An exvangelical missionary kid goes canvassing

I wasn't ever very good at this. To my credit.

I will do almost anything for democracy. I will make cringe parody videos mocked by Charlie Kirk, I will go to protests galore, I will write postcards and visit the Hill and make art and volunteer in my community and/or with various pro-democracy organizations. If there is something I can do, I’m pretty game.

Except I will NOT do the phone banks because I hate phones or the text banks because I get 50 of those damn texts a day, and they make me want to move to North Korea.

Up until Saturday, I had never canvassed door-to-door. As a federal employee, I wasn’t allowed to. Which was a really great excuse to deflect from the real reason, I didn’t want to.

But unlike phone and text banking, it seems canvassing might work? Campaigns claim that 40 flyers left on doors=1 vote or 11 in person conversations with registered voters=1 vote. I have no idea if this is true. Personally, I am super annoyed when anyone I am not expecting knocks on my door, and I am not inclined to support any of their endeavors. This was particularly true when I had little kids. My sweet husband once told some Mormon missionaries who interrupted nap time that Joseph Smith was a pedophile. I am not that mean, I usually just ignore any door knocking. But I will say that I will almost always peruse any flyers left, and I have indeed learned things on occasion, such as There is an election next Tuesday and A clogged dryer vent can burn your whole house down and Jesus is returning soon.

Whether or not canvassing is effective, I don’t think you can call yourself a Democracy Warrior if you have never knocked doors. That seems to be a major litmus test these days that I knew I would have to eventually pass. So I finally screwed up my courage, took some Tums, and headed out to canvass for Abigail Spanberger on Saturday.

I thought they might send people out in pairs, but alas, if you do not bring a friend, there are none to be had. The campaign people gave me some very basic instructions (smile, introduce yourself, ask voters what issues concern them, tell them Abigail is a mother of three and former CIA officer who is a bipartisan problem solver) and some campaign literature and sent me on my way with a list of maybe 20 households to annoy visit.

They were all in an apartment complex, and perusing the names, it looked like they were almost all immigrants. As if I weren’t nervous enough, I had another thought—with all the ICE raids going on, with even American citizens detained and accidentally deported, this community was probably gonna be extra un-thrilled to have some rando knocking on their doors. Great. I ate more Tums.

No one answered the first several doors. I was encouraged.

I left my flyers and moved on. Then I got a couple of yells through the door asking Who is there and replying No thanks when I informed them I was not Oprah giving away cars. Fine, disembodied rejection > being yelled by an actual human face.

Incidentally, if I heard a baby inside a particular apartment or saw any indication of a small child living there, I didn’t knock, I just left the literature. Because I am not a monster.

Then I got my first real-live Conversation with A Voter. This guy had not heard of Spanberger, so he was technically undecided. But when I asked him what he cared about, he basically gave me a Moms for Liberty presentation, about how parents should control the curriculum and approve everything their kids are taught and basically monitor the teachers at all times. I opted against asking him if he had ever considered homeschooling and instead assured him that Abigail has three kids in public schools and definitely cares about his concerns. And also that she is a former CIA officer and a bi-partisan problem solver, which will really come in handy when the Russians start recruiting Virginian elementary school kids, or if the Republicans ever decide that solving problems is more fun than creating them. He said he would look into it.

I had a couple more Conversations with Voters who truly seemed undecided. They didn’t even know there was an election this year. They also had no concerns.

And then I encountered what was probably a serial killer. First, a creepy older woman came to the door. I introduced myself, then asked to speak with Ms. Voter. The woman hesitated. Then a creepy younger man suddenly came into the doorway and said emphatically, “She doesn’t live here anymore!” Then he looked at the woman and said, “Remember she doesn’t live here anymore.”

The part of me that has always wanted to solve murders briefly brainstormed how I might surveil the apartment and break in when they were gone to see if Ms. Voter was dismembered in the bathtub. I decided to just finish the task at hand and get the hell out of there before I became the next victim (I absolutely cannot die before early voting). I do hope Ms. Voter is alive, because based on her demographics, she is almost certainly a Spanberger voter.

So that was my first time out. I did not die, from embarrassment or murder.

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I have to say—knocking on strangers’ doors and asking them to accept Jesus Candidate X as their Personal Lord and Savior choice for governor/president/senator is just a little too close for comfort to the evangelical proselytizing with which I was surrounded for much of my life. And man, did I HATE. THAT. SH*T. I hated being the object (I was already saved, that people knew of, but I was sometimes targeted for various repentance pitches), I hated being privy to it, and I really really really hated the pressure to do it myself.

My parents proselytize as easily as they breathe. You literally can’t stop them. Their corpses will probably offer an altar call at their own funerals. When I was growing up, if a known heathen was coming to our house, or even if we encountered one out in the wild, I could count on witnessing a Jesus pitch. Sometimes the other person would engage, ask questions, be interested. Many times they would nod and smile and look like they wanted the earth to swallow them. Occasionally, the whole thing turned into a religious version of the WWE. They went balls-to-the-wall with the atheist American lady who taught at the Kenyan primary school I attended. I cowered in another room and hoped she would not take it out on me in class.

All of it made me want to die on the spot. And that was even as a true believer. In fact, wanting to die on the spot caused me to question my own faith—why would I not want people to learn how to avoid hell, even if it is a little cringe? Maybe because I wanted company down there, that’s why.

Of course, there was both implicit and explicit instruction to become an evangelist myself from as early an age as I can remember. Fortunately, I was mostly surrounded by people whom I felt reasonably confident were already saved, so I was kind of off the hook. But when we came back to the States briefly and I was enrolled in public school, sh*t got real. I was suddenly swimming in an ocean of heathens (in hindsight, probably not—this was in Texas, where there are churches on every corner and Jesus billboards every few miles. Also where they have the highest uninsured rate in the country, the highest maternal mortality rate so far in 2025, and minimal sh*ts given for the poor and vulnerable. Guaranteed most of the kids I went to school with had heard the good news of Republican Jesus anyway).

