The Foxy Essayist

In the past few weeks I've been reminded of Frank E. Peretti's This Present Darkness (1986), an evangelical horror novel that tells the tale of a demonic attack on a small town. Much of the plot revolves around the effort of a cult-like New Age group that attempts to purchase a small college in the town to take it over for a demonic horde. The heroes, a local newspaper reporter named Marshall Hogan and a pastor named Hank Busche, gradually piece together the plot. One narrative element that has stuck with me over the last twenty years is what happened to both men as they began to cause problems for the conspirators: demon-possessed women falsely accused each of sexual assault. Within the story, this works out since both men meet in jail, team-up, and eventually defeat the forces of darkness. I am troubled by the way in which Peretti deployed spurious charges of sexual misconduct as a go-to tool for demons to interfere with those fighting for truth and Christianity. Part of ...

Donald Trump, his administration, and many of his supporters have gone out of their way to deflect criticism of themselves through invoking a "Deep State" that is full of democratic operatives attempting to use the arcane bureaucracy of the federal government to subvert the will of the people. The last few days have led some of these supporters to conclude that they are right. The current crisis became more intense when the press began to report on the contents of Bob Woodward's Fear . It is reported to show how various officials in the West Wing have worked to contain and redirect Donald Trump, preventing him from doing what he has ordered them to do (such as assassinate Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and withdrawing from NAFTA). The officials implicated by Woodward are high-ranking (Jim Mattis, Gary Cohn, John Kelly, Reince Priebus, and Rob Porter have all featured prominently in the reporting) and have been close to the president. While the White House's of...

What do you do when the world around you stops making sense? This is a question everyone faces at times and we each struggle through it in a variety of ways. From a brief moment of confusion to an enduring existential crisis, encountering disturbing experiences in the world is a part of the human experience. How one handles such moments of disorientation determines the form of the individual's growth, either channeling it in a direction that can assimilate the new experiences, or in a way that suppresses them. As a teacher, creating such moments of disorientation is an essential part of what I do. It is hard to learn when you think you know where everything is going. It is also hard to learn when you don't care about what is happening in front of you. Nothing breaks through apathy like a shocking example that does not fit one's assumptions about the world. A classroom crisis of this sort is usually operating on the margins of one's identity. For example, while tea...