Though I was in New York when the shootings in Boulder took place, within hours I posted a response from our church.  None of our friends had died, though one of our co-pastors grew up in the neighborhood, and was in the parking lot just two hours before the shooting began. Another friend was there barely an hour before.  Another acquaintance was a friend of the police officer who was killed. So many of these horrific tragedies have occurred that I don’t know what to write anymore, even when it hits close to home.  The feelings are almost too overwhelming to name – anger, fear, frustration, sadness, resolve, disbelief, fury, resignation.

When events like this take place, I tend to follow my feelings.  Strong feelings arose on the day after the shooting, when I was watching the debate on the Senate floor.  Ted Cruz, someone I already have a difficult time suffering, was railing in his full volume cadence, saying guns are not the problem.  Then he said he would not apologize for offering thoughts and prayers, because prayers are important.

Prayers are important.  I have been praying that the people of Texas would turn out Ted Cruz ever since he arrived in the Senate.  I have been praying for a clear majority in Congress who would enact a ban on assault weapons like the one used by yet another angry young man.  We are the only nation in the world that has to deal with regular mass shootings, and the pure and simple reason is because politicians are afraid of the NRA and its constituents.

I have been praying that people would believe the Democrats who say we have no intention of taking away your guns.  We just need to ban weapons of war.  We had a ban on assault weapons in Boulder, but just a few weeks before the shooting, a district judge overturned the law as unconstitutional, a decision celebrated by the NRA.  The vast majority of Americans want a ban on assault weapons. It’s enough to make me want to move to a right-leaning state and run for Congress. I want to do something that will actually make a difference.

That is one of the most frustrating parts of the shootings in Atlanta and Boulder.  The majority of us have been rendered powerless on this important subject, while people like Ted Cruz virtually guarantee that thousands more Americans will be killed by deranged men.

I did a TED Talk a year and a half ago in which one of the other speakers was a father whose son who was killed in the Aurora theater shooting.  His talk was simple.  Never mention the name of the killer, he said.  Refuse to give them the notoriety they crave.  If we can’t get rid of guns, maybe we can get rid of the endless news stories about the men who perpetrate such atrocities.

When the Parkland shooting occurred, Donald Trump had to be given a note prompting him to show empathy when he met with families who had lost children.  One of the students who spoke with Trump that day spoke eloquently of the need for gun reform.  Trump sat there emotionless.  That young man is now a college student, and in an interview on Monday evening he said when he marries and has children, he will not raise them in the United States.  He will go somewhere his children can be safe.

I am trying to find hope, for without hope we cannot move forward.  Despair is concrete to the soul.  After I returned home I went with a friend to the memorial set up against the temporary fencing that surrounds the King Sooper’s.  It was a gray and rainy day, pretty unusual for Colorado, but it felt appropriate.  I read the notes and posters and looked at the beautiful flowers covering every inch of the fence.  There were at least one hundred other people there.  I looked at the sad eyes above their facemasks, and noticed their knuckles, white as they held tightly to the hands of loved ones. In just four days, thousands of people had come to show solidarity and pay their respects.  One television reporter talked of two families who lost loved ones and were encouraged and soothed by the crowds and their expressions of love, respect, and devotion.

My trip to the site was cathartic.  I was reminded that most people are good, thoughtful, and kind.  They want to make a difference.  They want to make sure evil is not the final word.  They want compassion to prevail.  My friend and I went into a couple of shops on the perimeter of the fencing, and purchased a few items, wanting to support the business owners whose stores are in the shadow of the sadness.

You cannot remain silent in the presence of evil. I will speak about the senseless tragedy at the beginning of our church service tomorrow. I do not yet know what I will say, because words are never enough when your heart is worn and surrounded by sorrow.  But I will speak words of hope, because hope is the only thing stronger than fear.

There is fear in the power of a mob.  With the Biden administration settling in, Republican conservatives are turning to a number of initiatives they believe to be achievable, at least at a state level.  One of them is the curtailment of transgender rights.  We need the Equality Act or my civil rights as a transgender person are going to be diminished.  And who is leading the way in these irrational fear-based initiatives?  Evangelicals.  Should I be surprised?  When I came out in 2014 I lost not one single non-evangelical friend.  On the other hand, I lost all but about five evangelical friends.  Thousands of people gone with one single blog post.

