Last year, here in Portland, I went to an author event at my local bookstore. The book was called “On Fire for God: Fear, Shame, Poverty, and the Making of the Christian Right.” It was a memoir by Josiah Hesse.

The event description said the memoir was about Hesse’s “bleak and difficult childhood in a small, rural Evangelical community in Iowa.”

My guess is that his literary agent or his editor understood how hungry mainstream publishers are for books that attack and slander the Christian faith.

Apparently, Hesse suffered mental anguish as a child when he was told by church elders that he was going to be tortured in hell for his sins.

Breaking with his church and family while still in his teens, he struck out on his own, eventually becoming a successful writer and journalist. Now he had written a book exposing the Christian right.

Dissing Christians

Hesse was doing a national book tour. He was traveling the country doing interviews and podcasts. He had just been featured on National Public Radio.

Needless to say, the mainstream media loved this book. A full frontal attack on the Midwestern evangelicals is always welcome in their circles. Especially if the author escaped the oppression of the church and found shelter in the safe spaces of progressive liberalism.

The book event began with Josiah Hesse making a grand entrance into the bookstore’s event area.

I didn’t know what to expect from such an author in terms of appearance, but I was definitely not expecting the rock-star shag haircut, the crisp white shirt, the shimmering black dinner jacket, or the elegant cravat around his neck.

Had this guy come here on his yacht? His face had definitely been moisturized. He looked like he could be in an ABBA tribute band.

Getting to know the author

Hesse took the stage and began his talk. He described growing up as an evangelical Christian.

As a young man, he was sensitive and imaginative and didn’t fit in. His parents, meanwhile, were loyal evangelicals. His dad believed in the “end times” and the eventual rise of the Antichrist.

In his teen years, Hesse’s feelings of alienation from his family and community got progressively worse. It didn’t help matters that he developed a taste for wearing high heels and trying on his mother’s clothes.

Small-town boy

So it turns out that Josiah was gay! Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Eventually, he did what so many young gay people do: When he was old enough, he moved to the nearest big city. In this case, Denver.

There, he scraped by, working odd jobs and picking up writing gigs. Over time, he was able to develop his talent and eventually got a literary agent and published a book called “Runner’s High” at a major publishing house.

Watching him talk, he seemed like an upbeat guy. He told funny stories. He didn’t seem traumatized by his Christian upbringing. He was just gay. And now he was a successful writer who was gay.

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Joe McNally/Getty Images

Family ties

I also noticed the “breaking with his family” part of the story wasn’t quite as severe as promised. In his talk, he described returning home, hanging out with his dad, meeting up with old friends, reconnecting as best he could.

It was an interesting and relatable story.

So what happened to the evil Christian right? That’s what the book was supposed to be about. Where’s the trauma? Where’s the abuse? Where are the scars?

The Portland audience seemed restless and disappointed. Where was the evil? That’s what they came for. WE WANT OUR CHRISTIAN EVIL!

Not following the script

I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know for sure what’s in it. Hesse did quote some statistics during his talk.

These statistics seemed designed to reassure the anti-Christian audience that he was on their side. Trump is bad. Conservatives are neanderthals. Christians are brainwashed and in some cases predatory.

But I was skeptical. I didn’t believe Hesse was really this simpleminded. He was clearly an intelligent guy. He wasn’t super political. He didn’t hate his family, or his town, or his old friends.

He had moved away from his rural community, as any talented gay person would do. He found his people in Denver. And now he was writing books and living his best life.

Go where the money is

My guess is that his literary agent, or his editor, or maybe Hesse himself understood how hungry mainstream publishers are for books that attack and slander the Christian faith.

They especially love books that confirm the stereotype: “small-town Christians = bigots + racists.”

These memoirs are so popular that there’s a formula:

The author is abused and humiliated by the sadistic locals.The author breaks free of their bigotry and finds his way to the “good people,” i.e. college-educated liberals in coastal cities.There, the formerly oppressed author can flourish and be his true self: gay, or nonbinary, or furry, or poly-whatever.Everyone lives happily ever after.

That’s the genre that Josiah Hesse’s “On Fire for God” supposedly belongs to. (See also “Educated” by Tara Westover, another memoir with almost the exact same storyline.)

Did Josiah strictly adhere to that formula? More or less. My main impression of the author: He looked happy. His writing career was going great. He was on a national tour. He was staying in nice hotels. He was wearing a cravat.

And I’m sure his publishers got what they wanted too. Another book that confirms that educated people, good people, moral people are uniformly against the Christian right, which is apparently an ongoing threat to our nation.

The only problem is: Whenever someone writes a book about the “dangerous Christian right,” it turns out he is just describing another small town in Iowa — usually, a town where, if you actually went there, you would find kind, decent people who, when you brought up the “Christian right,” wouldn’t even know what you were talking about.

​Antichristian, Memoir, Trauma, Books, Entertainment, Faith, Memoirs, Josiah hesse, Portland, Christian right, Blake’s progress 

Most Americans assume the ingredient label tells the whole story.

But according to Ashley and Patrick Sullivan, creators of the documentary “Breaking Big Food,” that assumption is usually wrong — and they’re exposing one loophole Big Food uses to keep cheap but toxic ingredients hidden from the public.

“What would you say is maybe one ingredient that people don’t know to look for? I’ve heard a lot of people talk about seed oils and different things, but what would you say is maybe one that doesn’t get enough attention that people need to look out for?” BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey asks.

“I think natural flavors can be tricky. Sometimes, they can be from naturally derived sources, but specifically if they are used in savory foods, a lot of times it can be code for MSG,” Ashley tells Stuckey.

