About

I was born into a very conservative, fundamentalist Baptist world on the campus of Bob Jones University during the Bob Jones University v. United States trial in which BJU lost its tax exempt status for its racially discriminating practices.

My interest in music and writing began early. I sang my first solo in church at age three and was writing stories and songs by age five. But I also was told that certain forms of worship and styles of music were acceptable, while others were not.

I had many fears during these formative years regarding God’s posture toward me, my place in the world, and what might be looming for me after death. So after graduating from Bob Jones University with a B.A. in Bible, I left fundamentalism and entered into the world of mainstream conservative evangelicalism, assuming the worlds were fundamentally different.

After getting married to Ruth Ellen and graduating from BJU, we moved out to Denver, CO to help start a church, where I led the worship and small groups, and occasionally preached. I started a cleaning business during my time there in order to give me the flexibility to volunteer for the church. But seven years later, after a difficult season that included our pastor’s divorce, we ended up having to move on.

One year later, we moved back home to Greenville, SC. With a growing family that eventually included five kids, I paid my bills in the cleaning industry while volunteering to lead worship for a megachurch in town.

During this time, they connected me with a worship school for a season of healing and development. On our first night, one of the coaches told us we needed to have God-awareness and self-awareness. I figured that my God-awareness was totally fine, but that I had never thought about my self-awareness.

The next year began a season of facing my wounds, grieving and healing, listening to others, and learning to love myself well.

Because my season of growing in self-awareness helped me grow in awareness and empathy, I began to realize how my theology had been numbing my wounds and suppressing my wonder.

I soon enrolled at Northern Seminary as part of my journey of reconsidering everything I believed in. I eventually graduated in June of 2021 with a Master of Arts degree in worship.

In December of 2019, Ruth Ellen and I decided to switch places. She had received a B.A. in Interior Design, but had spent the previous ten years freelancing while taking care of our five kids. I was struggling with my cleaning business, but really wanted to write. So she was able to get a really well paying interior design job, while I came home with the spiritual and financial freedom to be a stay at home dad and a writer.

Six months later, I began writing for Baptist News Global. Then in 2025, BNG asked me to start the “Highest Power: Church + State” podcast, where I analyze the news twice a week, examining the intersection of faith and politics at the highest levels of power. And in 2026, my first book is being published with Broadleaf Books, titled “Weapons of Worship: How the Songs of Evangelicalism Form the Soundtrack of Extremism.”

While much of my journey has come from the Christian tradition, I also feel the freedom to explore the wonders and wounds of my neighbors, whether they are Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Agnostic, Atheist, or anything in between. I want to help us all learn to leave our theologies of hierarchy and exclusion that wound and separate us and move toward theologies of convergence and embrace that heal and bring us together. More than simply another journalistic attempt to expose the way authoritarian Christians are harming our nation, I hope this website will be a resource that can help us become more aware of self and neighbor, ask better questions, recover our capacity for wonder, and be liberated toward living in light of the universal union that has always been true.