A lot has changed in evangelicalism since my departure, and most of it is not good.  According to the American Enterprise Institute, over 25 percent of evangelicals believe the basic premise of QAnon.  Over 75 percent believe, without a single shred of evidence ,that voter fraud stole the election from Donald Trump.  (Only 54 percent of non-evangelical Republicans believe that to be true.)  Sixty percent of evangelicals believe antifa was behind the 1/6 insurrection. (Only 42 percent of non-evangelical republicans believe the same thing.)  According to a Washington Post/ABC poll, 44 percent of evangelicals will not get a Covid vaccine.

These statistics indicate what I have already believed to be true – evangelicalism has become an anti-intellectual movement subject to manipulation by baseless conspiracy theories.  It is time for its leaders to speak up and stop the nonsense.  Unfortunately, their leaders are afraid of the power of the evangelical mob.

We learned this week, without surprise, that the British royal family is frightened of the power of the British tabloids.  The Republican Party is frightened of the power of one narcissistic ex-president who cost Republicans the Presidency, the House, and the Senate.  And evangelical leaders are frightened of their members.

I spent decades with evangelical megachurch pastors.  They were close friends and confidants.  I know a lot of these guys, and they were all guys.  They are smart, relatively well educated, and politically savvy.  And I am confident they do not believe any of these conspiracy theories.  They know this was a free and fair election.  They know Trump is a disaster, but they are as afraid of losing their power as moderate Republicans are afraid of losing theirs.

Lindsey Graham’s wild swings from Donald Trump’s loudest critic to his biggest supporter are a sign of what motivates Graham – power.  Whatever way the political wind blows is the way Lindsey Graham will rush.  He will do just about anything to stay away from any storm that could remove him from his coveted perch.  The same is true of many evangelical leaders.

I have been out of the evangelical world for seven years, but even back then, many of the megachurch lead pastors I knew were privately supportive of monogamous gay relationships and transgender rights.  Until the tide of public opinion turned, they routinely welcomed transgender members into their churches.  Jim Burgen, at Flatirons Church in Colorado, even told his entire congregation of his church’s embrace of one transgender woman.  In a private conversation I had with another influential megachurch pastor, he made a half-hearted argument about homosexuality being a sin.  When I said, “Come on, you know better than that.” he said, “Maybe, but my leadership doesn’t.”  I had no doubt he spoke the truth.

When Burgen received pushback for supporting the transgender woman in his church, he promptly called her in and read her a prepared statement telling her she needed to return to life as a man.  The statement included theological justification that a freshman Bible college student could refute.  I couldn’t even follow its logic.  The woman’s life was upended by Burgen’s swing from transgender support to rejection.

These guys know it is the conservatives who give disproportionately to their churches.  Conservatives make up their boards, and they are not about to risk their power by fighting for LGBTQ rights.  While that has been devastating to my community, their lack of courage does not stop there.  They do not speak out against systemic racism.  And now, they cannot even find the courage to tell their people that Donald J. Trump lost a free and fair election.  They cannot find the courage to tell them that there is no evil cabal of Democrats and Hollywood elites abusing children.  They cannot find the courage to tell them that Trump stands against everything for which Jesus gave his life. They cannot even find the courage to tell them that getting a vaccine could speed up herd immunity.  These leaders know every one of these things is true, yet they are afraid of the evangelical mob.

In the book of Romans, Paul talked more about corporate sin than individual sin.  He knew we have the tendency to behave in groups in ways in which we would never behave on our own.  This is sin as a cosmic malevolent force.  Evangelicalism’s embrace of QAnon and conspiracy theories about the election is an example of a cosmic malevolent force.  This radical evangelicalism could lead to the loss of our democracy.

Those on both coasts do not understand the power of evangelicalism in the South and Midwest.  But our system of government does.  The Senate and Electoral College, by their very nature, give greater power to smaller more rural states, where evangelicals influence the outcome of elections.  The embrace of conspiracy theories by evangelicals is not benign.  It is a malignancy on our democracy.  And there is only one group that can stop it – evangelical pastors and denominational leaders.  They know the truth.  The question is whether or not they have the courage to speak it.