Dear American Church

   It’s October of 2025.  The smell of decay lingers underneath the morning dew, and the sunshine trickles to the forest floor like golden leaves.  The monarch butterflies and the indigo buntings have left the country. The land grows colder, the forest shows her true colors, and the flowers curl under the biting frost. I can feel the shift of the seasons, and the slow, inevitable march of time.

   All my life I have wrapped my faith around me like a tattered but comforting sweater. Several years ago, I pulled at the wrong thread, and it unraveled completely. I used to think, after my worldview became undone, that I could weave it back together again, until it loosely resembled what it was before. I tried to wear my old clothes, think my old thoughts, and frequent my favorite places, but nothing fit anymore. It all felt like a lie. I felt like a puppet at the mercy of my old life.

   Nearly a decade ago, during another autumn, I was fifteen, cut off from the internet, social media, and most of the outside world. I was waiting for my eighteenth birthday to come so I could quietly leave the church and find a new one. One year earlier, the sexual harassment I had endured became common knowledge within the church. After that, the public shame and ridicule directed towards me left me questioning my culture and my faith. I was trying to keep my head down and obey the church rules so I wouldn’t attract further attention.

   The only information I had about the world outside my insular culture was political in nature. Although they did not vote, my father and grandfather were deeply invested in the politics of the U.S.  I heard hundreds of political discussions between them that year. Most of the time, they were laughing at the absurdity of it all, but underneath the laughter, the conversations were laced with disbelief and concern.

   “Is Trump better for Christianity like my friend said?”

   When my nine-year-old brother asked this question, the answer my parents gave him was crystal clear. Neither candidate is better for Christianity. Politics has nothing to do with Christianity. Politics is always dirty, my father said, but this year, it’s smut. The best we can do is pray for our nation and make sure we are living a peaceful, moral, and Christlike life.

   Like my father, I was deep in my obsession with World War II at the time, and the first time I heard Donald Trump speak, I thought he sounded like a dictator. When I said so, no one took it seriously. After all, I was a child. Despite being a child, I recognized the significance of what was taking place in the nation, and I carefully documented footage of political conversations taking place in my home, as well as news clippings and footage of my family’s reactions to Donald Trump’s election to the presidency. After Election Day, I put everything together in a home movie, and squirreled it away on a flash drive, like a letter to my future self. Turns out, I needed that movie to make this blog post.

   After November, everyone stopped talking about politics, because, suddenly, there were more important things to talk about.

     It started with a letter and a Sunday School lesson that veered off course and became a lecture on modesty.  The things that were mentioned—tight sweaters, wide belts, not enough gathers in dresses, and hairstyles—were all aimed at me. Suddenly, my father had mysterious ministers’ meetings and my mother looked stressed every day. My conversations with my friends became stilted, like they knew things I did not. My parents and I had late night conversations about our standing in the church, and the possibility of my father resigning his position in the ministry.

     November passed, and Christmas rolled around. On Christmas Day, which landed on a Sunday, I wrote the following in my journal—

   “Today was Sunday. A Christmas Day Sunday. It was awful today at church.

   The song leader stared at me.  Endlessly.  Why must men be so stupid?

   The devotional was led by [Name Redacted].  He said, “We are not EMT’s, doctors, nurses, lawyers, firemen, policemen… we are the poor in this nation.”

     We are ‘the poor’ in this nation.  He insisted that we are poor, because we don’t have control of the government. Because we don’t hold influential places in society.

   We have, in this church, families who own real estate worth millions, who build expensive buildings to follow farming trends, who have never known real hunger, who have lived in peace and wealth their whole lives…

   And we are poor?

   I see within this church people whose lack of compassion destroys other human beings. I see ministers with an obsession for power, lustful men, and a place where only appearances matter and the example of Jesus Christ means nothing.

  This is a poor church. 

   But it isn’t poor in the way he said it was.”  

   After Christmas, no one denied that the church was splitting anymore. Everything descended into madness.  My father resigned from the ministry. Men’s meetings turned into shouting matches. Pointed letters and articles appeared in our church mailbox.  Rumors swirled everywhere. People started moving away from the community.

   I had become the church’s scapegoat. I was told that my dresses ‘were for looking and not wearing’ during a Sunday morning sermon. My friends stopped speaking to me. Men ogled me during church services and youth activities. I was the topic of malicious gossip and lies. Even the people closest to me questioned my character. It was then that I saw, in perfect clarity, the dark underbelly of the church. The faith that I placed in my culture was obliterated. All my life I had been told that Mennonites believed in peace, morality, and fairness. Nothing I experienced during those hellish months was peaceful, moral, or fair.

  The culture who prided themselves with being apolitical and non-voting built a deeply political church structure. The ministers of the church became egotistical politicians who screwed each other over in pointless power plays. Sexual predators were given free food, housing, and an endless supply of innocent children while their victims were shamed and publicly ostracized. Church function depended on the labor of women who weren’t allowed to speak or vote. Middle aged men said that women were too emotional to lead, but they got so hot and bothered over a teenager in a cape dress that they blamed her for their church drama. The peaceful people of my childhood were petty, bitter, and full of hate for each other and themselves.

