Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Evangelical
History and Religion
Our American Horror Story

Our American Horror Story

Last updated on: January 27, 2026 at 9:34 am by Joey Cochran

0 Comments

Our American Horror Story 2026-01-27T09:34:36-04:00 Joey Cochran

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

We are all living in an American horror story. As we navigate this era of The Great Deportation, it will serve us well to glean lessons from Ida B. Wells. Wells covered the Southern horrors of lynchings during The Great Migration.

Lessons From Ida B. Wells’s Depictions of Southern Horrors

Cover of Southern Horrors (1892) by Ida. B. Wells

By 1892, Ida B. Wells had become a widely known investigative journalist, who had covered many of the lynchings that occurred across the South. She was a co-owner and writer for the Memphis based newspaper, The Free Speech. After being terrorized by Memphis whites and driven from her home, she took to publishing her work in the New York Age. By the end of 1892, much of her collected research was sponsored for publication by over 200 African-American peers. Entitled Southern Horrors, Wells’s research and reporting became a compelling analysis of and argument against the culture and practice of mob lynchings across the South.

It is the March 1892 People’s Grocery lynching of her dear friends in Memphis that offers an uncanny resemblance to our current American horror story. In this incident, recently deputized, white goons ruthlessly invaded a grocer to inflict maximal harm upon its 40+ African-American occupants. These occupants had armed themselves and hunkered down to protect the local black business establishment and its owners from a mob.

Peoples Grocery (1890)

When armed, unidentifiable deputies invaded the business, the owners and occupants reasonably defended themselves and opened fire on those who threatened their lives. Not knowing that these rather hap-hazard, untrained, plainclothes men had just been deputized by the local law—they knew not at the time that their use of force was being used against the law. Once these circumstances were known, they put down their arms and fled the grocer.

Eventually, with a large force of numbers, a posse rounded up thirty-one of the agitants, arrested them, and detained them. Three conspirators: the president, manager, and clerk of the grocer were secretly taken by a mob of white men from the jail to a trainyard where they were ruthlessly overkilled by gunfire.

The People’s Grocer Lynching was a watershed moment for Ida B. Wells. She advised her fellow black citizens of Memphis to flee from this Southern horror and migrate to the North. If you think the Great Migration was just about African-Americans seeking opportunity in Northern metropolitan areas, you’re mistaken. Migration was also driven by sheer terror and horror.

Wells draws a couple of conclusions that serve as fresh reminders for those of us living in today’s American horror story. She aptly encapsulates her context well:

This cry has had its effect. It has closed the heart, stifled the conscience, warped the judgment and hushed the voice of press and pulpit on the subject of lynch law throughout this “land of liberty.” Men who stand high in the esteem of the public for christian character, for moral and physical courage, for devotion to the principles of equal and exact justice to all, and for great sagacity, stand as cowards who fear to open their mouths before this great outrage. They do not see that by their tacit encouragement, their silent acquiescence, the black shadow of lawlessness in the form of lynch law is spreading its wings over the whole country. (Wells, Southern Horrors and Other Writings, Bedford Series, 128)

In reference to her dear friends, who were ruthlessly lynched, she described these unfortunate souls in this way:

On March 9th, 1892, there were lynched in this same city three of the best specimens of young since-the-war Afro-American manhood. They were peaceful, law-abiding citizens and energetic business men. They believed the problem was to be solved by eschewing politics and putting money in the purse.

You don’t have to cross the Atlantic and tap into the history of Nazi Germany to describe our American horror story. There is a genetic connection between ICE/CBP with our own history of white supremacy.

Our American Horror Story

During the past year, we have watched in real time the rapid crumbling of our democracy. It has become our own American horror story. Unless we’ve completely unplugged from the web, we relive in our minds videos of the world’s largest paramilitary force attacking the American people in the name of “Law and Order” and “immigration enforcement.” The number of citizen shootings and slayings that have been videoed are piling up from Chicago, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles.

These incidents look strangely familiar to those who have read the accounts of southern lynchings. There is a large force of newly deputized, masked, untrained, out-of-condition but armed men. They move around in groups, intimidating people, and damaging people’s personal property—giving little attention to the law and acting well outside the purview of their role. They regularly provoke and instigate, brandishing weapons haphazardly, firing into crowds, inciting horror and terror of citizens.

