according to my instagram, four years ago I was holding this sign at an anti-Muslim travel ban protest at the PDX airport, and three years ago made it the image to accompany an essay I wrote on why I still called myself an evangelical.

I liked the cheekiness of the sign. People took lots of pictures of it. But at the Muslim ban protest a group of Proud Boys/Patriot Prayer dudes showed up and started screaming obscenities about Muslims *in the name of Jesus*. Explicitly.

Me and a friend tried to put our bodies in between them and the people of color in the crowd, praying frantically the entire time. It was tense, awful, and ultimately--eye opening.

Thus began the next few years of my life, where going to protest for the rights of marginalized people in the US would result in me getting screamed at, spit on, threatened, and harassed by self-described Christians.

I wouldn't hold that sign today. I wouldn't call myself an evangelical today, because I don't align with nearly any of their political values. Looking back at this picture just makes me feel so much grief, for so many reasons.

At some point I realized I needed to believe white evangelicals when they told me who they were. And they were, for one example, the people least likely to say the US had a moral responsibility to resettle refugees. https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/5/29/17405704/white-evangelicals-attitudes-refugees

Holding up a cheeky sign at a protest doesn't change the world. It doesn't protect my Muslim neighbors. It doesn't change immigration policies. But you know what will? Getting white evangelicals out of positions of power.