Growing up a child of the 1980s and 90s in West Michigan, where the conflation of religion, politics, and the evangelical subculture was especially potent, I learned that the physical and cultural fabric of a life are intimately connected.

I spent the first half of my childhood as a white kid in a majority Black city. Then we moved to the next town over, where I spent the second half learning I was a poor kid in a rich town.

I was taught by my physical landscape to desire whiteness and wealth, and the evangelical church gave me a version of the Bible which said the same.

I’ve had a wide variety of experiences with evangelicalism. My two most formative denominations were Baptists and Assemblies of God, but I experienced everything in-between, having significant relationships with 11 different denominations by the time I was 30.

I grew up in the evangelical subcultural bubble, and yet what I have come to realize, as I’ve raised my 5 kids, left the evangelical church, and moved away from Michigan, is that the bubble was not a system designed to protect us from the world. Instead, it was a force meant to control it.

The driving focus of my research is understanding how white supremacy is used culturally by evangelicals in order to garner support for their political goals.