   Time passed, and the dust settled. Our family left that community and joined another. I became an active member of my new church. My fragile faith became stronger. I began sharing my story publicly, hoping to raise awareness and bring positive changes to Mennonite communities. While my story was well received by the public, it was not well received in my church community. I was told that my story made the Mennonites look bad and to focus on following church rules instead of complaining.

   The pushback I received led me to withdraw my membership from my new church community. I knew, after I left, that I could never be a part of a Mennonite community again. I had done my best in two separate communities, and I had not been fully accepted in either of them. I realized that the issues I was facing were not a glitch, they were systemic and generational.

   After I left, I grieved. My childhood friendships were over. Since I had never been allowed outside my community, I didn’t have secondary communities to fall back on. I had to start over completely. I was isolated and deeply lonely. Losing my Mennonite faith and community was like a slow, agonizing death.

   Shortly after I left the church, I started college. I knew that the Mennonite school I had attended did not give me a quality education. The history we had been taught was heavily skewed towards the history of our religion, not the history of the world. The science curriculum we used had been printed in the 1970s. The last one-hundred years of the US had scarcely been mentioned. So, I devoured everything. I watched movies, documentaries, and listened to podcasts. I spent hours catching up on history and science. I watched democratic, republican, national, and US news outlets and commentators to try to get a balanced perspective of politics, although I discovered early on that I was left leaning.

   Away from the church’s constant influence, my beliefs shifted. I became less judgmental. I began to let go of the need to be correct. While studying different religions, I learned that all high control religions had the same systemic problems as the Mennonites. I came to think of myself as a spiritual person, not a religious one. It was a relief to be open and curious, instead of allowing a church to dictate what I believed.

   Last November, I was sitting in my therapist’s blue office, looking out the window at the cold, gray day outside. The week before, Donald Trump had been elected to a second presidential term. The election had dredged up a lot of memories from my childhood. I had disliked Trump from the start. He reminded me of the men I grew up with, who blamed me for their lust, who complained about what I wore, who defended my abuser, and who preached at me from the safety of their pulpits. That day, in my therapist’s office, I voiced my concern.

     “I feel like I’m being sucked into a culture I’ve worked the last five years to escape.”

   When I left the Mennonites, I used to wonder if any of my beliefs would survive. I had been conditioned to believe that if I left the community, I would lose my morals, my faith, and my place in heaven. I grew up with people who valued their traditional culture and the teachings of Jesus. I grew up hearing sermons about loving your neighbor, a kingdom not of this world, the unconditional love of Jesus, and second chances.

     It was a special kind of grief to realize I was not their neighbor, and the unconditional love was for the people who abused me. I didn’t get second chances.

   I still grieve the loss of my community. If it had been possible for me to stay, I would have. This year, watching my old community and the broader American Christian community has left me with a new kind of grief and a lot of questions.

  You say you would have hid Jews during the Holocaust, but you cheer when Alligator Alcatraz opens its doors. You say you would have spoken up during Hitler’s rise to power, yet you say nothing when children are dragged naked into the streets by ICE. You post eulogies for Charlie Kirk, yet fail to shed a single tear for the innocent children who are shot every year in our schools. You say you are pro-life, but you don’t care for single mothers. You say you are against hate, yet you speak in racist and homophobic ways. You are against every single war, except Israel’s war. Suddenly, being pro-peace is a liberal concept, and being kind is too much to ask.

   These politicians are putting on a play for you, and you are eating it up. They don’t care about you or your faith. They care about power and money.

   Maybe I am unpatriotic. I don’t really care. The reality is, America was never a Christian nation. We built this nation by spilling the blood of thousands of native populations. The infrastructure that we believe is so great was built by slavery and generations of injustice. America didn’t become a world superpower because it was blessed by God, it became one by being the biggest bully on the block. For hundreds of years, Christians have used their religion to justify war, injustice, and brutality, and the pattern continues today. I fail to recognize any of Jesus’s teachings in today’s America and presidential administration.

   During my research for this blog post, I came across an essay I wrote about Deitrich Bonhoeffer, World War II, and the reaction of the German church to Hitler’s rise to power. As I read the end of that essay, I realized I have not changed as much as I thought. My core beliefs have brought me to where I am today. I am thankful for the younger version of me, because she was less afraid to speak out than I am today. Instead of being ashamed of her, I am inspired by her. In closing, I want to share an excerpt from that essay I wrote when I was seventeen.

   “Some people say World War II will never happen again. Some go so far as to deny the Holocaust even happened. This is very dangerous. Denial makes recurrence even more probable. History does repeat itself.

   The questions and issues that faced Bonhoeffer could well face us. The dilemmas he faced could stare us in the face as well. We dare not ignore this possibility. These possibilities deserve fair hearing. They can’t be brushed away and ignored.

   What would we do if we were faced with a national crisis like that? This is not a question the church can settle for us. This is a matter of personal integrity. Are we Americans first, or Christians first? If a time comes when we cannot be both, which will we choose?

  I don’t believe in remaining silent in the face of evil. There comes a point in time when neutrality is not an option. Silence could put us in the wrong camp, as well as unquestioning obedience to authority figures. Is defending a perpetrator of evil any different than defending the evil itself?

   We cannot say that our nation is on an upward course. We deceive ourselves to suppose things will get better. Are we standing on solid ground now? If we aren’t we will end up just like the German Christians.

   The line needs to be drawn in our own hearts.”