid burnout. The company held workshops all across the country and in Canada, where nurses and social workers could acquire continuing education credits. Even when she felt like she had given all she had to give, McGregor transformed her own healing journey into a way to give even more to others. Looking back, she laughs and says “That was my recovery, I can’t believe I did that!” 

The Prison Story Project

After moving to Fayetteville in the late 2000s, McGregor made the decision to step away from the storytelling microphone. However, she quickly realized that when much is given, much is required, and she could not just put her craft away altogether. That was when she decided to bring forth other people’s stories and experiences who normally do not have a voice: the incarcerated.  

McGregor sits within the circle of writers at the women’s correction center, where the project first began. Both an incredible teacher and eternal student, Blunschi said McGregor is always listening intently and writing just as much as everyone else. The circle of writers is sacred, an introspective space where folks can choose to write or not to write, to turn in their work or keep it for themselves. Blunschi often brings published poems to the circle to use as a starting place for people to tell their own stories. Then she will say “Write about a time when…” A particular topic that stands out to McGregor is when writers talk about things that they miss, with answers such as grass under their feet or a closed door, she said. It encourages an audience to look at prison in a new way, by focusing on the people in them, highlighting their redemption and their humanity. 

It’s a sentiment McGregor resonated with during her time as a hospice nurse at Joseph’s House in Washington D.C. The facility serves homeless men with AIDS or cancer. 

“One of the things we learned there is welcoming people right where they are, and I carry that over into my work with the incarcerated,” McGregor said. “We never had a curiosity about where the men came from that we served at Joseph’s House, and we have never had a curiosity to know what people have done to land themselves behind bars. When you take that (curiosity) away, it increases your ability to really hear people and (see) the humanity in people and connect with them.”  

The project members, along with UA MFA students, fashioned the women’s writings into a staged reading called “Stories from the Inside Out.” They first performed the reading for the women, then took it out to the public. The venue for the iteration’s first performance outside the correction center was St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, where McGregor serves as a deacon. Many of the anecdotes in “Stories from the Inside Out” centered on abuse the women suffered from the men in their lives, whether that be husbands, brothers, uncles or others. Most of the times, if there is a woman incarcerated at the women’s center, at least one man in her life is incarcerated as well, McGregor said. After three or four classes, the theater director excerpted some of their stories about suffering abuse and wrongdoing at the hands of the men in their lives. They took those stories to the men at the correction center in Pine Bluff and asked the warden to give them men that would be paroling out in the next couple of years. They were hoping to “plant a seed for change for better relationships between those men and women,” McGregor said. After seeing the performance, some of the men wanted to join the project and write their own stories. The group stayed a few extra days and then took the men’s stories back to the women, creating a sort of “call-and-response” between them.  

In 2016, project members found themselves with unprecedented access to the men on Arkansas’ Death Row. When McGregor and the other project members approached the men about joining the project, they looked at them and said “We know what’s in it for you, but what’s in it for us?” Many of these men had been in solitary confinement for over 30 years and did not trust very easily. There were 34 men on death row at the time, and 11 men agreed to be part of the project. McGregor and the other project members became their liaison to the outside world. But even after the group was denied access to death row after the executions, their work continued on. Others began to notice The Prison Project and the importance and impact of highlighting prisoners’ humanity. The group received funding from entities such as Mid-America Arts Alliance and completed two tours of the staged readings covering five states. A Whiting Foundation grant allowed the group to tour across five more states and craft create a program guide so that other prison arts organizations could replicate parts of the program. They hired a documentary filmmaker to film a staged reading of the men’s stories titled “On the Row.” Soon after the pandemic hit, the group received various grants to show the filmed version of “On the Row” to Episcopal churches across the country and various organizations. 

Two performances of the men’s stories took place for the UA community in 2016, in line with a lecture from author Bryan Stevenson. He spoke about his book “Just Mercy,” which shares some of his client’s stories from his time as a lawyer and addresses present flaws in the legal system. A takeaway from his book that has stuck with McGregor is that “each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done,” in line with her mission to highlight the humanity of those incarcerated.  Currently, Blunschi and McGregor are working to bring author Susan Burton to visit both the university and the women’s correction center in April. They plan to drop off copies of her book “Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women” to the correction center for the women to read. 

Getting Back to Death Row  

The pandemic has complicated prison access despite McGregor’s position as a deacon, although she has resolved not to give up on the men of death row. She has formed very deep friendships with many of the men, and they mean the world to her, she said. The members of the project have vowed to never abandon the surviving writers, and the men are continuing to write. McGregor usually spends four or five hours a week following up with the writers on the row. She also assists with hosting art exhibits of their work, the next set for March 19-26 at St. Paul’s. 

In Arkansas, you can only be on one person’s phone and visitation list from death row if you are not family, McGregor said. She is currently on her friend Ray’s list, and he has been in solitary confinement for more than 30 years. When she goes to Varner Unit, she knows she is being watched by people in the guard tower the second she pulls into the parking lot. After going through security, she walks down a long sidewalk and to her right she can see a slew of dead birds that have accidentally flown into a large electric fence. To her left is the prison, and from a distance she can see small white specks in the windows. It is the incarcerated men, in their white prison uniforms, watching her as she walks.  

Death row is the building at the very end of the sidewalk, where she gets to visit with Ray. McGregor hopes to soon be able to use her position as a deacon to see the remaining writers, her friends, the men that she has come to know and love. In the meantime, she continues to help make incarcerated people’s voices heard any way she can, whether it be amplifying their stories through art, letter writing or a listening ear. 

Called to Service  

On her birthday, McGregor sits in the St. Paul’s parish hall next to a table holding items such as condoms, Plan B and Fentanyl test kits. People are gathered in the hall for St. Paul’s community meals, in which hot lunches are offered to hungry people from all walks of life twice a week.  The sign next to McGregor is titled “harm reduction ministry.” A stethoscope sits around her neck, and several people approach her for free blood pressure checks during their meal. As McGregor interacts with each person, she genuinely asks them about themselves and how they are doing.   

It is her first week back at the church after a month-long retreat in Florida, where she worked on a memoir about her relationships with the men on death row, and her return is noticed by many.  When Mikki Cloud sees McGregor sitting at the table, they run up behind her and give her a big hug, saying how much they have missed McGregor. Cloud first noticed McGregor’s table at one of the luncheons in 2018 and approached her, expressing admiration for her harm reduction ministry. Having lived in a mini-van for almost five years, Cloud said having a regular place to come for food and other resources is essential for them and many in the community. They think McGregor’s presence at the luncheons is calming because they know someone with medical expertise is around and happy to provide aid. As one man approaches McGregor, he opens by thanking her for her service. 

Her passion for service is how she became involved at St. Paul’s in the first place. She was not raised Episcopalian, but when she began looking for a church home in Fayetteville, people would look at her and say “I don’t go to church, but if I did I would go to St. Paul’s.” For someone looking for a service-oriented church, that phrase is the perfect invitation, she said. 

As the procession enters the church every Sunday, McGregor is among them, holding an intricate red and gold book high for all to see. She sets it on the altar until it is time for the gospel reading when she goes down into the church aisle to share a message with churchgoers. McGregor also gives the dismissal at the conclusion of the service, and one of her favorite phrases to say is “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” Her current position as a deacon has left her feeling like she is right where she is supposed to be, like it is “one foot in front of the other in doing what God has called (her) to do,” she said. And she even utilizes her background as a professional storyteller, because a deacon’s responsibility is to tell a story that will bring the congregation to service of some sort. When McGregor tells others to “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord,” she means it with all her heart. And when asked about the healing impact her life’s work has had on others thus far, her response is simple: she is just thankful to serve. 

The post Highlighting Humanity: St. Paul’s deacon provides hope, healing through storytelling appeared first on Hill Magazine.

At the university, two Muslim students work in community to navigate what religion looks like on a college campus.

In many ways, college proves to be a fresh start. People see it as a change from what life was like at home, some view it as an opportunity to come into their own and others are able to discover what is important to them, such as religion. For first-year graduate student Abdullah Asif, the practice of Islam acted as a lifeline in an ever-changing environment.

Since elementary school, Asif had to constantly explain to the other kids why he would pray during the day or eat different foods due to dietary restrictions. 

While growing up in Bentonville, Asif said his family brought him up in the Islamic faith but he didn’t necessarily understand the reason behind the practice that left him constantly explaining.

“It’s a faith that I found a lot of logic, spirituality and also clarity within,” Asif said. “As I grew up I remember watching a lot of podcasts, a lot of lectures on different philosophies and religions and even though I was born into it, Islam is the one that stuck with me the most.”

While the classes got more difficult and the social aspect became more of a priority, Asif faced challenges that students practicing other religions were not facing.

“Muslims, we pray multiple times a day,” he said. “It is often difficult to find time between classes to do your daily prayers or time to balance your religious life while also balancing being a student on campus.”

Although the challenge was something Asif struggled with coming into college, he said the university has aided and accommodated him. His current lab instructor gave him permission to leave class early for prayer, the multicultural center in the Union provides a space for meditation and he has been able to respectfully pray all around campus in the open.

“Me and my friends sometimes pray together just in the JB Hunt building in the open area,” Asif said. “We just let people around us know that we are praying before we start and most people are pretty receptive and open to us.” 

Whether it is through prayer at the JB Hunt building or meeting at the mosque, Asif revealed that the community aspect is something that has allowed for fulfillment when it comes to his Islamic faith.

Asif serves as the Vice President of the Muslim Students Association at the U of A and this year has been a catalyst of activity for the organization that he said he hopes will encourage other Musilm students to feel welcome.

In addition to weekly gatherings, the group has held events such as talks with guest speakers and a lecture discussing the relationship between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. The group is set to host an event centered around Ramadan called “Fast-a-thon.” 

“We’re challenging our non-Muslim friends to fast the entire day with us and then they are going to join us at sunset and then open our fast together with us,” he explained. “It’s kind of opening cultural attitudes towards Islam.”

Another practicing Muslim on the U of A campus is Roohan Tanveer, a junior from Pakistan whose family now lives in Oklahoma. He said that while the community aspect inside of the religion is vital, it is also important for external individuals to keep an open mind about Islam.

“Every religion has misconceptions,” Tanveer said. “I would like for people to explore those instead of being polarized by the news or other online sources of information.”

The solution Tanveer expressed: talking. He suggests for people with questions to talk to someone they know that is practicing the Islamic faith. Many people tend to view it as the “bad religion” he said and so talking through misconceptions is a way to become more educated.

Many people associate Muslims with violence according to Tanveer, but he said he wants people to know that is not what the faith teaches. 

“Every faith has people that try to misrepresent it, misuse scripture,” he said.

With these stereotypes surrounding Islam, it can prove difficult to be accepted on a college campus, Asif said.

Asif said he wishes for people to be more open minded to Islam and educate themselves on the religion. 

“We like to have a community that’s allowed to thrive on campus,” Asif said. “Outside of that, we’re still pretty normal people even though I’d say Islam is more of a conservative and extra-practicing religion than most other religions are now-a-days.”

The post Muslim Students Navigate Religion on Campus appeared first on Hill Magazine.

There is no denying that college is a time for experimentation. Fresh out of the surveillance of our parents, we are left to our own devices and are subjected to face the many different ways of living. We see this curiosity with the more obvious: careers, partying and sexuality, but it is also common in spirituality. 

