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A picture of the Gadsden flag to introduce a piece talking about its unhealthy rhetoric
“Don’t Tread on Me!”: A History of Unhealthy Rhetoric

“Don’t Tread on Me!”: A History of Unhealthy Rhetoric

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So if you google the history of the “Don’t Tread on Me” symbol and flag (often called the Gadsden flag), as I did last week, you’ll find a wide range of storytelling styles about it—most of which are either right-wing or very right-leaning “moderate” in nature. Today I’m going to unwrap some of these narratives from a rhetorical perspective, take issue with some of these interpretations, and discuss why this flag has been a strongly questionable symbol of militant masculinity…

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Book Review: Resist and Persist by Erin Wathen

Book Review: Resist and Persist by Erin Wathen

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NOTE: In the spirit of last week’s post about recognizing the reasons for and coping with Outrage Fatigue, my posts over at the Assertive Spirituality Facebook page this week have been encouraging self-care even while we persist in resisting. In that same spirit, this week’s post upcycles a book review I wrote that originally appeared at the lovely Englewood Review of Books. Part of what this allows me to do is to put the final touches on the long-promised “Assertive…

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Christian Folk, Let’s Stand Up Against Abuse!

Christian Folk, Let’s Stand Up Against Abuse!

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We’ve spent a few weeks discussing the toxic patterns that can be enabled by conflict-avoiding “Christian nice” spiritualities and the ways they can make us sick. It’s high time we discuss what healthier spiritual responses to conflict look like. In this post, I’ll outline what I see as an excellent constructive way to approach conflict in abuse situations by jumping off an excellent reflection by Abbot Tryphon, the leader of the All-Merciful Saviour Monastery of the Russian Orthodox Church on…

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