Apostate

A letter of resignation from the Leftist Church of Critical Social Justice

APOSTATE

A letter of resignation from the Leftist Church of Critical Social Justice

David Jerome Lewis-Peart

I am not a Leftist.

Now, this isn’t altogether new. I am saying here what I, and those others close to me, have known about me for quite some time. Though it’s become ever more important to me to vocalize what, for some, is an inconceivable and irreconcilable transgression: having a change of heart and mind.

In the course of years spent working, loving, and living in “progressive” circles, I have been witness to an ever-increasing warping of a once (perhaps) well-intended cause and politic, toward an at times incoherent, inconsistent, and dogmatic kind of high control religiosity.

From the many folks I’ve been in conversation with over the years, including hushed voices behind closed doors and around dinner tables, I am aware that many of us are concerned. We have been cowed into silence by a vocal and virulent minority of extreme activist types (often those perpetually online lot) who have made disagreement punishable by assassination of character or through social (and economic) marginalization. Now, however, with an uncomfortably cold and righteous clarity (the kind usually reserved for the most fanatical), these attack tactics are praised by otherwise lovely and clear headed people, those I call colleagues, family, and friends. I have seen the growth of an unbothered and unquestioning acceptance of what are essentially laws against blasphemy, punishable, it now seems, even by actual death. The American political influencer Charlie Kirk’s assassination being just one upsetting example of what these ideas look like when walked out to their fullest extent.

For all those, like me, sensitive to energy and attuned to the subtle changes of wind and fortune, there is a shift of consciousness happening, however, slowly but surely. A fatigue setting in. Many empires are falling and things familiar are losing ground, including political monocultures. In that space of uncertainty and fear, like all things in Nature, a vacuum is abhorred. Eventually, like water rushing into a hole made on a sandy beach, absences most certainly will be filled. With what, is always suspect, and by whom, is the question, one requiring our most thoughtful attention. Bad actors and agents of chaos thrive in these moments and feed on existing divisions and unattended anxieties for their individual gain, and our collective loss.

To be clear, this letter, however and by whomever it is received, may be one of resignation but it is not one of defeat. I resign nothing but my membership to a club whose costs are way too high for all the small benefits (if any) that it once delivered. Kinda like those of us still paying predatory gym fees and gaining little more than debt and self-deception. This serves as a reminder. Contrary to the Leftist refrain, our silence isn’t violence, but it sure as hell allows the extremes on both Left and Right to assume that we co-sign their partisanship, as they march us all toward destructive ends.

To all my fence sitters: we the mushy middle majority, Centrists (both to the Left and the Right), us ideological agnostics, muted apostates (and, dare we say it, the quiet Conservatives) who’ve wrung our hands long enough while the zealots got drunk on altar wine and egos, burning bridges, long laboured for, down—give notice.

We do not believe.

(take a listen to the accompanying original poem, Apostate, below)

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David Lewis-Peart is a Toronto-born writer, social worker, and psychotherapist. He is the author of Pray You Break, a self-published poetry collection, and creator of the GRACE Principle, a framework he developed as a college lecturer and corporate DEI educator to foster engagement across difference.

David has been a fellow with the Heterodox Academy Writers Group under Dr. Musa al-Gharbi and most recently served as an Ambassador with the ProHuman Foundation. He has presented with The Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR) Canada and at The Counterweight Conference on Liberal Approaches to Diversity and Inclusion, where he led “The Space for GRACE: Holding Whole People in Divided Times.”

A former lecturer and ordained minister, David co-founded Sunset Service Toronto Fellowship, a not-for-profit spiritual arts community recognized by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation in 2014 and 2016, and named Best Activist Religious Group – Runner-up by NOW Magazine in 2015. In 2017, he was appointed Co-Chair of the Next Generation Task Force for the Parliament of the World’s Religions, where he oversaw youth and young adult programming for the 2018 Parliament in Toronto.

His writing and commentary have appeared in CBC Arts, Huffington Post Canada, ByBlacks, Global News, and he is a former playwright fellow with Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and Obsidian Theatre Company. David’s work has earned him numerous awards, including the inaugural Walden New Thought Award for socially conscious leadership, the Christopher Hewitt Award for Poetry (Honourable Mention, 2018), and recognition as a community curator for the Lambda Literary Festival.

David has a Substack (where a version of this essay was originally published) and may be found at his website and on LinkedIn.