A line of federal agents in Minneapolis, January 24, 2026.

And the establishment narrative of what’s happening is also strikingly familiar with the lynch law myths that spread. Rather than being rapists, deviants, and ill-mannered blacks—it’s murderers, sexual predators, and gang members. As U. S. citizen’s have mobilized in protest, the threat has expanded and evolved into including leftist, antifa terrorists—which, at this point in time, is no longer a radical subset of democrats but the caricature of all democrats.

Marimar Martinez. Carlos Jimenez. Keith Porter. Renee Good. Alex Pretti.

U. S. citizens. Casualties. Three murdered.

No. One. Feels. Safe.

While some Christian activists and private citizens have spoken out, made signs, marched, and taken to social media activism—numerous institutional leaders and some of the largest evangelical personalities, who have great influence, have failed to speak out unequivocally about the unfolding events that have occurred.

We can be thankful for the courageous stance of notables like Jemar Tisby, Angela Denker, David French, Lisa Harper, Shane Claiborne, Kristin Du Mez, Charlie Dates, and Peter Wehner. History will remember their brave voices during the past months.

They are the horrified half of Christians that Frederick Douglass referred to in his striking preface to Wells’s Southern Horrors:

If American conscience were only half alive, if the American church and clergy were only half christianized, if American moral sensibility were not hardened by persistent infliction of outrage and crime against colored people, a scream of horror, shame and indignation would rise to Heaven wherever your pamphlet shall be read. (Wells, Southern Horrors and Other Writings, Bedford Series, 108)

Unfortunately, there is still the unaffected other half. Some Peter Wehner have parsed, recently and rightly, as those with MAGA sensibilities that are incompatible with Christianity. Their proclivity for Christian National-Populism (totalitarianism by another name) has kept them unmoved by recent atrocities. Others are merely apolitical, apathetic, and unaffected white evangelicals. What’s happening hasn’t change their lives. The American horror story hasn’t applied to them, as of yet, so they’ve stood by silently endorsing the terror. Their cry of outrage has not come…until now.

Cities Church, Minneapolis

For over a year, citizens of color have felt unsafe in public spaces, places of work, and even their homes. Families of color have had their homes invaded, their Miranda Rights disregarded, and their families broken up. They have been racially profiled and detained in poorly maintained facilities, in inhumane conditions.

Yet, much of suburban, white evangelical life has continued unaffected by these circumstances. Until recently, many have remained unmoved by the American horror story.

However, after a protest group invaded a church and disrupted its Sunday morning service in Minneapolis, evangelicals like Albert Mohler suddenly broke their silence, raised the alarm, and signaled their chagrin about the American horror story. The ignorable political activism in the public square, encroached upon and became an unwelcomed guest in their sacred space. Their safe white sacred space was disrupted.

Cities Church, pastored by a previous Desiring God editor and regular contributor, Jonathan Parnell, became the targeted location for protest activism. The church was chosen because one of its lay pastor/elders, David Easterwood, is the field director of operations for immigration enforcement in St. Paul.

Another previous elder/pastor of the Church is Joe Rigney, once President of Bethlehem College and Seminary, and now co-belligerent to Douglas Wilson in Moscow, Idaho. Rigney is a Fellow at New Saint Andrews College and Associate Pastor at Christ Church, two key institutions that Wilson founded and are part of his Christian Nationalist infrastructure and program.

It would be gross negligence to dismiss the political affinity of a past elder/pastor and to understate the conflict of interest of a current elder/pastor of this church.

Admittedly, a non-violent protest in a white evangelical church is indeed problematic. Church members rightly might have staged a silent and orderly walkout to signal their disapproval in leadership that gives tacit endorsement to our American horror story. Though all ought to be welcome in an evangelical church, not all are welcome to disrupt the right and orderly execution of the offices of the church and the administration of its sacraments and worship. As others have indicated, children and families should feel safe and secure in a house of worship.

But, also, shouldn’t every one of our citizens and neighbors feel safe and secure in their homes, vehicles, places of work, and every other space that constitutes the public square? Is it possible that these activists, while meaning no physical harm, have merely shook the asleep awake and confronted them with the undeniable horror story that more and more Americans are waking up to every day?

