One reason I write about my experience with marriage as it relates to evangelical indoctrination is that I hear from so many women--and a few men--that reading my story helps them feel less alone. Another reason is dialog with folks like this reader, who I believe make up the majority of evangelicals.

They are good people who love the Lord and try to do right. They love their families and treat their spouses well. For them, evangelical church involvement and doing life with an evangelical mindset continue to work to produce the outcomes they want and need for their lives. They have suffered difficulty and loss because we all do, but perhaps have not seen the dark side at work in their lives like some of us have. They look at my story as an anomaly. I know because these are my people.

The youth director at my childhood church molested young boys who spent the night at his apartment. Bill Clinton created scandal in the White House with an intern, and Martin Luther King engaged in extramarital affairs through the civil rights movement he led. The wealthiest man in town--a known adulterer--stood his pregnant teen stepdaughter in front of my home church to confess her sin.

And I heard about a pastor who counseled a woman to stay with her husband who had blackened her eyes, crushed her face into their gravel driveway, and held a gun to her head. This pastor quoted scripture about submission, forgiveness, and winning her husband over with her faithfulness. He passed out political signs at church for candidates he believed represented family values. This pastor was followed in all these things, not falling from grace until recently when he left his wife for the church secretary. I know other women who have been told similar things by their pastors and other church leaders.

My reader said this in an email: "You condemn 'a large swath of evangelicals' as harmful because of........

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