Thread by @doctor_episcopa

My high school community has been shattered by the shooting at #CovenantSchool. My alma mater, Christ Presbyterian Academy, shares many ties with Covenant. Two of the adults killed were part of the CPA community.

Both Covenant and CPA are part of the Presbyterian Church in America, the evangelical branch of Presbyterianism. The mindset is generally conservative (in every sense). Intellectual curiosity is discouraged.

In fact, one of my classmates once said to me, "I don't WANT to live in the real world!" These schools are largely designed to shelter students from the horrors (and temptations) of secularism. That's one of the reasons some parents I know have chosen them.

Yet the real world came for our schools in ways we couldn't predict. First, by an almost inconceivable set of circumstances, Marsha Blackburn (a church member) became our US senator.

Then, in an even more inconceivable set of circumstances, a longtime family friend, whose children went to CPA (and whose second wife taught there), became governor.

And guess what? These communities decided the real world was just fine as long as they had power in it. They began to act directly counter to the lesson we were taught, to be "in the world, but not of the world". T

The laws they have passed showed no spirit of compassion or kindness. Instead, they have appealed to the basest instincts of popular Republican dogma, which is grotesquely anti-Christian.

And yesterday, the real world caught up with us in another way, as members of our community lost their lives because Bill Lee and Marsha Blackburn think it's more important for people to own guns that are "fun to shoot" than to protect the lives of children.

CPA was a difficult place for a person like me. I did not conform, which was discouraged by everyone but @DavidDark, whose presence there probably saved teenage me. So I don't talk about my time there often.

But our little community has now made news twice over. And I thought I should share a bit about it for my friends, to give some context. I'll return to my Female Authors soon, but am going to take a break to give myself time to recover.