For most people, religion is something you are born into and it seems rare that you come across someone whose parents let them choose their own spiritual path. In college, being surrounded by people of different backgrounds and mindsets can come as a culture shock, but it can also open new doors for those open to the idea of experimenting. 

In the last few years, social media has taken on a new fascination with spirituality. If you are on Tik Tok or Twitter, chances are you have heard of “crystal girls” and “astrology girls” and maybe you have even had videos of tarot card readings grace your feed. This new interest in spirituality is drawing more people into the idea of accepting and even practicing metaphysiology and Paganism.

For much of history, following the expansion of Christianity, people turned a blind eye to these spiritual beliefs. The word pagan, which comes from the Latin word for rural, was used to describe a person who subscribed to any religion other than the main world religions at the time. Those who practiced them were convicted of “dancing with the devil” and witchcraft, reactions at the fault of one’s own fear and miseducation of the matter. And while there is still a stigma surrounding the idea of embracing one’s spirituality with tarot and spells, it’s becoming more accepted by society. 

With all this to say, it is important to have safe spaces and communities in a college town like Fayetteville for those that wish to experiment.

Metaphysical shops are a great place to look for those interested in finding a spiritual community. Off of first glance, The Four of Wands shop off of College Avenue may not seem like much but the store, with its cauldron logo, is full of tarot cards, herbs, crystals, oils and so much more.

Walking around the shop, it’s surprising to see how big the space is. Each room seems to have a doorway into another room full of more merchandise. It feels like entering a different dimension. The store is full of walls of different tarot card sets and spiritual books appealing to practically anyone: cat tarot cards, queer pride cards, even yarn tarot for those who like kniting and crocheting. They seem to have it all.

The store smells of incense and essential oils and it is surprisingly calming inside. Melissa Hall, the shop owner, says that it can have that effect on customers. 

Hall opened the store in 2018, after Passages, the metaphysical shop she grew up going to in Fayetteville closed. It was that store that helped her spirituality bloom. She started her spiritual journey as a young girl by going outside as a form of church after parting ways with a local presbytyrian parish. After finding deeper connections in nature, it ultimately led her to Passages in the late ‘70s. It was there that she bought her first metaphysical book, she says. 

“We didn’t have a metaphysical shop here anymore, and it was sorely needed, and when I became an empty-nester I figured I might as well give it a shot,” she says.

As a shop owner, Hall has noticed the influx of social media in her business. Last year alone videos of the effects of moldavite went viral on Tik Tok increasing the demand in her shop. Hall doesn’t use social media other than to post on the shop’s Instagram, but says she finds it “disconcerting” and not always a valid tool when it comes to metaphysiology. What she does recommend customers do is conduct their own research and look for reliable books with multiple editors, like the ones shelved in her shop. 

Social media trends like we have seen with moldavite are always downplayed by Hall and her employees, she says. During the time it was in high demand, there seemed to be very little on the market which drove the prices to extremes. Hall says it is logical that this could have been done purposely. 

“A piece that I could buy for $9 is going for like $110 now. So I don’t think people should trust it because of that. It is easy to manipulate the public with social media and people tend to be more vulnerable when it comes to their spirituality,” she says. 

To those who have found interest in their spirituality through social media, Hall recommends walking around the shop and seeing what they gravitate towards. The store also offers tarot readings and personal consultations for those who need spiritual guidance. These are guided by professionals that are hired and trusted by Hall. 

In one of the shop’s rooms stands a community bulletin board full of flyers for events, hotlines, and business cards. The Four of Wands hosts their own in-store events which are posted there as well. Looking at the board, it was surprising to see how the spiritual community spans further than the shop. 

“Anything that’s different from the mainstream can have fear attached to it,” Hall says.“We have a lot of people that come in recovering from their birth and home religion, and they just need an easy place to be themselves and look around and see what they find appealing and get back in touch with their own spiritual life.”

UA student Savannah Gunnoe is a prime example of discovering her spirituality after parting ways with her birth religion. Gunnoe was raised Catholic but during her time in high school started exploring a new religious path and found herself researching the history of Paganism. 

“As I became older I became more aware of points of views that weren’t Catholic. So that’s what has really inspired me to learn about Paganism. It’s really interesting because a lot of what you hear is from the Catholics’ point of view or early Christianities point of view, but that is just the winning side’s point of view … Until now there is a new surge of neo-Paganism, but I just wonder what would’ve happened if Paganism had continued to be the Roman emperor’s choice of religion. If they never switched to Christianity and what not, our world could look completely different,” she says.

Gunnoe, now a sophomore, is still fascinated by Paganism and admires the way it inspires a “train of free thinking” but identifies more with agnostic spiritualism. She says she uses religion for the philosophical aspect rather than the belief in a higher power itself. 

Like many others, Gunnoe has found a community of like minded individuals in college who have similar interests in spirituality.

“I have found a lot of similarities with them, especially just with our way of thinking and viewing spirituality,” she says, “because we are all college kids and it’s the first time we are kind of able to learn whatever we want and also do whatever we want. So I find that a lot of people, now that they have the ability to choose to learn more, a lot of them are leaning more towards the questioning and learning side of agnosticism rather than a set in stone religion. A lot of people are still in their exploring phase which is really interesting.”  

She has also found safe spaces within metaphysical shops all over Northwest Arkansas such as The Four of Wands, The Sage Elephant and Mystical Crystal, all being female owned, she notes. Gunnoe likes purchasing crystals for their symbolism and herbs for their healing properties from these stores.

For those interested in expanding their spirituality, Gunnoes advice is similar to Halls. She recommends looking into religious philosophy books that don’t have a bias and keeping an open mind. 

The post A New Spiritual Community on the Rise in Fayetteville appeared first on Hill Magazine.

Story by Kari Adams

Marie didn’t think she deserved to die. The two boys yelling out the bus window thought otherwise.

“F—king witch!”

“Cut yourself and die, you emo whore!”

The boys’ voices carried down the empty street on the quiet October morning in 2009. It had been rather serene before they got there; everything was cast a cool blue as the sun peaked above the horizon line, only 6:30 a.m. Marie’s house was one of the first on the bus route. 

She was sitting in the driveway of her family home, still wearing the clothes she slept in, waiting to wave at her friends as they drove by. Marie was 12 years old at the time and had started seventh grade in Quitman, Arkansas, a small town about 60 miles from Little Rock, a few months prior. But, a day ago, her parents pulled her from school. 

Since school started in August, she went to class every day as an outcast. Students told her she was an abomination. They told her she was going to Hell if God didn’t save her soul. They told her to kill herself — all because Marie practices Wicca, a modern form of Pagan witchcraft, and has been since the fifth grade. When the taunts took a toll on her mental health, her parents decided leaving the school was the best option.

She was sitting in her living room when she received a call earlier that morning. It was a small room with nothing but a long, rust-colored couch, worn and rough, with a matching love seat, a small coffee table, and old TV. Marie had woken up early that day, her body too accustomed to an early morning school routine. It was her best friend’s name that popped up on the screen, but her friend’s brother was on the other end. He told Marie to wait outside for the bus; he and his friend wanted to wave as they passed her house. 

Marie waited outside for 10 minutes on the chilly fall morning, rubbing her bare arms for warmth. When the bus finally turned down her street, the boys slid down the windows and screamed obscenities, flipping her off and laughing like hyenas as the bus rolled past her. She just watched, paralyzed. 

After her mother convinced Marie to tell her what happened, they walked into the Quitman High front office demanding accountability, but the school officials told them that nothing could be done. The exchange wasn’t on camera, the bus driver said he didn’t hear anything, and Marie was no longer a member of the school system. 

“I went numb to the world,” Marie recalled. 

***

Marie, now 24, lives with religious trauma and prefers to keep her identity hidden. Today, she is afraid of even placing an altar in her backyard. “Others can display crosses in their front yard with no fear,” Marie said, “but if I put anything near my house on the outside, I put myself in real danger.”

What Marie experienced was something many Pagans face over and over again throughout their life, stories of hatred and disgust — especially in Arkansas, a Bible Belt state. Arra Graskewicz, 24, a central Arkansas resident, told her mother she was Pagan when she was a teenager. Her mother told their pastor, and Graskewicz sat through a sermon bashing Paganism. Afterward, he came to their home and cleansed her bedroom because she had been “communing with demons.” Tesha Baker, 44, of central Arkansas, was the subject of a nasty Facebook post, instigated by her ex-husband’s fiancée after he told her about Baker’s witchcraft. People commented that Baker would go to hell if she didn’t find Jesus. Baker is a Christian witch who prays to God. 

Paige Hines, 21, of southeast Arkansas, only celebrates Pagan holidays like Easter and the autumn equinox ­­— called Mabon — shielded by the trees and free from drawing too much attention. She is afraid of being accused of Satan worship. In Little Rock, the urban center of the state, Elizabeth Scott, 29, heard whispers at her waitressing job after she revealed she was Pagan. Her co-worker was talking behind her back, telling people she was in a sex cult and sacrificed animals for fun. 

Modern Paganism ­— also known as contemporary Paganism or Neo-Paganism — is a movement more than it is an organized religion, and it encompasses a variety of nature-oriented paths, including Wicca, eclectic Paganism, herbalism, Druidism, and many others. It is a polytheistic or pantheistic worship, meaning there are multiple gods, surrounding a central theme of celebrating the earth. Some Pagans identify as witches while others ignore the word entirely. It is not a religion in a traditional sense, but if it must be, then it is a religion that preaches the gospel of self-expression and empowerment. 

No two Pagans practice the same, but a yearning for autonomy and a connection to nature is a unifying feature amongst all Pagan paths. Some people place altars in their room or in their backyard where they leave offerings to deities or speak to lost loved ones. Many meditate to ground themselves to the earth or read Tarot cards to learn about the past, present, or future. Witchcraft is the use of spells, like a protection spell, or rituals to materialize intentions by focusing energy onto herbs, crystals, or candles. People do what they feel drawn to. 

However, many Pagans fear practicing out in the open, making a definitive count impossible. Dr. Helen Berger, resident scholar at the Women Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, has studied and collected survey data on the Pagan community for 30 years, but the number of Pagans in the U.S. still remains a “guesstimate,” she said. The total is expected to be nearing two million, less than 1% of the U.S. population. But this is most likely an undercount due to the amount of book sales, website traffic, social media involvement, and participation is Pagan festivals, Berger said.

Wicca, one of the most prominent expressions of modern Paganism witchcraft, has exploded in popularity, especially among the younger generations. In 1990, only 8,000 people identified as Wiccan, then in 2008, it grew to 340,000, according to World Religion News. Today, social media apps like TikTok are home to Pagan and witch influencers sharing educational videos, Tarot card readings, or horoscopes. The hashtag #witchtok has 20.4 billion views, #pagantok has 198.2 million.

The birth of modern Paganism is often traced to 1950 with the release of Witchcraft Today, a book by English writer and self-described witch Gerald Gardener, detailing Gardener’s experience meeting witches in the 1930s and starting his own coven. His influence from overseas trickled into the States around the 60s with New Age philosophies that took root in activism as the country was undergoing drastic social change. 

Since its rebirth, the rise of neo-Paganism has been slow but steady as young people sought freedom from authority, misogyny, racism, and homophobia by delving into the realm of magic. “There’s been an enormous increase in solitary practitioners,” Dr. Berger said. “Since between 1980 to 2021, it just keeps increasing. And part of the reason it can increase is that people learn about the religion, learn more about its practice, learn more about magic, and connect with others in the religion online.”