The protesters and their sympathizers have rightly pointed out that their actions were merely consistent with Jesus’s activism. He is the one who fashioned a whip, turned over tables, and drove out corrupt profiteers in the Temple, on more than one occasion (Mt 21:12; Mk 11:15; Jn 2:15).

Regardless of where you sit today along the political or evangelical landscape, it has become an irrefutable fact that you can no longer ignore the American horror story that has unfolded.

Of chief concern for evangelicals should be evangelical leaders’ response. Will they behave like Bishop Fitzgerald or Governor Tillman, apologists of Southern lynching (Wells, Southern Horrors…, 122)? Will they remain unmoved and unaffected? Or will they cry out against injustice, as Wells and Douglass beckoned leaders of their era to do? We must listen to the silence of evangelical leaders and interpret it as their tacit approval of the American horror story.

History and Religion

Previous Post

January 22, 2026

My Late Roman Detective Story

Next Post

January 29, 2026 The Long, Long, Story of Groundhog Day

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"Very good point about MacDonald.I am certainly a Machen fan!"

philipjenkins

Fairies, Witches, Folk Horror, and the ..."

"The Scottish author George MacDonald integrated fairy world into his fiction in a way that ..."

Terry

Fairies, Witches, Folk Horror, and the ..."

"I like the idea that we can have different streams. The coffee analogy is genius."

Lisa Clark Diller

How Do You Take Your Evangelicalism?

"Geography lesson: Southern California is actually in North Texas. I've lived her for 40 years, ..."

