In the summer of 2023, my wife and I got run up on by the youth group from the First Church of White Christian Nationalism.

We were out at a public park, sitting on a bench and eating some excellent fried food. It’s a big public square–type space—lots of families, kids on bikes, old guys on roller skates reliving their glory days of the ’80s. All races, all generations, lots of working-class people. As an interracial, queer, working-class family, we appreciate this kind of space. My wife is a Black cis woman, I’m a White trans man, and we’re both covered with tattoos, most of them religious. It’s not always easy to blend in. So, that evening, we were happy to just be part of the crowd enjoying a summer evening by the water.

We’re just digging into our takeout when a very young White man, maybe nineteen or twenty, suddenly gets on his portable sound system to try to save some sinners. He starts preaching into the microphone, and immediately, the crowd thins, the Friday night good vibes having been crushed. He carries on until park security rolls over in a golf cart to shut him down.

About then, I notice a small crowd of other young White men, probably ages fifteen to seventeen, coming to flank him defensively as the security guard speaks to him. As the security guard departs, I watch their group scan the crowd, smirking. Behind us, an older and fairly intoxicated gentleman gets on his own mic and starts karaoking in multiple languages. He’s both excellent and funny as hell, breaking in with welcome commentary (“Don’t you love it when twenty-year-olds come and try to tell grown-ass people how to live!”)

I lose track of the group of young men for a moment, but minutes later, they’re right next to me, asking my wife and me whether we know Jesus. I ignore them entirely, but my wife, being a better Christian than me, says yes. Their leader, the oldest one who had been on the mic, keeps pushing more questions: “Do you go to church? Is it a Bible-believing church? What’s the name of the church? Where is it?”

It was all pushy, smug, and annoying as hell. Still, it was a pretty standard street proselytizing script—until he says, within inches of my wife’s face, “It’s not a Black Lives Matter church, is it?”

Immediately, I’m on my feet and in his face, ordering him to get back. Like clockwork, the rest of the Church Boy Brown Shirts swoop in to form a protective semicircle around him. I keep walking at him to force him to walk backward, repeating, “This is inappropriate, get back,” loudly, over the top of him while he wheedles with a grin, “What’s inappropriate? I’m just trying to talk about the Word of God! Did you know the Bible also says homosexuality is a sin?” The coordination of this entire event was so clear and so calculated. Clearly, these little assholes have been trained, coached, and released into the world by some White Christian national-ish church to test their mettle against the “ungodly.”

I finally walk their lead boy far enough backward until they all peel off. My wife—ordained in two denominations, with a divinity degree from Harvard and a PhD from the School of Hard Knocks—is on her feet now too, itching to get at them.

We leave the park instead because their sole goal is provocation, because even negative attention feeds their hustle, because we have a movie to catch, and because we refuse to cede our date night to the Youth Group from Hell.

A few weeks after this incident in the park, my wife and I were in the grocery store and, bless the Lord, guess who we saw! The ringleader of the boy posse. He was alone and pushing his grocery cart, no minions to bolster his sense of owning the place.

My wife called to me, loudly, so the rest of the shoppers around us could hear, from the other side of the produce stand. “Is that who I think it is?!” she asked.

I called back, just as loud, “Oh yes, it is! That same little guy who ran up on us just to tell us that homosexuality is a sin! What a great approach!” At this point, all the other shoppers and store clerks are staring. The blood has drained from the little fella’s face, and he’s staring like a deer in the headlights, mumbling.

She says, “He said that, and he said that it goes against God to support Black Lives Matter. Well, look at this, this is nothing but God’s work that we’re both here again tonight. Because I need to tell you: you were wrong for that. That’s not what the gospel says. And you need to know that he [she points to me] saved your life that night. Because he got to you first and pushed you away from me. If I had got you first—oooooweee!”

He stammers something nonsensical and weak and continues to dig his own grave right there, between the onions and apples. “Black Lives Matter supports abortion,” he mumbles. “I-I just want you to be saved.”

At this wild twist in the conversation, the older Black woman restocking fruit bins next to us also whips around to stare him down, sliding her glasses down her nose like a grandma about to go off. My beautiful wife, always ready for it, brings her voice up a notch, “Oh, Black Lives Matter supports abortion; THAT’S why you have a problem with it. Really? Well, Ms. Angela,” she says, turning to the clerk at the fruit bins, reading her name tag. “I’m sorry, but you’re about to have a cleanup situation on aisle six.”

The clerk chuckles, smiles, and says, “Now, now.” No one does anything to come to Teen Fascist’s aid. He’s alone in this space, he’s shook up, he has recruited nobody, and he has been publicly marked as a bigot instead of a Nice White Christian Boy on at least two counts. He knows it, and the rest of the people in the produce department know it too. Our job is done; we roll out.

This is a small interaction in the grand scale of things. But it’s going to take a lot of persistent, dogged vigilance in every space we can contend for to push White Christian nationalism back into the hole it crawled out of. It’s going to require calling out White Christian nationalism in the produce aisle, in the streets, in the pews, and at the ballot box. To be clear: I’m not endorsing “callout culture” with this anecdote. Nor do I think the tactics of public shaming are always strategic when your target is someone who, though they may be wrong, has very little power. But when it comes to contending for public space and fighting spiritual malpractice and the brazen scapegoating of oppressed people, you have to check folks, and you have to check them immediately. You have to let them know that you also have power and that you are willing to use it.

We can’t leave this at the one-on-one level, either. Little dude from the grocery store is not likely to hang up the megaphone after going one round in the produce department. And even if he did, there are countless others ready to take his place. What we need is our own mass movement truly contending for power to run the likes of this guy’s older brother out of elected office, off the street corners, and out of their own pulpits (and yes, of course, ideally into our own movement for a thriving future for all people . . . once he’s done hate-preaching at me and my wife on date night).

To really put the mass in mass movement, we gotta bring in every damn Randy and Brandy we can get. Again, there’s just too many of them to ignore. And right now, that little street preacher is far more likely to have Randy and Brandy’s recruitment on his to-do list than anyone else is. If we don’t talk to them, guess who will?

This is an excerpt from Bring Back Your People chapter 4: Rule Four: Know Yourself, Know Your Adversary.