Though there is irony in a religion so grounded in nature thriving off technology, social media plays a large role in connecting Pagans across the United States as a way to avoid the backlash of public exposure, especially in Arkansas and other Bible Belt states. A Facebook group called “Arkansas Pagans and Witches” is a digital safe haven for more than 1,400 Pagans in the Natural State, including Marie. The group is teeming with posts every day. 

“What did y’all do for the full moon?”

“I’ve been set to deploy to the Middle East next month… Does anyone know of any good protection spells or an amulet or something I can take with me for protection?”

“Witchy bitch looking for community amongst like-minded individuals from my state.”

“I was wondering if anyone had any cutting ties spells… I have three people who I had a falling out with and wish for them to be out of my life for good…”

“Today is the day that I come out of the broom closet and tell my Christian husband that I am converting to Paganism.”

Other groups include “Witches of Arkansas” with 1,500 members, “Arkansas witches crew” with 753, “Arkansas Witches, Wiccans, Pagans” with 432, and a few others. Many Pagans practice alone but frequent the Facebook groups for advice, using others to learn about their own craft, and in the middle of the Bible Belt, find a sense of community in an otherwise unforgiving landscape.  

Marie was raised in nature. She lived 10 minutes outside of Quitman, Arkansas, in a little house enveloped by a thick line of trees, only one other house and a trailer home nearby. She spent most of her free time trudging through the woods with her dogs looking for mud holes or good climbing trees. 

As she got older, she started hearing small town gossip about evil witches that lurched in the woods around Quitman, stories about women sacrificing animals to Satan, but it was confusing. Kids at school rambled on about movies like The Craft from 1996, a movie about teenage witches in a Los Angeles Catholic school struggling with their newfound power of witchcraft. Students coated their hair with shampoos and conditioners, mimicking an iconic scene from the movie where one of the teen witches rubbed her hand over her head, changing her hair color instantly. “A few kids, despite being terrified of witches, still had this pull to do something crazy like that,” Marie said. “They wanted to stand out and scare people like, ‘I did a spell.’ Then, it would just be dropped at that, but I never dropped it.”

Marie started sneaking out at night to practice spells on her plants. She read books and watched more movies like Practical Magic, a 1998 movie about two sisters born into a family of witches. Then, when she was 11 years old, it was like the movie came to life before her eyes. Her father sat her down in the living room and told her he came from a line of practicing witches. Everything started making sense.

Marie didn’t grow up religious, but she was always looking for answers. Quitman was a predominantly Baptist area, most of the churches were Baptist and subsequently, most of Marie’s friends were Baptist as well. Her parents both actively avoided church, avoided talking about it all together, so when Marie started hearing kids at Pre-K talking about someone named God, she got curious. At four years old, for the first time, someone told her that she would go to Hell if God didn’t save her.

***

She was five years old when she decided she needed to go to church. Her mother dropped her off in the parking lot and waited in the car while Marie went in alone. It was the biggest church in town, white and pristine with a large, white steeple in the middle of the roof, a bit intimidating for little Marie, and it smelled stale, like a closet that hadn’t been opened in a while. 

The day started off at Bible study where kids memorized Bible verses that they pulled from a hat. John 3:16 was the first verse Marie ever learned. After she memorized it, she got a piece of candy, a treat like she was one of Pavlov’s dogs. After that, the rest of the experience was a blur of buzzing voices and big smiles and songs and alleluias and sermons. Her first time listening to a sermon was strange. The pastor’s voice was loud, sickly sweet yet intimidating at the same time. It filled the room and rammed against her eardrums like he was trying to drill into her skull. She didn’t like what she was hearing either. Marie thought God sounded scary. She didn’t want to worship Him. She just wanted to go home.

After that, she lost her sense of wonder surrounding God and church, but it was all people talked about in her little town. A few years later, her friend begged her to start going to church again. This time it was a smaller Baptist church on the outskirts of town, barely inside city limits. She started going on Sunday and Wednesday every week, but eventually stopped going to Sunday service because they didn’t serve food. Marie’s family was poor, and Wednesdays became an opportunity for an easy meal. But people in the church noticed that her heart wasn’t in it. They started picking on her, singling her out to answer questions during Bible study. Eventually, she got yelled at when she tried to get seconds during dinner. She stopped going after that. 

So, she kept playing outside, making forts out of sticks and rocks and mixing potions out of wild berries. Nature wasn’t mean to her. When her father sat her down to tell her about his family of Pagan witches, she almost wasn’t surprised. 

Her father didn’t know his family, only his mother, so when an ancestry test resulted in a call from a woman asking for her brother, nobody knew what to think. These people were Marie’s long-lost aunts and great aunts and uncles and cousins. They were strangers but also familiar. 

When she was 10 years old, everyone met in Alabama for a family reunion. People were drunk and talkative, conversation flowed more freely with every drink. Marie’s father was heavily tattooed, full sleeves with skulls and pentagrams, and his great aunts finally pulled him aside when they decided he would be understanding after seeing his appearance and told him that they were a family of generational witches. Then, he explained that he grew up Wiccan as well. “There was always a pull,” he said. Marie was watching from the corner of the room, putting all the pieces together.

A year later, her father finally sat Marie down in the living room after her mother went to bed. He talked about how his family members were witches. He talked about how he practiced in the past but doesn’t anymore. He talked about how he got into some really bad stuff through Paganism, did things he shouldn’t have, and wanted Marie to be better than he was. Marie started calling herself Wiccan the very next day.

Marie started fifth grade soon after and couldn’t wait to tell her classmates about her new self-discovery. Harry Potter was one of the most popular movie franchises at school. Magic was on everyone’s minds, and Marie was dreaming about being the most popular kid in school. A real witch. Instead, she was called a devil worshipper. She walked down the hallways and heard whispers that someone should “burn the witch”. One teacher pulled her aside at recess to ask her to come to church, saying God needed to save her soul. It felt more selfish than anything like she didn’t actually care about Marie and instead just wanted to be in God’s good graces. It was the same questions over and over again, asking if Marie believed in God or if she knew Jesus died for her sins. 

Eventually, she started lying, agreeing with people and hoping they would leave her alone, but she couldn’t help the fear bubbling up inside her, little seeds of hesitancy and anxiety in the back of her mind growing with every interaction. 

“That’s the devil getting into your heart.”

“You don’t want to go to hell, do you? All your family is going to heaven, and you don’t want to end up in hell and burn for eternity.”

“I can save your soul if you just come to church with me.”

It kept happening in sixth grade, and seventh grade was shaping up to be the same. Soon, Marie stopped sleeping. She left school at 12 years old, moving out of Quitman a few years later. There was no place for her in Quitman, but there was a place for her in Wicca and Paganism. Many women were finding the same.

***

It started in the 1960s. The Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell, or W.I.T.C.H, was founded as a feminist organization fighting alongside other causes like the Civil Rights movement, the anti-war movement, and the gay rights movement — all protests not typically aligned with traditional southern history. Even today, the members show up to protests covered head to toe in black attire, faces concealed by black cloth, but the most notable feature is a tall, wide-brim hat with a distinct conical point ­­— a witch’s hat. 

Many members were or are not real witches, but they saw the reaction that their imagery had. It was eye-catching, and it made people afraid. With the power women found in paganism, some forged ahead despite negative public opinion with a hunger for change. In 2018, a group of New York witches gathered for a group hex on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh before the midterm election. Kavanaugh has been accused of sexual assault by three women. 

Witches across the state gathered at Catland Books, a metaphysical shop and bookstore in Brooklyn, with the intention to incite change by using “the only means of exacting justice available to those of us who have been wronged by men just like him,” according to the bookstore’s Facebook event. More than 18,000 people responded to the post.  

Their mission to hex Kavanaugh resulted in outrage among the Catholic community — Kavanaugh being Catholic himself. California priest and exorcist Father Gary Thomas told the National Catholic Register, “This is conjuring evil — not about free speech.” He described the witches as “real evil people” who “should not be underestimated or dismissed.” 

This was not the only instance of public hexing. The year before, the same bookstore called witches to cast a spell on Donald Trump, accused of sexual assault by 26 women. The Christian Nationalist Alliance called it “a declaration of spiritual war.” Women were weaponizing the fear that Christianity manufactured. But with bad blood brewing between Paganism and Christianity, it also made practicing freely in the Bible Belt that much more difficult.

For Paige Hines, the two religions coexist every day. Hines is a Christian witch, meaning that the Christian God has power over all, but she has power over herself as well as what happens around her. When Hines was reading the Ten Commandments, she said that “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” led her to believe there were gods below the Christian God rather than no other gods at all. Though she believes in those gods, she does not pray to them.

Hines is from southeast Arkansas where she, her family, and a few friends are the only people nearby that practice witchcraft. She chose her path at 10 years old after finding her mother’s spell books, planting a seed of curiosity that compelled her to learn more.  

She grew up going to a Southern Baptist church, then a Pentecostal church, a Free Will Baptist church, and a Catholic church before choosing Christian witchcraft. Christianity had “become so muddled,” she said. Like many others, she was seeking empowerment and could not find it in the rigid and patronizing environment of traditional Christianity, but she said what she had learned as a kid in church still made sense to her. Hines said God is the Creator, but she controls her own being. Christian witchcraft plugged up the holes that Christianity alone couldn’t fill.

However, she still retains a small fear of Christianity that she hopes will fizzle out as modern Paganism grows. Though, in Hines’ small town, everyone knows everybody, and backlash or judgment is always lurking.

Pagans aren’t free from judgment from family either. Even after formally choosing her path at 16, Elizabeth Scott couldn’t escape Catholicism. An explosive argument with her mother after her decision resulted in Scott being grounded. “If you live under my roof,” her mother said, “you’re going to go to church.” 

So, for two years, Scott went to church with her family. She would walk in and grab the weekly bulletin, carefully avoiding the eyes of the other churchgoers around her. Sometimes, she would take the bulletin and walk out, and other times she would hide in the quiet room where mothers took their crying infants during sermons. 

Her mother thought making her go to church would change her mind but really it made Scott more determined, more defiant. The week she moved out at 18, she told her mother that she wouldn’t go to church again. “I did what you said,” Scott told her. Her mother does not support her decision to this day, 12 years later.

Today, Marie lives in central Arkansas, and she can’t escape feelings of isolation. She fears dying, afraid that people are right and she will rot in hell because she can’t connect with Christianity. She stopped telling people she is Wiccan. She stopped practicing out in the open. She stopped collecting spell books, candles, crystals, and herb boxes because she is afraid people will find them. Marie has one set of Tarot cards, and she sits hidden away in the back room of her house to read them. She also stopped wearing Pagan jewelry, no symbols or hints of her beliefs.

Regardless, Marie doesn’t regret the path she chose. 

“The most amazing thing about Wiccanism, Paganism…is it’s all free,” Marie said. “If dancing naked under a full moon isn’t for you, then don’t do it. If doing spells isn’t your thing, then you don’t have to do them. If you want to just sit outside and make the wind blow, you’re free to do so.”

As a child, she felt trapped, cornered like a wounded animal, but she never questioned who she was. 

“I have always been told to trust my gut,” Marie said, “and this is something deep in my gut — in my bones — that feels so right that I could never doubt or deny it.”

