Spiral Forge Syndicate — Author
Missionary's kid. Grew up inside the evangelical apparatus — as interpreter, representative, and proof of concept. Writes about what happens when the machine you were built to serve turns out to be built to destroy you.
"I was the missionary's kid. My family didn't just live in the apparatus — we built it."
James Thornburg grew up in the intense, between-worlds reality of evangelical missions in Nigeria. He was the interpreter, the representative, the perfect proof of his parents' calling. But from the backseat of a car outside a police station, he witnessed a different kind of "good work": a mob, fueled by religious certainty, brutalizing a man bound with grass rope.
At thirteen, the puzzle pieces snapped into a terrifying clarity. A book on "Christian sexuality" — handed down in love — labeled James an "abomination." In that moment, the ghost of kinship found its name. The same theology his family crossed oceans to spread was the very machine designed to destroy him.
This is not a story of external colonizers. This fire is directed at home.
A blistering testimony of sacred rage and radical reclamation. An account of what happens when a "weapon" of the church realizes he is also its target. From the silence of mission boarding schools to the ash of deconstruction, Thornburg dismantles the "unholy righteousness" of the evangelical machine and reaches a hand back to those still trapped inside.
You call that holy? Then let it burn.
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