By Jill Wilson
Before June of 2020, I had never heard of Cultural Marxism. I had a vague understanding of social justice, mostly as it centered around the LGBTQ+ movement, and an even vaguer awareness of what the “critical theories” were. Both my husband and I worked on the same university campus, he was the Chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance and I taught in communication. We were well-versed in the struggle between light and dark from a Christian worldview, and we were often asked by students to come alongside them as they reasoned through the heresies being taught in classes on religion and Race, Class, and Gender. We saw everything through the lens of a biblical worldview and were both reasonably vocal about that with students, colleagues, and members of the community.
The community itself was small. The town boasted just under 19,000 residents, and the university had about 11,000 students. In a place that size, one’s voice tends to carry further than it might in a bigger city. People knew who we were, and we lived our lives without looking over our shoulders. There was, however, one female colleague at the university who had long been my husband’s rival. When he was elected department chair—a position she had also wanted—her resentment grew. For years, she opposed him at nearly every turn. When he directed a play about the life of C.S. Lewis and chose overtly Christian music to underscore it, she was outraged. And I will never forget the morning after President Trump was elected in 2016: we met her in the parking lot as we were all arriving for work. She said, “My God. The students are terrified. We have a lot of work to do, and we’re going to be overcome with anxiety and heartbreak.” She, of course, knew my husband and I hadn’t supported the candidate she’d campaigned for. Whenever an issue of worldview surfaced, she made sure to stand firmly on the opposite side. Both my husband and I were deeply engaged in campus and community life. He worked his way up from an entry-level faculty position to head of the School of Visual and Performing Arts. He chaired committees, led university leadership searches, served on academic councils, and was active in the greater Kansas City theatre scene as both a leader and performer. I taught communication, served as an on-air spokesperson for a regional company, led a women’s Bible study, sponsored the campus Rotaract Club, and was an active member of Rotary. We were busy, connected, and thriving.
Until 2020.
The world’s response to Covid-19 reflected our busyness back to us. For the first time in our adult lives, we were still. By then, I had transitioned to professional writing—a decision I made after my husband’s rival turned her ire toward me, making the university environment untenable for my emotional and mental health. Working from home became an unexpected gift. We set up offices in different corners of our townhouse: mine on the third floor, his in the finished basement. For the first time in fourteen years of marriage, we were in the same place at the same time, day after day. We shared coffee and breakfast, met in the kitchen for lunch, and gathered in the living room at five to watch the evening news. We often said how grateful we were to discover that we liked each other even more the more time we spent together. Gone were the twelve-hour days and five-week rehearsal runs. Life was peaceful, even amid the world’s fear.
Then the headlines shifted from empty streets to streets filled with fire, protest, and violence after the death of George Floyd. We were horrified by what we saw. Yet as chaos grew, so did our confusion. “They’re setting fire to cities in the name of justice? Justice for what?” I kept asking my husband across the living room. Cries of racism, white oppression, and tearing down the hegemony leapt from the screen and writhed in the space between our couch and coffee table. They were living, breathing ideas; no longer confined to the news but entering every conversation, every community, every conscience. Trying to make sense of it all, we turned to alternative news outlets—Megyn Kelly, Officer Tatum, Ben Shapiro, Michael Knowles—people who were also wrestling to understand the source of this cultural upheaval without leaping to the conclusions legacy media was presenting as fact. In the midst of that chaos, a new symbol emerged: a black square. Black Lives Matter. Do you remember when that image spread across every social media feed, every yard sign, every storefront window? When I first began seeing it, I looked up the organization online and read its mission statement. Before it was later revised, the statement explicitly outlined a plan to dismantle the nuclear family, among other goals.
One afternoon, the husband of my husband’s rival posted on the Department of Theatre and Dance’s public Facebook page: “Where is the Black Lives Matter statement from the theatre department?” Because my husband was Chair, he knew he needed to respond but he wasn’t sure what he was allowed to post or what the post should say. After a confusing exchange of messages up and down the university chain—from the dean, to the provost, to the president—my husband was told that he and his colleagues could go ahead and write one. Through a series of emails, faculty wrote one together and my husband posted the statement. The next day, the same man asked a questions directed specifically to my husband: “Where is your personal statement of support for Black Lives Matter?” That question was the spark. Within hours, an online mob began to form, and their ire turned on my husband. Former students he had mentored, baptized, officiated in marriage, and celebrated were suddenly calling him “racist,” “fascist,” “weak,” and “dangerous.” Riding atop that mob was his rival. We later learned she had convinced the faculty to unanimously sign a vote of no confidence against him. She reportedly told others, “If we don’t get rid of him, we’ll lose our entire department.”
What followed was a blur. The vote was sent to the dean, who, though aware of her motives, felt constrained by pressure and fear. He sent it to the provost, who passed it to the president—all of these men were first-year leaders at the university. The decision relayed to my husband: He was to be immediately demoted from his chair position and forced to serve alongside those who had just voted against him. An interim chair would be appointed. The department would undergo “re-education” to address white privilege. After one year, they could vote again on who should lead. This came with a $30,000 salary cut. His offense? Refusing to post a Black Lives Matter square on his personal Facebook page.