The post Out of Hiding, Into the Bible Belt appeared first on Hill Magazine.

I couldn’t miss Canaan Sandy when I walked into Sassy’s Red House in Fayetteville. No one could. The barstool he sat on was swiveled 180 degrees back to the bar, directly facing the restaurant’s entrance. Lifted like a pedestal, he swung his legs and watched the front door.

I had never met Canaan before, but I recognized him instantly. He wore black pants, an “Eric Musselman Live at Sassy’s” shirt, and a giddy grin. His face crinkled like someone who had been smiling for 37 years straight. His mom, Ginger, sat to his right, assuming her role as Canaan’s assistant greeter.

Everyone who stepped out of the February darkness into the warm glow of Sassy’s had two things in common. The first was that they were all there for Eric Musselman’s Monday night radio show to hear the University of Arkansas’s head basketball coach discuss all things Razorback with Chuck Barrett. The second was that they all knew the red-headed superfan on the barstool.

Canaan called each newcomer by name, greeting them with a bear hug and a kiss on the cheek. He returned every “how are you?” with “better now—I missed you so much.” He told me that he missed me when I introduced myself to him, even though we had never met. Strangely enough, I felt like I had missed him too.

Canaan was born in the summer of 1982 with a hole in his heart, intestinal blockage and no hearing. Two days later, his parents were told that he might have Down syndrome, or as Ginger prefers, be forever young.

“That was kind of earth shattering until almost immediately he started having health issues,” Ginger said. “Pretty soon all of that worrying about being forever young went away, and we just wanted him to live. Nothing else seemed to make any difference.”

Canaan survived to create a life that few would pity. The Cave City native is a Razorback superfan who, over several years, has developed a fan base all his own. Canaan and Ginger travel hundreds of miles to Razorback games almost every weekend of the year—a tradition that they’ve had for most of Canaan’s life. His unwavering support of Razorback athletics has charmed players, coaches and fans alike. He has become a leader within Razorback nation.

As a through-and-through Razorback fan myself, I’ve known of Canaan for years. I don’t remember when I first heard of him, but just like the running Razorback logo or a celebratory Hog call, Canaan has been there over the course of my life as a fixture of Razorback fandom. I’ve long been one of his 13 thousand Twitter followers, keeping up with his life from a distance. I remember when Canaan scored a touchdown in the Razorbacks’ spring Red-White game in 2014, and I remember when the Sandys were given a Hogmobile in 2018. I also remember hundreds of people sending their love and encouragement to Canaan over the past year, a time that has been plagued with strokes.

Over his life, Canaan has become many things to many people. He is a follower of Christ, a devout Razorback fan and a friend to all he meets. He’s a son, a brother, an uncle and a 4-H Lifer. He’s a member of the ESPN Fan Hall of Fame and the Batesville Community Theatre. He’s a charming cheerleader and a world-class hugger. His green eyes sparkle with the wonder of a child and hold the wisdom of Solomon. Though his body is aging, his spirit is not.

Sitting at Sassy’s, Canaan laughed with Mrs. Terry, Coach Musselman’s secretary, about Coach Calipari being ejected from the Kentucky game after racking up back-to-back technical fouls in Bud Walton Arena. Chuck Barrett, the voice of the Razorbacks, asked Canaan his prediction on the next day’s basketball game against Auburn. Coach Musselman, the man of the hour, made a beeline to Canaan through a room of people who were there to listen to him speak. Mason Jones, the Razorbacks’ best ball handler and Co-SEC Player of the Year, followed behind to get a hug and a picture.

After each person he greeted, he turned to me and said, “remember him?” I didn’t, but he was quick to tell me.

As the room filled with Razorback fans and the smell of fresh barbecue, Canaan was giddy, quietly calling the Hogs to himself. The freckles on his fingers blurred as he wiggled them in the air, scanning the room to recruit imitation.

When Canaan was asked to lead the Hog call before the show started, Ginger leaned over to me and said, “he pretty much rules the roost wherever he is.” A few minutes later, Canaan asked the owner of Sassy’s for a to-go cup. He was happy to get it for him.

Canaan’s giddiness might lead one to assume that this was a rare and special opportunity for Canaan. And though it was special, because it’s always special to Canaan, stealing the show at Razorback events is just part of his regularly scheduled programming.

Regardless of the Razorbacks’ success, Canaan is used to winning. He wins people over. He wins the room he’s in. Polite, personable and passionate, Canaan often has whole-hog command over whomever is around him. But instead of abusing this attention to get his way, Canaan recruits.

Canaan’s passion recruits high school athletes to take notice of Razorback nation. Canaan’s passion recruits dejected fans to keep cheering until the final buzzer of what feels like a hopeless fourth quarter. Canaan’s passion recruits members of his church to stay after lunch for a second worship service. Canaan’s passion is unwavering and infectious. From football to faith, Canaan’s passion recruits people to buy into what Canaan has bought into.

When Mason Jones answered a question by giving all the credit to God, the Sandys cheered from the crowd, exchanging high-fives and “Hallelujahs!” Canaan yelled, “I love you, Mason Jones!”

Though Canaan’s fame is a first for the Sandy family, he’s not the first to be Hog wild. Ginger and her husband Danny are lifelong Razorback fans. They had season tickets to home games until Canaan was born, “but then life changed a lot,” Ginger said.

The multi-generational family fandom all started with Ginger’s mother, Clara Cossey, a die-hard Razorback fan. Clara has been almost totally unconscious for months now following a bad stroke. One day this past October when Canaan was visiting his grandmother, who he calls “Mudder,” he leaned over and started calling the Hogs. Clara, who hadn’t spoken in hours, suddenly became cognizant and started calling the Hogs with him.

Though they were born into a Razorback-loving family, going the extra mile—or 200—to support the Hogs in person every weekend is a tradition unique to Ginger and Canaan. Beyond making it to the games, they sometimes go to Fayetteville a night early to be there for the Monday night radio show or other pre-game festivities.

After the radio show ended, Ginger laughed with Assistant Coach Corey Williams, who played on the Chicago Bulls with Michael Jordan, about how she and Canaan were at the game when Arkansas beat MJ. “Canaan was only about this big,” she said as she used her hands to measure out about a foot. “I almost threw him on the court!”

The superfan said goodbye to everyone with a hug and a “Go Hogs! Beat Auburn!” The Sandys were among the last to leave Sassy’s. The smile that was on Canaan’s face when I first spotted him hadn’t budged.

Canaan knew that I was hanging out with him so that I could tell people his story, which he was excited to share with me. When we parted for the night, Canaan said, “Put this in your story: Auburn’s going down!”

…

When I arrived at Bud Walton Arena several hours before the game started on Tuesday, Canaan was already on the court hyping up the team. Every player, coach, referee, security guard and newscaster called him by name. After the student section started to fill up, he jumped in front to lead them in a Hog call.

Canaan loved calculating what the teams’ records would be after the Hogs won the game. He loved how touched I was when he gave me a Razorback necklace. He loved passing out high fives, hugs and “Go Hogs” to everyone who walked by. He loved singing “I’m a Believer” by the Monkees, and he loved telling me that “all referees are not created equal.” He also loved seeing the cheerleaders, who he called his “dates.” Canaan loved it all. And how much Canaan loved it made me love it.

“They play for me,” Canaan said. “I know it in my heart.”

When we finished singing the last note of the national anthem, Canaan looked up at me, beaming, and said, “It’s awesome, right?” Until then, I had forgotten how awesome it was. And it was so awesome.

As always, every bone in Canaan’s body believed that the Razorbacks would beat Auburn. He welcomed fans of each team, cheered loudly for the players and danced his heart out on the Jumbotron.

Auburn came back from a late 11-point deficit to beat the Razorbacks 79-76 in overtime. Canaan was mad at Auburn, just like he’s always mad at a team that beats his Razorbacks.

“Sometimes we just sit in the stands and let him deal with it,” Ginger said. “But then as soon as someone waves to him or says hello, he’s running to give them a hug and assure them that we’ll get them next time. Then he’s pretty much done with it.”

Around 9 p.m., Canaan and Ginger left to drive four and a half hours back to Cave City with all the faith in the world that the Hogs would beat Missouri on Saturday.

…

The two-lane highway that weaves through the rolling hills of northeast Arkansas toward Independence County is sprinkled with Baptist churches, campaign slogans and for sale signs advertising acreage. The land is mostly barren but everyone is taken care of; there are barns and waterholes for the herds of cattle and Bible verses on billboards for drivers passing through. The highway is lined with corroded barbed wire fence—the kind of barrier that would be easy to knock over if time hadn’t petrified it into the natural landscape.

If you hang a right 12 miles north of Batesville, you’ll find the Sandys’ house at the end of the gravel. And by the time you’ve climbed the winding dirt driveway to the top of the hill, your new best friend will be waving from the front porch.

Canaan lives with his parents on their family farm in Cave City—self-proclaimed home of the world’s sweetest watermelons and the Razorbacks’ #1 fan. The Sandys’ home base overlooks 183 acres of cattle grazing land that has been passed down through the family for generations. Wind rocks the oak trees, but the wooden cabin is steady.

Danny works in commercial refrigeration while Ginger stays home with Canaan. For the most part, Canaan sleeps late. When he wakes up, he turns on SEC Network and gets 103.7 The Buzz in his ears while he waits for breakfast. He takes about 10 pills per day, and he drinks a lot of water.

“And diet pop,” Canaan said as he pointed to the 2-liter bottle of soda on the counter. “I’ve got it right here.”

Canaan’s whole day revolves around following the Hogs. He reads every article, listens to every radio show, watches every broadcast. He takes his responsibility as a Razorback superfan seriously, constantly updating his Twitter followers with scores, encouragement, and the latest in recruiting news.

Born with an unending list of medical issues, Canaan quickly dropped from 7 pounds to 5. He underwent his first surgery at 5 weeks old, and 4 weeks after that, his parents took him to his first Razorback game. Ginger and Danny admit to taking him to Fayetteville for the season opening football game that September because they couldn’t find anyone brave enough to stay with him. Ginger was prepared to have to sit in the car with him if he got too hot or started fussing, but much to her and Danny’s surprise, Canaan did well. Little did they know that that stadium would become Canaan’s second home and the people within it, his second family.

Canaan is best known as a cheerleader for others, but competing is in his blood. Canaan started competing through Arkansas 4-H at age 5. He showed pigs on a national level, joined the Arkansas Purple Circle Club for showing rabbits at the state fair and was featured on the cover of the National Swine Association’s first youth program brochure. He also traveled with a 4-H dance group to perform across America, and he was chosen as one of 10 dancers to perform in the national talent show in Washington, D.C.

As the first ever forever young in the Arkansas 4-H system, Canaan was recognized as a Governor’s Award finalist, and in 2002, he was elected to the Arkansas 4-H Hall of Fame.

One of the reasons I wanted to get to know Canaan better was because his competitiveness intrigued me. Not because it was big or bold or intense—which it was—but because it was different. It felt cleaner, purer. Even in the face of hostility and aggression, he was gracious and compassionate.

Canaan loved the Razorbacks with a love that I had never seen in sports before. His fandom was delivered like a home-cooked meal—served warm, made with love, and expected no recognition.

