@NLENTS, your post has been on my mind all day. I read @Patrick’s post first thing this morning and I still can’t shake it. If I didn’t know you, if we hadn’t had such a good conversation in St. Louis at @swamidass’ workshop, it might have just rolled by. But I have seen the way you talk about your family, I have seen your humility and eagerness to understand those who disagree with you. I know you care about people in a way that, frankly, I wish more Christians would. In fact, part of why this is so hard for me is that I’ve seen Christ in you more than I have in lots of so-called Christian leaders. I hope you take that as a compliment and not as offensive.
So, when people, who may have religious or political positions closer to my own than to Nathan’s, make such unprofessional, unacademic, and frankly just petty, personal attacks in a book review of all places, I makes me a little sick inside.
P.S. I thought about sending this to @NLENTS privately because I really don’t know how people in my sphere, including my employer, might react. But I decided that if Nathan can have the courage to be “out”, as a gay, progressive, atheist as he engages in dialog with Christians, then the least I can do, as a straight, relatively conservative, Christian, is publicly say “I’m sorry that happened to you, you deserve better.”