Maybe they could just read the billboards instead of me having to humiliate myself.

I never could pull off my parents’ straight-up frontal assault. I told myself that American high schoolers required a more stealth approach if I were to avoid being stuffed into a locker persecution for my faith. So I wore some Christian T-shirts and tried to be socially appealing (as if those two things could ever go together). I made one sort-of friend, Natasha, who told me she was an atheist but seemed to enjoy hanging out with me anyway. Every time we got together, I felt like I was going to throw up. I knew I needed to give her my sales pitch, but I really didn’t want to. I really just wanted to hang out like two normal humans with no agendas and no clue. So I would only hint at Jesus things (“This fish is delicious, but I bet not as delicious as the two fishes Jesus fed the 5,000 people with”) without ever informing her that her soul was at serious risk of eternal damnation.

I squandered my time. We went back to Kenya without me ever giving the existential truth to her straight up. I felt guilty for awhile, but soon I forgot about it. Until the next Spiritual Emphasis Week, which you will recall is basically a week-long proctological exam for one’s soul (as well as a banned-cassette-tape-recovery covert influence campaign). As I reviewed my many sins/Madonna tapes, I was soon overcome with the knowledge that Natasha would be relocating to hell because I couldn’t bring myself to confront her with her dire spiritual condition. I would probably be her roommate.

I went back to my room and immediately wrote her a letter. I put it all on the table. I apologized for not telling her before. I begged and pleaded with her to accept Jesus into her heart so I would feel better she would live forever in heaven. I included biblical references. I drew pictures of the cross bridging the divide between Holy God and our yucky sinner selves. I told her God loved her so much he committed the gruesome murder of his beloved son just for her. Didn’t she want to follow a God like that? I mean, who wouldn’t.

She wrote back thanking me for my concern and telling me that because I cared enough to share with her the Good News, she had indeed accepted Jesus as her Personal Lord and Savior.

And if you believe that, you should probably avoid anyone selling anything of any kind (and definitely the Girl Scouts during cookie season) for fear they will soon possess all of your money. I never heard from her again.

I made a few other attempts at saving people, but I never was much of an evangelist. My soul count is about as impressive as Donald Trump’s crowd size.

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Now, I have of course obnoxiously shared plenty of opinions, engaged in plenty of debates, and pressed many cases on other issues. Including democracy, including to those voters who undoubtedly wanted me to remove myself from their premises on Saturday. Including the belief that, right now, the Democratic Party and candidates are the only ones committed in any way to preserving and protecting American democracy. And therefore they are the only option. And therefore I will be trying to get them all elected.

So what’s the difference? Why do I think knocking doors is fine but want no part of religious proselytizing? A few reasons.

• First of all, religious belief is entirely unprovable and uncertain by definition,¹ while there is ample, concrete, real-world evidence, based on history, the law, a massive document trail, jillions of witnesses, and the actions and words of the people in question for my political beliefs.

• Whereas what you believe as a faith matter doesn’t really affect me—unless you decide to force it upon me via law and government—how you vote does indeed directly affect me. We are all in the same boat in this here democracy. By living in a country governed by the people, you, a person, have pretty much consented to being part of the political process, including getting your door knocked on. Sorry, but it’s true. If you don’t like that, try Afghanistan. And right now, our democratic ship is sinking. So, yes, I’m going to try to convince you to grab a bucket and start bailing us out, because our system has endowed us both with that power.

• It’s sinking, coincidentally, in large part because a whole bunch of religious people actually do want to force their faith on us, and not just via a sales pitch in the Target check out line. Some of them are resorting to violence, and 80% of them elected a criminal coup leader who stokes violence and wants to use the Presidency as his personal ATM. So congrats to those folks, they have just made their religion my business with that nonsense. And now I feel OK about trying to convince a few of them to get the hell out of there. Or at least retreat to a commune and leave America alone.

To be clear, it’s not my preference to have to sell anyone on any of my views. I still don’t like to proselytize, and I definitely don’t want to knock on doors on a Saturday. Fifteen years ago, I wouldn’t have considered it necessary. Live and let live. See you at the polls. I’ll sleep at night either way. I still had opinions and argued with people, particularly if I considered their views harmful to others or based on misinformation or misunderstanding. Or just for a fun debate. But I could take it or leave it. Now the stakes are too high.

Evangelicals proselytize because they think the stakes are high, too. They sincerely do believe most people are going to hell, and they really do care about that. The rub is, they actually don’t know that. There’s no way to know that.

And devoting one’s time and attention to convincing self and others that the unprovable is fact and the realm of faith is indisputable reality is a good way to miss and dismiss the glaringly obvious, all the clear-as-day, hard-as-concrete evil in which we can become complicit and all the brilliant, broken humanity we keep at arm’s length. Because walking around convinced of your own spiritual rightness is an excellent way—maybe the very best way!—to become complicit in evil. And seeing others as people to convert is a good way to keep them at arm’s length. It’s hard to let someone into your heart when you see them mainly as an object of your persuasion, a project of your perfection.

I’m reminded again of the roots of white evangelical theology in pro-slavery Christianity. How a fixation on the afterlife minimized earthly injustice and the moral failure of true believers and became a way of maintaining control and preserving power.

Things haven’t changed all that much.

I’ll keep knocking on doors.

1. “The Bible says” is not evidence, dear one. That’s still belief. You can’t prove the Bible is a factual document. It doesn’t mean we can’t cherish it as sacred, but we do so in the realm of belief, not fact.