…

  Friday nights are warm up for Canaan and Ginger. When they’re not watching Canaan’s nephews play in Cave City, they travel to Friday night high school games to cheer on prospective Razorbacks. They’ve been to Mississippi, Alabama, Texas and every corner of Arkansas following recruits.

“We love to go to other schools and cheer for kids,” Ginger said. “It’s so much fun. If we ever thought we made anyone feel special, it would just be the best thing we could do because so many of these kids are so special, and we just love to show them some attention.”

Saturdays are game days. Wherever the Razorbacks are competing is where Canaan and Ginger are headed to on Saturday morning. Canaan likes to be there when the doors open so he can tell the players good luck. He also likes to walk around the stadium to welcome the opposing fans. He doesn’t want them to win, but he’ll never pass up the opportunity to wish them luck. And no matter how mad he might be after a loss, he’ll go tell the winning team’s fans congratulations and that they played a great game.

The Sandys arrive early and stay late. On their frequent day trips to Fayetteville, they drive 200 miles home after the game, often racing the sun to Cave City.

From going into the football locker room after a win with Tony Bua 20 years ago to throwing the first pitch at a baseball game this past year, Canaan has had his fair share of memorable Razorback moments over the years. However, no Hog wild memory can come close to rivaling his touchdown during the Red-White game.

Bret Bielema, the Razorbacks’ head football coach from 2013-2017, had a special place in his heart for Canaan and became close friends with the Sandys. After inviting the family to the football team’s Red-White spring game in 2014, Coach Bielema let Ginger in on his plan of letting Canaan score a two-point conversion.

However, toward the end of the third quarter, Ginger remembers an assistant running toward them saying, “Coach wants more!” Players and coaches whisked Canaan away. The last thing that Ginger heard the athletic director say was, “Canaan Sandy, don’t you dare drop that ball in front of 30,000 people!”

Canaan ran onto the field, took the handoff from Brandon Allen, and ran the football 50 yards to the end zone, putting the Red Team up 54 to 22.

The players, coaches and administrators huddled around Canaan in celebration. When the whooping and hollering started to die down, Canaan asked if they could pray. Everyone gathered up and said a prayer, but before they closed it, the athletic director said, “Oh, and by the way Lord—please let us beat Alabama.” Of course, everyone yelled “Amen!”

Steve Sullivan, KATV’s long time Sports Anchor, is one of Canaan’s many fans. Steve has had the well-known superfan on air with him several times, and he often catches up with the Sandys at Razorback games. In October of 2018, Steve ran into Ginger on the way out of Little Rock Touchdown Club.

“I know her life’s mission is to grant every wish that Canaan has,” Steve said, “so she drives all over the place. I saw her car and I knew she had to put a lot of miles on it, so I just casually asked how many were on there.”

When Ginger shared that the car that she and Canaan drove to games had 409,000 miles on it, Steve sent out a Tweet about how Ginger was a gift from God who was driving on a prayer.

Not long after, Mark Miller from Fletcher Dodge called Steve to tell him that he wanted to surprise the Sandys with a new car. Steve told Ginger to bring her car to Fletcher Dodge on Tuesday, but wouldn’t tell her why.

When Ginger and Canaan arrived, Frank Fletcher and Mark Miller surprised them with their new Hogmobile: a Razorback red Ford Focus.

“We didn’t even know what to say. We were so thankful,” Ginger said. “I mean it just takes so much pressure off of you. Now I don’t have to worry about us winding up on the side of the road somewhere. We’re so proud of it.”

Ginger and Canaan only drive the car to Razorback games. Ginger says that that is why it was given to them, so they want to honor that gift. They have had the car for 16 months and have put 34,000 miles on it traveling the state for Razorback events. The only time it’s been driven to a non-sporting event is when Danny picked Canaan up from the ICU in it after a recent health complication.

“Canaan’s love comes at a great time because we’ve really gone through a tough time,” Steve said. “He shows unconditional love, which is rare in life. We’ve suffered so much lately in basketball and football, but he’s that guy that never ever jumps off the wagon. He’s 100 percent supportive of the players and the coaches, so he serves a huge purpose. During a really tough time for sports in our state, he’s the one you can count on to always support the Hogs.”

Canaan’s relentless dedication to the Razorbacks is what inspired Ginger and Krista, his older sister, to nominate him for the ESPN Fan Hall of Fame in 2013. Out of thousands of entries, Canaan was chosen as a top-10 finalist and elected in December. After nearly 32 years of pouring his heart and soul into the Razorbacks, Canaan was recognized as a Hall of Fame Fan.

ESPN flew Canaan, Ginger, a UA Sports Information Director and UA’s mascot Big Red to New York City, where they explored for a few days before a limousine took them to ESPN Studios in Bristol, Connecticut. The first night, they dined with ESPN executives before retiring to their hotel rooms.

The day of the ceremony, the entire campus was decked out in flags and signs that celebrated the Fan Hall of Fame. Hannah Storm, Canaan’s favorite ESPN anchor, was the ceremony’s MC.

True to form, Canaan had the crowd stand up and call the Hogs before he even got on stage. Ginger said she was amazed by how much ESPN employees respected Arkansas, and Canaan cried when he thanked everyone during his speech.

When Canaan was young and Ginger first started driving him to games every weekend, Danny’s only stipulation was that they were able to find tickets.

“Danny’s agreement was that as long as you have tickets,” Ginger said, “if you’re gone every Saturday, you’re gone. If you have to spend the night, you have to spend the night. If you have to eat out, you have to get out. But you better have tickets.”

Holding up their end of the deal was made much easier after Sharon Bale met Canaan in a parade. For the next 29 years, Bale Chevrolet got Canaan and Ginger tickets to every game.

“We did football, basketball, everything,” Ginger said. “We were gone all the time for 29 years. Always at the game.”

When Bale Chevrolet recently gave up their season tickets, Canaan and Ginger lost theirs too.

Buying season tickets is outside of the Sandys’ budget, but Canaan and Ginger made it into every football game last year besides one. They made the four and a half hour drive to Fayetteville, cheered for the players at the team walk, and then drove home. Canaan was disappointed that he didn’t get to go inside, but he cheered up when Ginger reminded him that he got to encourage the players.

Canaan is well accustomed to not receiving special treatment. Though his support system is as deep as it is wide, cutting corners has never been the Sandys’ game plan. Ginger and Danny have never treated their Forever Young like he was any different.

“We never used any of the words that some people might use,” Ginger said. “We never put any restrictions on him. We refused to put him in a segregated school or join the segregated groups, which has made a lot of people unhappy with us. We just didn’t see him as any different.”

In 2003, Canaan was the first forever young to graduate from Cave City High School.

It’s never easy to be the first. There were lots of growing pains associated with paving the way for future forever young students in the school’s special education department. The student body accepted, encouraged and challenged him.

Superintendent Steven Green, who Ginger says is the president of Canaan’s fan club, remembers Canaan’s years at Cave City High School as some of the best years in the school’s history.

“He’s just always been one of those young people who is adored by everyone,” Steven said. “He was the same then as he is now. Just has a servant’s heart, always wanting to lift people up, always kind, always loving. Never anything negative unless you led him in that direction.”

And though most of his peers adored Canaan, there were inevitably a few bullies who saw him as an easy target. In one particular instance, some high school boys put him up to doing something to a girl that shouldn’t be done.

When Steven called Ginger to tell her what happened, he assured her that he knew that the high school boys put Canaan up to it, but because the girl made a complaint, he had to do something to punish Canaan. Ginger agreed wholeheartedly. She was surprised, though, when Steven mentioned Canaan choosing detention over a spanking. She knew that the school’s standard discipline procedure included both.

Ginger told Danny to watch the shop that they had at the time in Cave City, and she took off toward the school. She pulled Canaan from his classroom and walked him up to the office.

Ginger: “Mr. Green, Canaan is here to take his licks.”

Mr. Green: “Oh! No, no. We don’t need to do that.”

Ginger: “Yes we do. We’ve got to make a point. In a way I understand that he was a victim, but he’s got to learn not to be victimized.”

Mr. Green told her that he couldn’t do it. “I’ll be out in the hall,” Ginger said.

After that, Ginger never remembers Canaan causing trouble at school again. She says that to protect him, they had to make a point. “I wasn’t going to baby him,” she said.

Steven, on the other hand, had a harder time punishing Canaan.

“I can remember him coming down to my office and he and I had to talk about what’s right and what’s wrong,” Steven said. “When you’d talk to Canaan, you could never be mad at him. If you were trying to correct him, he would just be saying ‘I love you’ in that sweet little tone. Canaan always wanted to make sure everyone was on good terms. It was important to him to make sure I was okay, and he’s still that way today.”

Canaan was the first one at Cave City schools to invoke the Arkansas Disabilities Act, allowing him to attend high school until he was 21 years old. “We were thrilled,” Steven remembers. “We would have kept him forever.” For his last three years of school, Canaan was in double reading classes and became an excellent reader.

“We wanted to get him all the reading that he could go ahead and get in case he went deaf,” Ginger said. “And he is going deaf.”

Canaan is almost totally deaf without his hearing aid now. He has about 35 percent left in one ear and no hearing in the other. A few years ago, he underwent temporalis fascia surgery, in which doctor’s cut off his ear and made a new eardrum out of cartilage, but it didn’t work. The unsuccessful procedure left so much nerve damage that the ear is not good now.

For a few years, doctors talked to Ginger and Danny about cochlear implants. Once the Sandys were on board, they found out that it was a $200,000 surgery, meaning that the family’s 20 percent share would be $40,000.

“So, we’ll just keep trying with hearing aids,” Ginger said. “A doctor got him that hearing aid, but it’s got a problem and can’t be adjusted to account for the new hearing loss. It needs to be sent off, but it takes two weeks and we don’t have anything else to replace it. They need $500, which would be fine, but the two weeks off … we have places to go! And he is totally deaf without it.”

Deafness isn’t the only health issue that Canaan has struggled with in recent years. In January of 2018, Ginger heard Canaan call for help from his room. As soon as she laid him down on the couch, he quit breathing. His wandering green eyes locked as his skin turned red and then blue.

Several chest compressions later, she saw Canaan’s eyes start to light up. He took his first breath in what Ginger said felt like minutes. “I’ve got to get you to the hospital,” Ginger told him before darting off to grab her phone and keys. When she came back out, Canaan was gone.

“He had gotten up and walked to the car by himself,” Ginger said. “He knew he needed help.”

When they arrived at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, they found out that Canaan had an internal mass of stones that had released, causing a sharp pain so intense that it threw Canaan into shock. Following multiple procedures, including a gallbladder removal, Canaan stayed in the intensive care unit for 11 days.

Canaan’s health stabilized until the next spring when he had his first stroke. After a few nights in the hospital, the Sandys returned home on Saturday. Around 11 p.m. on Sunday, Ginger heard Canaan say, “Momma, I want my eyes back.” She and Danny knew he was having another seizure—the second of what would become a series of five strokes.

The morning after the second stroke, Lieutenant Governor Tim Griffin coincidentally called to check in on his friend Canaan. After Ginger filled him in, Tim told her to get Canaan to Little Rock as quickly as she could.

When the Sandys arrived at the Arkansas Heart Hospital, a cardiologist, neurologist and surgeon were waiting on them. The team of doctors found a massive hole in Canaan’s heart. Miraculously, they were able to mend it with a disc, avoiding open heart surgery.

