When Fellow Military Families Choose Silence

In 2014, my partner babysat Esau McCaulley's children in Scotland so he and his wife (a Navy Reserve medical officer) could work and teach. When Esau organized a prayer vigil after Mike Brown's murder, we showed up. That's what military families do for each other.

Years later, I asked Esau to help me break through the civilian bias excluding veteran theological voices. In April 2022, I sent him an essay comparing The Englewood Review of Books' rejection of my book, because military families "doesn't intersect well with our readership," to hypothetical rejection of his work Reading While Black.

He read it. I have the email tracking data. He never responded.

Over four years, I reached out multiple times—inviting him to speak at a veterans conference, requesting feedback on biblical scholarship about soldiers, asking him to join a podcast about Paul and citizenship. Each time, I invoked our shared history and his wife's military service. I wasn't asking him to champion a new cause. I was asking for acknowledgment from a fellow military family: "I see the parallel you're drawing."

He couldn't give even that. When I finally sent a direct appeal in January 2026, he responded citing "boundaries" and "limits on time and ability." In those same four years, he wrote forewords for other books, launched new podcasts, and expanded his platform.

On Race, Tokenization, and Social Death

I need to name something explicitly: Esau is Black, I'm white. For some readers, that fact alone discredits this essay. But that reading misses what's actually happening.

We're both from marginalized communities that get tokenized by the institutions we're trying to access. Black scholars in white evangelical spaces get platforms—until they make people uncomfortable. Veterans in civilian academic spaces get the same treatment—we're welcomed as "the veteran voice" until we cost the institution or influencer something as banal as personal comfort.

Tokenization comes with privilege, but also responsibility. When you get up on a platform without pulling up the people like you who are drowning, you've joined the entitlement class. I noticed when my token status as "the good veteran" required me to betray veterans as a whole. I got off the pedestal. Esau saw the same dynamic—he read my work—and chose differently.

Martin Luther King Jr., whose tradition Esau claims, said "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Esau built his career on that principle. He's not ignorant of what happened to me. He's complicit—not because he's cruel, but because standing with military families would cost him social capital in progressive Christian spaces where anti-militarism is currency.

Every rank-and-file believer is supposed to be a lifeguard. You can choose to swim while someone else drowns. But you can't fire all the lifeguards then get pissed when the water eventually takes you too. Esau has no moral claim to anger; any animus he feels toward me would be no more justified than the wars I fought in our name. And without the moral high ground, it's just a matter of time before the tide rises and those lifeguards woulda come in real handy...

Why This Matters

The personal betrayal is real, don't' get me wrong, but the evidence of a structural problem is more important than personal feelings. I have people supporting me, but a lot of veterans don't. This is pattern documentation for veterans coming after me. Progressive Christianity talks ad nauseam about marginalization and solidarity—but when it's military families facing exclusion, even fellow military families choose comfort over reciprocity.

Esau McCaulley built a career making visible how Black voices have been excluded from theological interpretation. I asked him to see the same dynamic with military voices. He saw it and chose not to engage. That silence is data. It tells military families what to expect when they ask Christian influencers for solidarity. It tells them that even shared military family identity isn't enough to guarantee reciprocity.

I followed Matthew 18. I brought this privately, repeatedly, for years. After documenting ERB's explicit exclusion, I named Esau publicly and sent another email: either our faith means something when solidarity costs something, or it never meant much at all.

I'm documenting this not to punish Esau, but to clear the path. Every closed door I document is one fewer trap for veterans who come after me.

The work continues. With or without the support of those who should understand.