I am pleased to announce that we have are going to have a Q&A with an ex-evangelical on Thurs, January 26, 2017 @ 8pm. The Q&A will last for approximately 1 hour. I will be setting up a subforum for guest speakers as I hope to be able to get some other folks come talk to us.
Our guest on Thurs will be Chris Stroop. Here is his bio:
Christopher Stroop grew up a rank-and-file member of the Christian Right in an Evangelical enclave community, Stroop's childhood social milieu consisting mostly of family and people associated with church and/or Christian school. From about the age of 16, Stroop found himself dealing with an increasingly acute crisis of faith that was not addressed properly by the people he talked to about it, and he was subjected to spiritual abuse. Stroop nevertheless went on to earn a BA in history and German from Ball State University (summa cum laude) in 2003, and then a Ph.D. in modern Russian History and Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities from Stanford in 2012. Subsequently, Stroop spent three academic years teaching in the School of Public Policy at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in Moscow, where he kind of sort of almost got in trouble for "teaching Pussy Riot lyrics." Currently, Stroop teaches nineteenth-century European history and Russian Studies classes as a Provost's Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of South Florida and, as a freelance writer and public speaker, speaks out against the abuses of conservative Christianity in general and the the white Evangelical subculture he comes from in particular. You can find many of his writings in this vein on Religion Dispatches. If you would like to support this work financially, please click here (for monthly support) or here (to leave a one-time gift). Stroop's more academic writings can mostly be found here, and you can follow him on Twitter - @C_Stroop.
We are going to use the Q&A forum format. I will be setting up a special forum just for Chris. I will open the forum about 15 minutes before the Q&A starts so you can start asking your questions.
We have a few rules. Failure to follow these rules will get you temporarily placed in the Prayer Closet so we can preview your posts. If you get put in the PC during the Q&A you will be released once it's over, but lets just follow the few simple rules so none of that is necessary.
Rules for Q&A:
1. Be polite. This is not an event meant for snark. Chris is taking time out of his busy schedule to talk to us. He is an expert in the things we discuss here, so let's give him respect, please.
2. One question per post. Please don't bog him down with a bunch of questions in one post. We are using the Q&A format so he can easily answer questions. Putting a ton of questions in one post defeats the purpose. You can continue discussion on the thread as he answers and ask another question in the same thread if you have one after he answers.
3. Please try to keep thread drift to a minimum during the Q&A. After it's over, if you want to continue discussion on the topics and they drift, that's fine.
4. Be polite!
These rules are subject to change as I and the helpmeets think over possible loopholes (cause there is always one person that has to push boundaries)