Canaan still battles chest pains, heat flashes, digestive complications and sleepless nights. He spends a lot of time at doctor appointments in Little Rock, where Ginger feels lucky to have so many people like Tim Griffin who support Canaan.

Tim remembers meeting Canaan at the Cave City Watermelon Festival in 2014 when he was first running for office. Ginger told Tim that her son would like to meet him, so he found Canaan.

“He was extremely outgoing, and I was loving that because I’m outgoing,” Tim said. “We just started having a good time talking about the Razorbacks. We were chatting and hugging and posting pictures on social media and all that. That was sort of the start of it. He was just such a nice guy.”

After Tim became Lieutenant Governor, Canaan dropped into his office on a few occasions to catch up. Then in 2016, Tim was asked to sing at The Buzz Christmas Karaoke. Canaan, who was also going to perform, asked Tim if he wanted to do it as a team.

“Canaan picked out a song and we bonded doing karaoke together,” Tim said. “We’ve just been friends ever since.”

The Lieutenant Governor connecting the Sandys with specialists at the heart hospital is just one of a million examples of people with a lot on their plates taking time to look out for Canaan. Tim said he thinks that people across the state rallying around Canaan speaks to the tight-knit community of Arkansas.

“We’re really like one big family, you know?” He said.

“His positivity shines through and sets an example,” Tim said. “He’s mostly known in the world of athletics, particularly as it relates to the Razorbacks, where he’s always optimistic and full of joy and happiness. People know about him in the college athletics context, but it overflows into all of life. It sets a good example for everyone. He’s like a light in a room.”

The strokes have hurt Canaan’s speech, and his new trouble with spelling and arranging words has made it hard for him to write. Until his strokes, Canaan would sit at the table and write all day, copying book after book.

Ginger said she doesn’t worry about Canaan’s future. When she said that that was something she leaves to God, I took her word for it. But when I heard her play “‘Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus” for the opening hymn, I believed her.

…

Right when I thought that all known civilization had ended 20 miles back, I rounded a bend and spotted Cedar Grove Missionary Baptist Church at the top of the approaching hill. The gravel lot had six cars—all backed into spots—and no phone service. I’m not one for backing in, but I found myself throwing my arm over my seat and turning around as I put my car in reverse. I didn’t want to be the odd man out. Now with seven cars, the lot was beginning to fill up.

Canaan picked me up at the front door, his hand on his hip waiting to escort me. “Welcome to my church,” he said. “You’re family now.”

He ushered me through the sanctuary, where the preacher was sharing a Sunday school lesson with the adults. The youth Sunday school class, which was made up of six teenagers and Canaan, was led by Ginger at a round table in the dining room. Canaan and I joined the group’s discussion about the promises God makes in the Bible.

“God keeps his promises because He is perfect,” Ginger said. “If there wasn’t a God, there would be no right or wrong.”

The dining room had a long table draped with a white table cloth as a make-shift buffet, three folding tables with mismatched salt and pepper shakers, and a ping pong table. The back corner of the room still staged the background set-up of the Christmas program.

At 11 a.m., a prayer dismissed everyone at the round table to join the adults in the sanctuary for church. “Few in number but hopefully high in spirits this morning,” Brother Eddie Lee said to the 35-person crowd.

The congregation voiced prayer requests, offered updates and announced that lunch would be potluck again next Sunday. Canaan sang “He Set Me Free” with Jack Sanders while Ginger played the piano, and Brother Lee delivered a sermon about accepting Jesus Christ as your savior.

“When you have genuinely been saved,” he said, “you will learn to love the things that God loves, like the church.”

The Sandys love the church. Even though they spend most Saturday evenings in a different corner of the state, they drive home through the night so they can be in Cave City for church.

“We would give up the Hogs for the Lord,” Ginger said, “but if we stay tough and be diligent, we can do both. We can make those Saturday games and still be back in time for church on Sunday morning.”

Ginger admits that driving back at night can be a struggle. Sometimes they have to pull over to a police station, rest area, McDonalds, or church parking lot for Ginger to take a cat nap.

“Usually if I can have 15 minutes, I’m good to go again,” Ginger said.

A member of the congregation strummed his guitar as he sang “The Little Mountain Church House.” I couldn’t help but watch Ginger while the guitarist sang “looking back now, that little mountain church house has become my life’s cornerstone.”

Ginger’s great-great grandparents started going to church on this hill after they settled here in 1848. Her other set of great-great grandparents joined them 10 years later. Worshiping in a newer building but on the same ground that her ancestors did is important to Ginger. She estimates that she and Canaan are related to about one-third of the congregation.

“People don’t care how much you know; they care how much you love,” Brother Lee said from the podium.

…

Brother’s Lee’s words lingered in my mind as I made the drive back to Fayetteville—the same drive that the Sandys make nearly every weekend. “People don’t care how much you know; they care how much you love.”

During hour three, I pulled off the highway for gas and lunch. I couldn’t help but think about how tiring this drive must get. I couldn’t help but try to calculate the yearly miles, gas money, travel time, and every other measurable sacrifice that the Sandys make to support the Hogs.

I couldn’t help but think of the Sandys on the open road in the middle of the night—humming through the stillness as the world resets. Canaan reliving the 3rd quarter alley-oop and Ginger planning her Sunday school lesson.

I couldn’t help but think of 1 a.m. with 100 miles to go and the fluid movement between Saturday to Sunday.

When did game day fade into the Lord’s day? Was it midnight? Was it when they reached the end of the winding driveway? Was it when their alarm went off for church?

Somewhere between 10 p.m. in Fayetteville and 2:30 a.m. in Cave City, the line between game day and Holy day becomes blurred.

Maybe Canaan’s devotion to the hogs is lined with Grace—a Grace that is found on the open road in the wee hours of the night when Saturday bleeds into Sunday.

Canaan is a cheerleader and a bridge-builder. He gets his theatrical flair from his mother and his stubbornness from his father. He prays during free throws, wears Razorback gear to church, and loves unconditionally. He was born into a Christian home that loved the Arkansas Razorbacks, but Canaan became the superfan he is in the wee hours on the highway in between.

The post Game Day, Meet God: Superfan Canaan Sandy’s unconditional love through faith and fandom appeared first on Hill Magazine.

By Tegan Shockley September 25, 2020

Ministries undertake the issue of sexuality, revealing how the religion has hurt and isolated believers.

I grew up going to church on Sundays like most people in the Bible Belt. Maybe not so normal, I put my faith in Jesus after God asked me in a dream, “Tegan, are you ready?”

I think my life is pretty normal for a small-town Missouri girl though. I played sports in high school. My boyfriend and I won prom king and queen. I watched my brother marry his high-school sweetheart. I have a loving family that supports me.

Moving to the University of Arkansas for college presented some new challenges. How strong was my faith? Could I make a long-distance relationship work? Would I be able to make new friends?

What really sucks is being away from my boyfriend. We started dating our senior year in 2016 and spent almost every day together. After we went long distance, we started sleeping over at each other’s dorms during visits.

I would lie to my parents about staying with a girl friend. There was something exciting about being sneaky, but a tinge of guilt always rang in the back of my head. Numerous religions have propagated the idea that women need to be pure. Virgin. Men don’t want a wife who’s engaged in sexuality activity. It was popular in the ‘90s for symbols like purity rings to grace young girls’ fingers across the U.S.

It was very clear to me that sex was off the table. Since I’ve been with my boyfriend, a gloomy thought has made residence in my mind and reappears every so often. What if I don’t end up marrying him? I’d have to explain things we did with my husband. With a vague understanding of sexuality from the church, guilt set in.

It’s easy to get caught up in exploring sexuality with someone you care about. It’s easy to push boundaries in a relationship because the Bible isn’t very clear about dating. It’s easy to justify those actions when you miss your boyfriend who lives 160 miles away.

The blurred lines of dating as a Christian led me to do things that I feel guilty about. How far is too far? I haven’t had sex, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t been sexually active. Fortunately, I haven’t felt isolated by church. In part, that’s because of Emma Rippelmeyer, 25, a mentor from my small group through Fellowship Bible Church.

When Emma said she was leading a seven-week study based on the book Rethinking Sexuality by Juli Slattery during my sophomore year at the University of Arkansas, I was all in. I had been feeling guilty about stuff I was doing with my boyfriend. The idea of getting clarity about dating drew me in. This isn’t a topic my family ever really talks about, so I was intrigued. I wasn’t aware of studies that dealt with issues around sex.

More and more Christian ministries are tackling the issue of sexuality. Generations of believers have been hurt by the religion’s narrow view or the culture’s perspective of sexuality, driving some people away. A 2015 Pew Research Center study estimated 106 million Christians are projected to leave, while only 40 million will switch to the religion globally by 2050.

Faith-based organizations are looking to the Bible to rectify that pain. Christians are moving away from the purity movement and the “just don’t do it” or “because God said so” adages. They focus on open communication about God’s design for sexuality and provide resources for people who struggle with specific issues, like pornography and the addiction to it.

My group met for a few weeks and studied Slattery’s book while working through passages in the Bible like Romans, Deuteronomy, Ephesians and Luke. We covered topics on sexual discipleship, sexual brokenness, sexual wholeness and more. The group is based on a ministry, which is a religious organization focused on a specific subject that serves people.

The ministry is Authentic Intimacy, with the goal of “reclaiming God’s design for intimacy and sexuality.” It is used across the U.S. and in places around the world like Europe and Africa, said Kristi Miller, the business manager. She sets up training seminars for church leaders and other events for Slattery to speak at, like Family Life’s Love Like You Mean It Marriage Cruise. The organization provides podcasts, studies and books, like Rethinking Sexuality, on multiple topics. There are other groups like it.

Authentic Manhood is another ministry that deals with sexuality. Its message focuses on equipping men to live Gospel-centered, passionate and purposeful lives. One resource it provides is 33 the Series, which has been sold to 1 million men all over the globe, said Tierce Green, a teacher for AM in Texas.

“When I was a teenager growing up in church,” Green, 65, said, “it really seemed like sex was this evil thing. Like, ‘Don’t kiss anybody or you’ll go blind …’ but really the foundation is that sex is a good thing. God created it.”

These ministries believe two things: God designed sexuality, and people are sexually broken. Sexual sins seem to carry a heavier weight than others, so people can feel shunned by the church. Sexuality in general is traditionally not a subject that’s talked about in Christian churches either, especially outside the context of marriage. Instead of staying silent on sexuality, the church needs to talk about these issues so people don’t feel rejected for sins.

EMMA

She sat in the back ring of the circle, trying not to move at a friend’s house in Fayetteville, Arkansas in 2016. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself. Emma Rippelmeyer, 22 at the time, rested her hand on her face so she could quickly wipe the tears away. The women in her Christian community group just levied some well-meaning, but devastating advice about sex in marriage.

The Rippelmeyers got married in June of 2016. After the honeymoon phase quickly dissipated, their sexual relationship became shaky, mainly for Emma. The group told her that to some degree, a wife is responsible for the sexual wholeness of her husband. If she isn’t available for her spouse, that will lead to sexual sin like pornography or an affair. The response sent Emma further down a spiral.

So now it’s her fault if the marriage falls apart because she’s not “serving him?”

Emma had finally brought up her struggle because the group of mostly married people separated into men and women. Surely some of them would’ve understood what she was feeling and alleviate some of her anxiety. Instead, she left that night crushed by shame’s heavy weight.

