Where Will We Find the Change We Are Looking For?

Holy Cr*p It’s US!

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Blast from the past … This is a clip from the 2008 documentary “The Ordinary Radicals” produced and directed by Jamie Moffett. I recount my experience connecting with “ordinary radicals” in Jesus Died For This?: A Satirist’s Search for the Risen Christ, a book first published in 2010 and then republished in 2025 by LakeDriveBooks.

At this time I still believed that the church was indeed undergoing a transformation and might be reformed into actually resembling the body of Christ.

Blast from the past … This is a clip from the 2008 documentary “The Ordinary Radicals” produced and directed by Jamie Moffett. I recount my experience connecting with “ordinary radicals” in Jesus Died For This?: A Satirist’s Search for the Risen Christ, a book first published in 2010 and then republished in 2025 by LakeDriveBooks.

At this time I still believed that the church was indeed undergoing a transformation and might be reformed into actually resembling the body of Christ.

Cutting-edge ventures aimed at rebranding the church as “cool” used to draw in those disenchanted with traditional forms of institutional church, but these methods no longer appealed to twenty-first-century pious peeps. The liberal mainline Episcopal Church of my youth that once marched in solidarity with Martin Luther King, Jr., was now walking biblically bowlegged, so to speak (sans a few prophetic outliers like Manhattan-based St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery).

Conversely, conservative forms of religion, appealing to many, were appalling to many more, many of whom said they were “done” with religion and went on to live entirely secular lives . Once these people stop checking off the correct Christian category, the institutional church drops them from their membership list as though they committed a serious spiritual sin . Some religion writers call these secular people “nones” because that’s what they put on the census forms under “religion.”

In my reporting on American Christianity, I observed how these “nones” and “dones” felt free to choose a path that spoke to them, one without guilt-ridden dogmas. Some find occasional comfort in a church, synagogue, temple, or mosque that truly welcomes all, one that aims to be a place of healing, not a means of harm to others. Others choose to worship, reflect, or meditate outside of traditional religious structures. Simultaneously, for the first time in U.S. history, atheists began to come out of the closet in droves.

Unfortunately, in reviewing Jesus Died for This? before its republication by Lake Drive Books in 2025, I felt my heart sink when I realized the extent to which I’d been hoodwinked. Throughout the book, I referenced those whom I thought were peers and whose work I once praised, who proved to be plastic when they got their shot in the media spotlight. Others showed their narcissistic side in more subtle but equally sickening ways. When I first began to experience such negative energies, I’d pray for the day when we could all come together and rekindle that spiritual spark that once drew me to their work in the first place. But I’ve learned to stop dreaming. Whenever I’d show up to one of their gatherings, they’d talk and talk and talk about their mission to build a better church, but in the end, it all proved to be a mirage. No amount of wishing can bring back that magic.

In the same spirit, I’ve given up any hope that those in my life who possess extreme narcissistic characteristics will change. This awareness allows me to forgive them without expecting any connection I thought we once had. Yes, I’d embrace such an authentic change of heart, but I no longer hold out hope for an apology, knowing the odds of such a genuine reconciliation are akin to winning the lottery.

Freed from this empty hope, I can move on in faith.

With my latest book *Gaslighting for God: A Satirical Guide to Save Yourself From Spiritual Narcissists* (Lake Drive Books, 2026), I profess I longer believe the institutional church can be saved. But I remain even more convinced than I was in 2008 when this video was released that I believe in us to be the change we are waiting for. (Credit to Marianne Williamson as the originator of this phrase.)