When Writing is Just Too Much

Mundane takes in the midst of turmoil

As my subscribers know, my plan is always to write these newsletters on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons. I did write about the Liberty University news and the potential problems with their Clery reporting on Wednesday, but I had planned that piece from the prior week.

On Monday, I was going to return to Robbie Jones’ The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and his work on the Doctrine of Discovery. Since it was Columbus Day for Italian Americans (and conservatives) and Indigenous Peoples’ Day for many others, it seemed like a way to focus on how the DOD had shaped both Columbus’ views and the views of those who pushed Native Americans off their lands again and again in order to favor white capitalist expansion. I was anticipating a “why not both” argument about the holidays but would advocate for them to be on different days. As I looked over my social media feeds on Monday, they were filled with anti-Columbus sentiment. I decided I didn’t have anything constructive to say and just skipped posting. I know I said this in a piece last week, but Robbie’s book is fabulous and you should all read it.

On Friday, I tried to come up with a pressing idea for a post and completely blanked. I had been working on wrapping up a presentation I’m doing at the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR) conference the end of this week in Salt Lake City. I organized a session on The Future of Christian Higher Education which will include friends representing Abilene Christian, Seattle Pacific, and Taylor.¹ It should be fun.

Over the weekend, I’ve pondered why I found it so hard to write on Monday and Friday. I think that sometimes writing feels like screaming into the wind. There’s so much turmoil and so much pain and so much that is precarious that it’s hard to figure out how one more 5-minute read is going to make any difference to anyone. How does yet another take edify anyone or provide an analysis that can really make an impact?

When writing gets too hard, you just stare at a blank screen

Clearly, the most immediate thing creating my inability to process was the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7. It was so devastating in so many ways and ran counter to everything recent decades have told us about the Middle East crisis. The balkanization of our news sources and the devastation Musk has brought upon X made it very difficult to grasp what happened and why. We moved very quickly from the horrors of what happened that Saturday. There was the performative outrage at the performative outrage of liberal groups celebrating Hamas as pro-Palestinian freedom fighters (ignoring the fringe nature of student groups and organizations like Democratic Socialists of America). As always, there was no backlash against right-wing groups arguing that we should just flatten Gaza because they all support Hamas. And those who support a legitimate two-state solution (while guaranteeing Israel’s right to exist) were squeezed out of the conversation.

Here at home, we have one-half of one of the three branches of government uninterested in governing. Since Matt Gaetz laid the trap for his Motion to Vacate back in January, what happened on the 3rd was pretty much inevitable. Kevin McCarthy is now the former speaker. Scalise looked ascendant and then pulled out of the speaker’s race. Jim Jordan², who finished second to Scalise in initial voting, is now whipping votes to get the gavel (with help from Sean Hannity) and may well win over the so-called moderate Republicans.

On top of that, we have a presidential race unfolding to look like the last one. Trump is so far ahead of his primary opponents that he’s all but guaranteed the nomination unless he’s struck by a meteor (and even then I’d hedge my bets). Biden is arguing for support of democracy and highlighting threats to it, but all pundits can talk about is his age.

Conservative states throughout the country are creating Supermajorities that don’t require them to adjust to either their Democratic colleagues or the wishes of their voters. They are doing things because they can. While I’m happy to live in a bluish-purple state with tripartite Democratic control of government, I’m still troubled by this complicates any sense of national domestic policy.

I haven’t even mentioned the ongoing war in Ukraine or the injustices of the criminal justice system. I remain concerned about the expansion of Christian Nationalism in far too many otherwise-normal churches.

So, I guess it’s not surprising that sometimes things just get overwhelming and writing my little piece to go out on the interwebs feels so pointless.

I’ll be back to my regular schedule on Wednesday. I’ll take Friday off for SSSR and then write about the conference at least a couple of times next week.

1. The panel is made up of three Purdue PhDs and two Baylor PhDs.

2. Who John Boehner called a “legislative terrorist”, who played a key role in the election denial strategies, who refused to comply with a subpoena from the Jan 6 committee, and who promotes the conspiratorial “weaponization of government” claims. I’m sure it will all be fine.