She waited until marriage for sex, but it was emotionally and physically painful for Emma. Although she trusted her husband, Josiah, more than anyone else, Emma began feeling anxious around him in the bedroom. For months prior to that community night, she locked the bathroom door and sat on the floor crying by herself with no idea why. She hated when people saw her cry.

“I was having deep emotional stress, anxiety and depression all around sex,” Emma said. “The rest of our marriage was super fun, which is another reason it was confusing … but this one piece was just a disaster.”

Emma didn’t know who to turn to as the first married person in her close friend group. She couldn’t talk to her family either.

Growing up in southern Texas, she never got in-depth conversations about sexuality from her church or her parents. Emma thinks her mom and dad are wonderful, but they didn’t equip her well. Her upbringing of silence led to a marriage full of anxiety and fear about sex.

“I just felt really alone,” Emma said. “I became very unavailable, emotionally and physically with my husband. Then I thought, ‘This is going downhill really quick, I need to figure out some advice.’”

JOY

It was fall 2011, her freshman year at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Joy Skarka, 18, entered college thinking she had to be a perfect Christian. Though young, she was looking for love after always being left empty in previous relationships.

Joy attended orientation in August, like most incoming undergraduates do before classes begin. Then on the third day of being on campus, Joy spotted an attractive boy.

She didn’t really know anyone there after moving from Monroeville, Pennsylvania, so Joy thought she was lucky to meet someone so early on. He seemed different than the boys she dated in high school. Sweet and trustworthy. She walked back with him to his dorm to hang out. Instead, he raped Joy.

She wasn’t drunk at a party. She wasn’t alone in a dark alley. Was this her fault for choosing to go to his place?

A couple months passed before Joy mentioned what happened to anyone. Her friends back in Monroeville knew something was wrong, so when she opened up, they assured her that it wasn’t her fault.

But did God care about her? Anger swelled as she questioned why God would let this happen. Shame became her constant companion: this is a punishment from God. You deserved it. You’ll never earn God’s love.

JONATHAN

Everything changed for Jonathan Daugherty, 46, on a Tuesday in August of 1999. He finally confessed everything to his wife.

He was a porn addict, went to strip clubs, slept with prostitutes and had multiple affairs. He revealed all of it.

He was first introduced to porn when he was 12 years old. A friend came over and unexpectedly showed Jonathan pornography. It was traumatic because his family never talked about anything sexual. But there was something alluring about the pictures too. This set him on the path of leading a double life.

“Eventually I got married,” said Jonathan, who lives in San Antonio, Texas, “and in my mind, (in) my Christian upbringing, you get married and that’s when all these problems go away … Sadly though, I learned the hard way that you bring into your marriage whatever is already broken.”

Even after sharing his darkest secrets, Jonathan went to be with another woman later that Saturday. When he came home, his wife’s bags were packed. Jonathan watched her drive away, headed to her parents as he walked into their house all alone.

He was faced with two options: keep doing what he was doing and end up dead or go back to the God he grew up with.

“I had thought about suicide several times in the year prior to my wife leaving, even to the point where I’d sat on the end of our bed with a loaded gun in my hand,” Jonathan said. “I had a profound experience with God’s grace that day.”

EMMA

After two failed attempts of asking for marital advice, in late 2016 Emma Rippelmeyer contacted Kim Vollendorf, a Christian author she heard speak about sex on campus at the University of Arkansas. Emma no longer felt crazy.

“I am forever thankful for Kim because she was the first woman to speak of sex as God intended it,” Emma said. “He made it, so he has authority over it, not the culture.”

Emma didn’t grow up talking about sex. She didn’t know how to express herself sexually in marriage, so everything felt hidden and shameful.

Young girls all over the country were told the same narrative Emma received growing up during the purity movement: Your body is a rose. Every time you sexually interact with someone, you give a piece of yourself away and lose a petal.

Maybe because she partook in sexual sin with her high school boyfriend, God was punishing her. No one wants a rose that lost its petals.

“I guess I’ll just have a really crappy sex life now,” Emma said. “I would get really mad at my own body for not reacting how I wanted it to.”

Although she didn’t have a stigma against counseling (her father was a counselor), the idea of talking about her problems felt worse than pulling teeth. Josiah had been suggesting they go to couple’s therapy, but Emma finally consented after Kim brought it up.

Emma slowly started getting better. Some sessions she would be with Josiah. Other times Emma was by herself, where she learned that her emotions need to be in a good place before having sex. With a helpful community, counseling and a husband who wouldn’t give up her, Emma’s sexual brokenness started healing.

“I had very few Jesus narratives about sexuality,” Emma said. “You can dig past what the Christian culture has to say about sexuality and get to what Jesus says. It’s really beautiful, and it’s really redemptive and it’s really forgiving.”

For her, Joel 2:25 is a verse she keeps close to heart: “I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you.” Emma believes God will heal her pain.

JOY

It wasn’t her fault. Joy needed to process that thought. But it was difficult. It took time before she decided to report the rape later that fall semester, opting to go through the university’s system. She had to tell her story over and over again, reliving her trauma.

In the middle of a random classroom on campus, Skarka was separated with a manmade divider, just a few feet away from her rapist. Joy’s representative from the school sat with her on the right. Three officials were in front acting as the judges. She had to recount that day, knowing he was right there. Joy got to leave before he argued his side.

During Christmas break of 2011, Joy got the news. The university believed her and kicked the student off campus.

“After going through it … I know why most women don’t tell anyone,” Joy said. “It wasn’t until that call where I think healing could finally begin.”

For the first year after she was raped, Joy was depressed and turned to porn for comfort. She first saw pornography in fifth grade. A friend came over and showed a video on her computer. At the time, Joy didn’t know what it was, but felt the need to hide it from her parents.

“I grew up in a closed family system,” Skarka, 27, said. “We put conflict under the rug. So, I just had all these questions, ‘What is sex really like? Like (the rape) wasn’t sex, what happened?’ I started Googling questions, which led to pornography.”

Healing didn’t come quickly for Joy. For months, she would go to class and immediately return to her room to lay in bed and cry. On the desk near her bed, Joy noticed the Bible her hometown church gave her. She thought that there must be something in it that could be helpful.

“I was asking God like, ‘I don’t understand, I don’t know anything, but can you just please comfort me and bring healing?” Joy said.

Then one day another college student from her dorm floor invited Joy to an event with Cru, a Christian organization primarily for university students across the U.S. Joy heard a message of God’s grace. It was the first time she understood God’s love is a free gift.

With the help of a Cru mentor, Joy worked through her abuse and stopped looking at pornography and masturbating. She rededicated her life to Christ and got baptized at Aletheia Church in Tampa her sophomore year.

Joy launched a website in 2013 to share her story and create resources for women. Through the trauma, she found a passion for women’s ministry.

JONATHAN

For nine months, Jonathan was separated from his wife Elaine. That day in 1999 revealed he was powerless, and he hit rock bottom.

“(Her leaving) was actually the catalyst that pushed me into recovery,” Daugherty said. “It also pushed me back towards God.”

He grew up looking at sexuality through a purity narrative. You weren’t supposed to have sexual feelings as a single person. You never discussed what it meant to be a sexual being. Sexuality was reserved for marriage.

“A lot of my confusion and frustration came around growing up in that environment,” Jonathan said. “I didn’t have any outlet for even having a conversation about urges and feelings that I have related to being a sexual being.”

The first step Jonathan took toward recovery was counseling. Out of spite, three months prior to the separation, he went to a counselor to get Elaine off his back. Jonathan didn’t want to be there, and he let the man know. So, they sat in the office in total silence for 50 minutes. Then he got up, paid the counselor and left with no intention of ever returning.

Components of Jonathan’s recovery included support groups, his local church and counseling. The road was arduous, but the Daugherty’s marriage was restored. Elaine forgave him, and they decided to use their pain for good in ministry.

MINISTRIES

Churches and ministries are finally addressing the issue of sexuality.

The Senior Pastor of Cross Church, which is based in Northwest Arkansas, has led a Family Matters series the past couple months. Nick Floyd preached specifically on sexuality April 1 via Facebook live. He said sex is exclusive, private, provides protection and is made for enjoyment.

Nick Floyd, senior pastor at Cross Church, warns parents through Facebook live of the sermon topic in case they don’t want their kids listening. The video has over 2,200 views. Screenshot from the Cross Church Facebook page. 

“The world speaks very openly about sex, and the church must speak openly about these matters,” Nick said during the video. “If you want to enjoy God’s gift to the fullest, you do it God’s way, within God’s boundaries [marriage].”

For those who have experienced a “hurt, hang-up, or habit,” Celebrate Recovery is a program focused on wholeness, growth and spiritual maturity. CR wants people freed from shame and pain. It has been used in over 30,000 churches and by 4 million people all over the world, including Emma. It allows people to find support teams, sponsors and more for multiple issues, like pornography, abuse and marital problems.

Emma’s participation in a CR step study through Fellowship and working through the book Rethinking Sexuality helped her find healing. She’s moved past pain to fiery passion. For a year into Emma’s marriage, she couldn’t even say the word sex out loud. Now she leads college women on the topic.

“We need to be having holistic conversations where everyone sees what the purpose of their sexuality is,” Emma said.

Emma thinks the conversation should be beyond sex. Sexuality doesn’t appear suddenly in marriage. What about new moms and their bodies? The elderly, disabled, LGBTQ, everybody?

“Everyone has sexual sin and we’re just leaving people in the dust,” Emma said. “I think with my children, the issue will be, ‘Do you feel seen and loved?’”

Joy questioned whether or not she was loved, but found her answer in Jesus. Her calling for helping women was revealed through the pain of sexual sin and abuse, which still occasionally affects Joy.

“Different things will trigger me where I know my husband is being loving or not trying to hurt me at all,” Joy said, but “he’ll do something like push me down on the bed where he’s just trying to be fun and playful and I’ll have a flashback.”

Porn and romance movies distorted Joy’s view of sex, but the couple worked through her struggles and her husband’s inexperience. She used her story of sexual addiction and abuse to help other women find freedom. Since 2013, Joy has been praying to make her passion a full-time job. This year, she was hired as the director of discipleship for Authentic Intimacy.

“There’s still a long way to go for our churches, but there is hope and a lot of great ministries doing good work,” Joy said.

Jonathan created one of those ministries. About three years into their recovery, he felt tugged by God to share what he learned, so Jonathan started Be Broken.

His life’s work is about helping churches and families grow in the area of sexuality. Although Christians are doing better, he thinks there needs to be more education to help tear down the barrier of an “us versus them” mentality.

“Everybody’s broken,” Jonathan said. “Everybody needs to learn more about how to respond well in this area of sexual brokenness.”

Because of Emma and Rethinking Sexuality, I have a better understanding of my relationship with God. I’m not so nervous to ask questions or bring up concerns about my relationship. Those nagging thoughts of guilt and shame are fleeting.

At first it felt strange to connect sexuality with Christianity. It seemed like something I wouldn’t have to deal with until marriage. And if I did anything wrong sexually, I was a terrible Christian. Now, I’m conscious of the culture’s distorted view of it in movies, books and TV shows. I know that everyone struggles with sexuality, and it doesn’t equal automatic condemnation. If I let the world define sexuality, it reframes my view of God and his design.