Terry

How Do You Take Your Evangelicalism?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abolitionism Abortion Abraham Joshua Heschel Abraham Kuyper Abraham Lincoln Academia Activism Adam Renberg Advent Adventist africa African American Religion Agnes Howard Albert Camus American History American Religious History American Revolution American West Anabaptists Ancient History Andrea Turpin Andrei Tarkovsky Anglicanism Annales Ansley Lillian Quiros anti-Catholicism Antisemitism Anxious Bench apologetics Apparitions Arash Azizi Archaeology archives art Artificial Intelligence Asia Asian Americans Augustine Authors Bad Bunny Baptism Baptists Barack Obama Battle of Hastings Benjamin Franklin Bernard-Henri Levy Beth Allison Barr Beth Moore Bethany Mannon Bible Bill Cunningham Billy Graham Black Music Bob Dylan Body Boenhoffer Books Breastfeeding Bruce Springsteen C.S. Lewis Calvinism Cancel Culture Capitalism Carmelites Catholicism Cedric Robinson Cesar Chavez Charismaticism charity Charles Dickens Charles Lindbergh Che Guevara Chicago Children Chinese Christianity Chris Gehrz Christ Christian death Christian Higher Education Christian life Christian Nation Christian Nationalism Christianity Today Christmas Church life Church Practice cinema Civil Religion Civil Rights Movement Civil War civility Classics Climate Change Cold War Colonial Mexico colonialism Comer Communism community complementarianism Conference on Faith and History Congregationalism Conspiracies Conspiracy Conversion Narratives Coronavirus Costa Rica Council of Nicaea Covid-19 Creation Critical Race Theory Crusades Culture culture wars Daniel K. Williams David Barton David Swartz Death Ways death with dignity DEI democracy Democratic Party Devotion Digital Age Diplomacy discipleship diversity Donald Trump Drama Dua Lipa Early Church early modern Early modern Catholicism Easter Eastern Christianity economic exploitation Education elections Elie Wiesel Elizabeth II Elizabeth Taylor emotions Empire Engineering England enslavement Entertainment Episcopal Church Erica Ramirez eschatology Eurocentrism Evangelicalism Evangelicals Exegesis Family Feminism Film Flannery O'Connor folk music Food Foreign Policy founding fathers Franciscans Franciscus Junius fundamentalism Funerals G.K. Chesterton Gender Genocide genre geography George W. Bush George Washington George Whitefield Global Christianity Global church Grief Guadalupe guest post Guest Post gun control gun violence Gustavo Gutierrez Hamid Dabashi Harold John Ockenga Harvest Hate Hawaiian Christianity Healing health care Heather Cox Richardson Hell Heresy Hermeneutics Higher Education Hinduism Hippocratic oath Historical Fiction Historical Methodology Historical Profession Historical Profession Historical Theology Historical Thinking historiography Holidays Holocaust horror movies Human rights Humanitarian Work humanities Hummingbirds Hungary hymns Imago Dei Immigration Injustice Interviews Iran Islam Islamophobia Israel Ivan's Childhood Jacob Randolph James Bratt Janine Giordano Drake Japanese history Japanese Literature Jean Paul Sartre Jesse Miranda Jesus Jesus Christ Jimmy Carter Joan Baez Joan Didion Joanne Freeman João B. Chaves Joao Chaves Joey Cochran John Calvin John Fea John Tillotson John Turner Johnny Cash Jonathan Edwards Jonathan Tran Joseph Smith Josh Howerton Journalism Jr. Judaism Jürgen Moltmann Just War Justice Justin Brierley Karl Barth Katelyn Beaty koi ponds Kris Kristofferson Kristin Kobes Du Mez Latin American Religious History Latino Americans Lectio Divina Leisure Lent Leonard Cohen liberal arts liberalism Liberation Theology Linda Ronstadt Lisa Clark Diller Literature Lou Reed Lynchings Lynneth Miller Renberg Mainline Protestantism Malcolm Foley Marilyn Monroe Maritime history Mark Noll Marriage Martin Luther Martin Luther King Martyrdom Marxism Mary Masih Alinejad mass shootings material culture medieval Christianity Medieval Ethiopia Melissa Borja memory Mennonites Mental Health Mental Illness Methodism Mexican Americans Mexicans Mike Madrid Miles Mullin Min Jin Lee Miscarriage Missionaries Mister Rogers Mitt Romney modernity Monasticism Mormonism Motherhood Mothers of the Church Moving Music Musicals Nadya Williams Nahua Christianity Native Americans Natsume Sōseki New Contributor New England New Year New York Nico Non-Violent Protest Orthodoxy pacifism Paleo Evangelicals Palestinians Parenting Patti Smith Paul Kingsnorth Pedro Calderón de la Barca Pentecostalism Philip Jenkins Phillis Wheatley physician-assisted suicide pilgrimage Pilgrims pluralism Plutocracy Poetry Politics Pope Francis Pope Leo XIV post-modernism prayer preaching Presbyterians prosperity gospel Protest Public history Publishing Puritans purity culture Quakers race Race Massacres Racial Capitalism racial reconciliation racialization Racism Raha Bahloulipour Re-Enchantment reading Reformation Refugees religion and the university religion and war Religious Freedom Religious Nones Religious Pluralism Religious Symbols religious violence Republican Party Revival Rita Coolidge Ritual Roger Williams Roman Catholic church Royalty Russell Moore same-sex marriage Sarah Irving-Stonebraker Scandinavia Science Science and Technology Scopes trial Scriptural Interpretation secularism Selena Quintanilla seminary Seventh-Day Adventists sexual morality Sexuality Sikhs Silence slaveholders theology Slavery Slavoj Zizek social justice Social Media Southern Baptist Convention Southern Religion Spain Spiritual Autobiography Spiritual but not religious Spiritual Discipline Sports Stanley Hauerwas Suffering Summer Camps Sunday Night Odds and Ends Supernatural Supreme Court Syriac Christianity Tal Howard Taylor Swift Teaching Technology Television Thanksgiving The Beatles The Mission theater TheoBros Theology Thomas Dixon Thomas Jefferson Thomas Kidd Thomas Merton Tim Gloege Tim Walz Tom Holland Tourism tradition Tragedy Translation Transnationalism Travel Trump Ukraine Uncategorized Unitarians United Methodist Church US History Vanessa Chan Velvet Underground Verónica A. Gutiérrez Veronica Gutierrez Vikings Violence Virgin Mary Virtue Virtue ethics Visions Voting War WCTU Wendell Berry Westminster Assembly White Evangelicalism Wildfires Winnie the Pooh Witches women Women in Ministry Women's and Gender Studies Work Worship writing Yasunari Kawabata Zena Hitz

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

"Resist the devil, and he will _____."

Select your answer to see how you score.

Grudgingly Respect You Pursue You Despise You Flee From You