MSG is monosodium glutamate, which Patrick explains is an “excitotoxin.”

At specific dosages, this acts as a neurotoxin to the brain.

“So think of like your Stove Top Stuffing kind of thing that has natural flavors. That ‘natural flavors’ is likely a monosodium glutamate,” Patrick says.

“You’re saying it could be in something that’s marketed as healthy, that doesn’t have any other bad ingredients, but it does have natural flavors, which honestly a lot of times I’ve kind of just resigned myself to being like, ‘Well, that’s the only thing in it then whatever,’” Stuckey says.

“But you’re saying it could be MSG,” she adds.

“Yeah, and that would be something that you kind of look at the FDA and say, ‘I think they’re asleep at the wheel here on yet another issue regarding food labeling,’” Patrick says. “I think most Americans want to know, they want to educate themselves. They want to feed their families healthy food.”

“And they’re sort of expecting the FDA, whoever is in charge of what is on the grocery store shelves, they kind of expect that the FDA has kind of done their homework,” he continues. “They’re sadly mistaken that there are loopholes like natural flavors.”

But it’s not just “natural flavors” that consumers have to worry about.

“There’s also the loopholes of like GRAS, ‘generally recognized as safe,’ where in America, you have to prove harm rather than proving safety,” Patrick says.

“So for the past 30 years, the FDA was overwhelmed, and they allowed Big Food to begin introducing new chemicals into the food supply that they allow the food companies to self regulate as well. We think that’s generally recognized as safe,” he continues.

“And as a result, you hear claims, I’m not sure if the number is correct, but there’s about 10,000 chemicals in the United States that are allowed to be used under generally recognized as safe principles,” he explains, adding, “And those same chemicals are not allowed to be used in Europe.”

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Allie beth stuckey, Ashley sullivan, Breaking big food, Excitotoxin, Fda, Gras, Msg, Natural flavors, Patrick sullivan, Seed oils, Relatable with allie beth stuckey 

A worker at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center was booked on suspicion of attempted murder after shooting a protester, Colorado police say.

Aurora police said protesters were blocking ICE workers’ access to the ICE facility on Thursday evening when two female protesters got into a verbal altercation with the workers and took photos of their vehicles.

She was shot in the lower part of her body, but her injuries are believed to be non-life-threatening.

Brandon Booth, 42, allegedly “retrieved his personally owned pistol” and fired it at the two protesters as they walked away, striking one. He got back into his car and drove away.

Police said they were notified about the shooting around 7:30 a.m.

Booth was detained about two blocks away from the location of the shooting on Nome Street with a gun in his vehicle, police said.

The victim, who has not been identified, was described as a protester by police.

She was shot in the lower part of her body, but her injuries are believed to be non-life-threatening.

Both was booked on “probable cause of attempted second-degree murder, first-degree assault, attempted first-degree assault, felony menacing, and unlawful carrying of a concealed weapon,” according to the police statement.

A spokesperson for GEO Group, which runs the ICE facility, released a brief statement about the incident to CBS News.

“We are aware that an off-duty Aurora ICE Processing Center employee was involved in a shooting incident,” the statement reads. “This individual has been placed on unpaid administrative leave, and we will fully cooperate with law enforcement.”

Aurora Police Chief Todd Chamberlain called the shooting a “tragedy on all fronts” in a statement Friday.

The Colorado District Attorney’s Office for Adams and Broomfield Counties declined to comment in an email to Blaze News.

RELATED: Sex toys, other objects allegedly thrown at cops at Minneapolis ICE facility, prompting dozens of arrests — but not by DHS

The district attorney’s office said official charges would be announced after the next hearing on July 22.

“We remain committed to ensuring an ethical, thorough, objective, and comprehensive review of this case. Violence of any kind will not be tolerated in Aurora. Constitutional rights are a pivotal part of a just society — violence is not,” Chamberlain concluded.

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​Attempted murder, Immigration and customs enforcement, Protesters, Politics 

California residents are expressing shock at the discovery of a swastika and a racial slur in a message left on an elementary school fence.

The message was found outside on a fence shared between Rio Seco Elementary School and the SportsPlex in Santee near San Diego.

‘Hate has no place in our schools or community.’

Someone snapped a photo of the message and posted it to the Facebook page “All Things Happening in Santee.”

The school district said in a statement that it notified the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office and immediately took the messages down.

“The Santee School District strongly condemns acts of hate and vandalism. Recently, we discovered an offensive and hateful symbol displayed on a shared fencing area,” the statement reads in part.

An image of the message on social media shows that the slur was the N-word.

“Hate has no place in our schools or our community. We remain strictly committed to fostering safe and welcoming learning environments for all students, staff, and families,” the district continued.

The incident comes as the City of Santee continues efforts to strengthen its reputation and promote unity following past incidents involving hate groups.

KGTV-TV spoke to residents who were enjoying the city’s weekly concert series near the school.

“It’s kind of sad that that’s happening because, you know, it’s the old saying, one bad apple,” resident Dion Milton said. “You can’t let it spoil the whole tree.”

“My sister-in-law grew up here when this was nothing but farmland,” he added. “It has changed, and I think for the better.”

RELATED: Auto shop vandalized with racist graffiti, so the owner installed cameras. Video captured two black suspects.

Milton went on to end with a hopeful message.

“You’re going to have your few that don’t know how to love,” he added. “You just try to show them love, and maybe they’ll catch on. If they don’t, then maybe next time.”

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​Racism, Vandalism, California, Hate crime, Politics