Jesus was a friend of sinners. An empathetic healer for the downtrodden and broken. In John 8:1-11, he saves a woman charged with adultery from being killed: “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” Sin is sin, but we can do God’s work by talking about sexuality and educating people, not turning them away for mistakes. If the church is modeled after Christ, shouldn’t we all be more like him and approach these issues with truth AND love?

The post Growing Up in Silence: Christians Reclaim Sexuality appeared first on Hill Magazine.

A hidden journey from Islam to Christianity

By Elliott Wenzler

Comic by Olivia Fredricks

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From the outside, he’s a man not so different from any other. He works in Northwest Arkansas; he raises his kids; he smokes the occasional cigarette; he loves his wife. He couldn’t live without her, he said. Despite working in a smaller kitchen than she’s used to, she’s still the best cook in the world.

Some days are harder than others. Work goes long, and sometimes he doesn’t get to his apartment until around 6:30 p.m. The apartment isn’t extravagant: a long couch and a few small decorations on the walls. It’s nothing compared to what his house in his home country of Iraq was like. It holds his three young kids and his wife though. The front door handle is hard to open. It makes him feel safer.

Feeling safe is important to him. He changed the book he prays from, and now he feels like he has to worry all the time. He thinks and worries about it more than he checks his dwindling bank account, more than he stews over problems at work.

***

His name for the purpose of this article will be Matthew. He chose it because it is the book of the Bible that changed everything for him, especially chapter five.

Matthew’s identity will remain concealed in this article, protecting him as he opens up for the first time to someone outside his family or church about how he converted from Islam to Christianity.

Even though Iraq is over 6,000 miles away, Matthew will only discuss his true self and beliefs behind closed doors and in a low voice. He fears his Iraqi friends will find out and post about it on Facebook. His family might be punished, those in Iraq and the United States.

“You have no idea what’s going to happen if they know,” Matthew said. “Maybe I’m disowned from my parents. If I come back, I’m going to be killed for sure … I’m willing to give my life for Jesus Christ, but how about this kid?” He gestured to his 14-month-old son playing close by.

He talks about how his wife, who chose the name Marry for this article, posted something about loving America on her social media recently and soon received messages from fellow Iraqis questioning if she planned to change her religion. This kind of obsessive attentiveness is characteristic of the Iraqi community here, they said. The gossip is constant.

As he explains the details of the culture, he pulls his son into his lap. The toddler just grew his first tooth, and as he sits giggling in his father’s lap, he bites his father’s hand.

Matthew and his family aren’t alone in their struggle to convert from Islam; in fact, there is a group fighting to help people just like them.

Ex-Muslims of North America, an advocacy group founded in 2013, aims “to reduce discrimination faced by those who leave Islam, advocate for acceptance of religious dissent and promote secular values,” according to its mission statement.

EXMNA makes a point to distinguish between hateful racial bigotry and criticizing an ideology. An article was published on its website in 2015 with a title including “there’s a way to critique ideology behind religion without resorting to hate,” which urged readers not to follow President Donald Trump’s lead in policies like a ban people from predominantly Islamic countries.

Sarah Haider, co-founder of EXMNA, was born in Pakistan and raised in Texas as a Shiite Muslim. From a young age, she began reading the Quran critically and left the religion soon after her late teens. Now Haider does advocacy work to encourage the acceptance of religious dissent from Islam and works to create supportive communities for those who have left the religion, according to EXMNA’s site.

Haider is also passionate about women’s rights and civil liberties.

“Everybody that I was paying attention to was telling me that this was a wonderful humanist religion. But when I looked into it, it was clear that it wasn’t,” Haider said in an interview posted on the EXMNA site.

The group has communities in 18 cities across the U.S. and Canada, according to its website. They use the term ex-Muslim as opposed to something like atheist to show the added difficulties faced by Muslims who want to leave their faith.

“Most people who leave Islam tend to be isolated. They don’t talk to other people because they are concerned about the consequences,” EXMNA President Muhammad Syed  said in an interview with The Thinking Atheist.

Pew Research Center reported in 2016 that 90 percent of the Middle Eastern-North African region criminalizes blasphemy, defined as speech or actions considered to be contemptuous of God or the divine, and 70 percent of the region criminalizes apostasy, which is the act of abandoning one’s faith.

Iraq, where Matthew is from, criminalizes both apostasy and blasphemy. The city he is from especially does not take deserting the faith lightly. That’s why he never openly considered it until he came to Northwest Arkansas.

“Tradition is more strict than Islam,” Matthew said, citing the fact that even Christian women in Iraq will wear a hijab because it is the cultural norm.

When Matthew came to the U.S., his dedication to Islam had already been fading for years. His uncle had been killed in the name of Islam, and he had started looking more critically at the Quran and other Muslim texts.

“I started to be atheist because I had seen many people killed in the name of Islam,” Matthew said. “I was just searching for the truth after ISIS took Iraq.”

He still was practicing Muslim prayers when he arrived, just like he had since he was a kid, but it didn’t feel right. He was losing his faith but still believed in God.

“I was just lost. I had no idea (if) I am Muslim or not,” he said.

Growing up, Matthew never considered Christianity because he learned a skewed version of the religion, he said. Matthew recalls learning that Christians believed that God and Mary had a physical relationship and that was how Jesus was born. It wasn’t until he confronted a Christian, asking how the person could believe this, that he learned it wasn’t truly a part of the faith.

When a Christian group came knocking on his door in Northwest Arkansas shortly after his family arrived, he was finally able to ask the questions he had always been curious about. When they told him the truth about their faith, they gave him a Bible as proof. That’s when he started reading it.

“I was shocked,” he said.

The story of Genesis was the same origin story that he learned in Islam, he said. He began reading the Bible daily.

One day, after living in Arkansas for a while, he asked his wife, “Do you accept me having four wives at the same time?” and after some hesitation and discomfort, she said no. Matthew was referring to a Quran law which allows men to have up to four wives. Her answer to the pivotal question set the family’s change in motion.

As Matthew recalls the beginning of it all, his 2-year-old giggles loudly in the background with a joy that is boundless and unfettered by the stress of such a question.

***

Experts agree that leaving Islam isn’t as easy as leaving other faiths.

“It is (more difficult to leave) in countries where religious law is enforced,” said Ted Swedenburg, a professor of Middle Eastern cultures at the University of Arkansas.

Religious law can be enforced by the state in places like Iran and Saudi Arabia and by individuals or militias in other Middle Eastern countries, which vary in the severity of measures taken.

“It’s not purely a religious issue,” Swedenburg said. There are also important political aspects for those who leave the faith.

One interpretation of Islam is that those who leave are heretics and should be punished by death, though there isn’t universal agreement on this among Muslims, he said.

For people in the Middle East, it is unlikely that someone who is no longer a believer would be open about it in public. The path of least resistance is to simply not observe Muslim practices but be quiet about it, Swedenburg said. There isn’t much room for atheists and definitely none for Christian or Jewish converts.

“When there are organizations around that are on the more extremist end, it’s not unthinkable that (this family) would be nervous about something like that, and they could somehow put their family at risk,” Swedenburg said. “But this would be militias, not the government.”

Armed militias have been present in Iraq since the days of Saddam Hussein. ISIS has only been in the country in the last five or so years. Although Iran and Saudi Arabia are the only Islamic States, or countries where government is primarily based on Islamic law, many others have laws influenced by the religion relating to divorce, marriage and inheritance, Swedenburg said.

“There are people who are working to bring more secular laws into being. In my opinion, that’s the step you have to take,” Swedenburg said. “Taking religion out of politics as much as possible and creating a society where one interpretation of religion is not the only one seems to be the way to go.”

Swedenburg worries that those who express dissent from Islam sensationalize and exaggerate points in a way that feeds into Islamophobia and is counterproductive. Some people who speak out against Islam after leaving the faith are using their experiences to make blanket statements, he said.

“Their word about Islam is taken as gospel truth,” Swedenburg said.

Swedenburg agrees that secular systems should be made that make it easier to leave the faith.

“I think you have to create political systems where there’s equality between faiths,” Swedenburg said.

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***

When they arrive at church, Marry removes her hijab. She wears it in the grocery store and to meet with friends from Iraq, but she doesn’t need it here. At the Baptist church the family attends, about 10 miles outside of town, they are far enough away that it isn’t a concern that they might run into an Iraqi. Inside, they worship as they please.

Matthew and Marry sit close to one another as they listen to the pastor. They take each other’s hands after the pastor calls for a prayer on family. Matthew gently shakes his head and mutters with the intensity of his prayer.

They sit with the same couple that brought them to the church years ago. Matthew met the husband at work and after many questions about his faith began joining him at church events. A few years later, Matthew named his son after the friend who brought him to church.

The friend claims he didn’t really do much. Matthew was on his way toward the faith, and he just so happened to be there at the right time.

Matthew’s brow furrows as he ponders the pastor’s words. Occasionally, he does a quick translation in his phone. Usually he will check which verses will be read and prepare by reading the Arabic version beforehand.

There’s an unseen shroud over the sunny Sunday morning service. Earlier in the day, thousands of miles away in Egypt, two Christian churches were bombed in an ISIS-claimed attack, leaving the country in a state of emergency.

“All I can do is pray for them,” Matthew said about the incident.

He hopes to return to the Middle East someday. Matthew wants to share what he has learned with those he loves. He knows they haven’t heard the full story that he has now been exposed to.

Matthew talks a lot about the grace he has found in the U.S. He never felt any pressure to conform to the ways and religion of the South, but the kindness that he was met with in Arkansas spoke volumes.

“Here, they help anyone regardless of his religion or race – for that reason, I believe this country has grace,” Matthew said.

Swedenburg agrees that even with the growing Islamophobia in the U.S., it’s unlikely that the couple would feel the need to convert because of the surrounding faith.

People were never rude to Marry because of her hijab, and she didn’t experience any attempted proselytizing after arriving.

Even when they started attending church events, their pastor didn’t attempt to convert them until he was sure they had found their way on their own.

When their pastor Charles and his wife, Sophie, who declined to use their real names for Matthew and Marry’s anonymity, met them at a church bonfire in October 2015, they had already been praying for the couple, they said.

“We just didn’t want them to have an ugly American experience. We just wanted them to feel welcome,” Sophie said.

Matthew and Marry were both baptized in October 2016, one year after they met Charles and Sophie. Matthew came first in his acceptance, and Marry converted soon after. Pastor Charles wanted to be sure they were doing it for the right reasons, so he met with each of them individually to make sure they understood.

After these meetings he said he realized that Matthew and Marry were people who “on their own have each chosen to follow Christ,” Charles said.

***

When Matthew talks about his faith, his loyalty and love for his family and his work, he speaks confidently and without pause. The only thing that seems to make him skip a beat is questions about his future.

“I have no idea about the future,” Matthew said. “(I’m) asking for God to give me the plan for that.”

The program allowing him to live in the U.S. doesn’t last forever, but he hopes he can find asylum before that time runs out.

Someday, when his kids are old enough, he plans to show them the Quran. He wants them to read it and understand it for themselves. It would be nice to take them to his home country, but he doesn’t expect it will be possible for at least 30 or 40 more years.

His dream is to keep living here in Arkansas, the place he gets homesick for when he travels. He might not be able to make very much money, but it’s worth it to have safety and freedom.

“(The money) doesn’t mean anything,” Matthew said. “I’m going to live here with my religion even if I’m going to be poor.”

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