Originally published in Indy Week. IT’S A WARM FRIDAY AFTERNOON, and I’m driving down Silk Hope Road through Alamance and Chatham counties. It’s a familiar route that I used to take several times a week, when I was reporting on the life of Siler City’s Loves Creek Hispanic Baptist Mission. For eight months in 1999 I threw […]
The Stealth Crusade
Inside one Southern university, Christian missionaries are being trained to go undercover in the Muslim world and win converts for Jesus. Their stated goal: to wipe out Islam. Originally published in Mother Jones. AT 8 O’CLOCK ON A WARM MONDAY MORNING IN JANUARY, 20 students file into Rick Love’s classroom at Columbia International University in South Carolina. Eyes […]
Into the Closet
Can therapy make gay people straight? Originally published in Salon.com. THE NIGHT JOHN WESTCOTT WALKED into his first meeting of Eleutheros, he had no idea where his life was heading—but he knew that he desperately wanted it to change. “Pray for me,” he had announced to friends several months earlier. “I’m walking out of Egypt.” […]
Walking Home
In the Triangle’s Hispanic heart, a Baptist mission learns the joys and trials of building a community. Photos by M.J. Sharp. Originally published as a two-part series in Indy Week. (Click here for Part 2.) Part 1: Soul and Skin SOMETIME THIS SPRING, when the weather gets warm, the members of Loves Creek Hispanic Baptist Mission […]
Holy Spirit
Carrie Bolton preaches a freedom message—and not just inside her church. Originally published in Indy Week. HENRY HUNTER WAS STILL A YOUNG MAN the day he learned Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation. With a presidential penstroke, the world suddenly seemed too big for Hunter to stay on the farm where his family lived. “I’ve […]
Gay No More?
A breakaway group of Christian and secular therapists claims to be able to convert homosexuals into heterosexuals—if they’ll just get with the program. So what exactly is the program? And does it work? Originally published in Psychology Today. IT’S A SUNDAY MORNING in Lecanto, Florida, and Faith Chapel is filled with the Holy Spirit. Tambourines shaking, guitar […]
The New Men’s Movement
Thousands of men have flocked to rallies led by the Promise Keepers, a religious organization that aims to restore male authority and make men better husbands and fathers. But what price will women pay? Originally published in New Woman. SITTING ON THE FLOOR OF THE SILVERDOME in Pontiac, Michigan, it’s hard not to fixate on the overhead […]
Rain of Nails
When an anti-gay bomb shattered the peace in Atlanta, was the far Right’s new “leaderless resistance to blame? Originally published in Out. EVEN THOUGH IT WAS ONLY 9:45 P.M.—early for a Friday night in Atlanta—the Otherside Lounge was already cranking up February 21. One hundred and fifty women and men had settled into the dark, […]
