All My Knotted-Up Life: A Memoir

by Beth Moore

That’s how they did it back in that day, and who’s to say it wasn’t a good way? There was no distance at all between where they came to faith and where they came to rest, where they gathered for worship and where they gathered to wail, where they ate on the grounds after church and where they ate the food of tears. Sanctuary and cemetery, where they held flowers and married and where they laid flowers and buried.

I was a reluctant Republican all along. But I’d have been a reluctant Democrat, too. Understand, I could not possibly have believed more strongly in democracy. The right to cast a vote according to personal conviction is, to me, the pulsating heart of American liberty, but I always thought diehard party loyalties and predetermined straight tickets were a bit fraught for Jesus followers. Hand-shaking and back-scratching could be hard to tell apart.