As this unfolded, we turned to our Christian community. Some, already afraid of cancellation, distanced themselves. Others joined BLM rallies, kneeling in public and vowing to read White Fragility. Still others stayed close, praying and grieving with us. One dear friend said through tears, “The Lord is catapulting you out of a toxic situation. He sees all of this and He has a plan for you. Go—go where you’ll be embraced for who you really are.” Two weeks before, I had been walking our dog, Mr. Bates, through the peaceful countryside. Two weeks before, my husband and I were cooking meals, listening to music, and living in comfortable life. Now, he was facing forced “re-education” to unlearn his whiteness and a career destroyed by accusation. A public letter soon appeared in American Theatre Magazine, labeling him a racist. Four years before retirement, my husband refused to bend the knee and he walked away.
Having left the university with a severance that can only be called “hush money,” we had about enough to survive for six months. We knew we could no longer stay in our small town. Within one month, we were packing a moving truck with five other men—pillars of the community: a high-ranking law enforcement officer, a respected local radio DJ, and several university leaders—all saying, “If it can happen to you, it can happen to anyone.” We sat on the kitchen floor eating pizza once the truck was packed. We laughed, cried, and talked about where the world was heading. The next morning, we left. We headed to the East Coast to help friends start the educational arm of their small theatre company, and for the next year we lived in and out of shock. In Virginia Beach, I took a job as an adjunct communication professor at my alma mater. My husband searched tirelessly for another academic post, casting his net across the country. But his rival’s accusation had followed him. Though he continued to earn first and second interviews, the label she had attached to his name—racist, white, Christian, conservative—was enough to close every door. In the new academic climate, he was the wrong kind of man. Again and again, he watched positions go to candidates who looked different and believed differently than he did.
As months passed, fear crept in. We trusted the Lord but wondered if He would one day ask us to trust Him from a cardboard box. That’s when my husband took a job in the kitchen of a Chick-fil-A. We thought it might be for a month or two. Nineteen months later, he was still there. And I’ve never been more proud of him in my life. In the months that followed, we listened, read, and prayed more than ever before. We filled the silence with sermons and Scripture. Voddie Baucham gave us language for what we had witnessed, specifically, the infiltration of Cultural Marxism into the Church, the academy, and the family. Paul Washer reminded us that holiness, not happiness, is the measure of faith. And Abraham Lincoln’s words became a refrain in our home: it is not important to know that God is on our side, but that we are on His.
That season stripped away everything we thought was secure—reputation, income, stability—until only one question remained: Whom do we trust? When all the props of modern life fall away, we discover what our faith truly rests upon. The storm revealed that some of what we had built was on sand, not rock, and the mercy of God was that He showed us the difference. What we lost in certainty, we gained in clarity. Through that collapse, we learned that faith is not proven in comfort but in surrender. It is one thing to say we trust the Lord; it is another to keep trusting when the world calls us names, when the Church grows silent, and when our own strength runs dry. The ground we once called ruin became the place where trust grew deep roots. The lesson for the Church is simple and sobering: our struggle is not for cultural dominance but for spiritual clarity. We are living in a time when the world has not yet asked us to deny Christ outright, but it is asking us to blur His lines. That pressure may feel subtle, even compassionate, but it is the first step toward a deeper compromise. Scripture warns that a day will come when allegiance to Christ will demand open courage, and the Church must decide now where she stands.
Words like equity, affirmation, and inclusion are beautiful when shaped by the truth of God’s Word, yet they become sin when detached from it. Without the cross, inclusion loses its holiness and becomes indulgence—an invitation to come as you are and stay as you are, with no call to repentance or transformation. Without the cross, affirmation loses its truth and becomes idolatry—a worship of self rather than of the Creator who defines us. Without the cross, equity loses its justice and becomes envy—a demand for sameness rather than righteousness, breeding resentment instead of gratitude. These are not the virtues of the Kingdom but the substitutes of a world trying to build one without its King.
And yet, even in that world, God remains faithful. If the past few years have taught me anything, it is that obedience to God may cost you everything the world can take, but it will give you everything the world cannot. You can do no better than to put your faith in Jesus Christ and obey Him. He redeems what the enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy. My husband found dignity in the kitchen of a Chick-fil-A because the work was honest and free of deceit. I found peace in writing again, in telling the truth plainly, and in remembering that the Lord never wastes a wilderness. Now, our marriage is stronger, we love the work He has called us to—my husband is the Director of Cultural Arts at a Jewish Community Center and I am teaching and writing—and we have a passion for helping other people understand this present darkness while focusing on Jesus and the world to come!
So the Church must not fear being misunderstood. We are not called to win arguments; we are called to bear witness. Truth does not need our panic; it needs our presence. Read the Word, every day. For us, the next step is looking forward. Yes, it matters that we understand the times we’re living in and the culture in which we’re swimming, but more than that, we must lift our eyes above the surface and look toward the future God has already revealed in His Word. It is good to recognize the ideologies threatening to unravel the fabric of our nation, but of far greater significance is where God is leading His people, and that what He has promised will come.
