Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie, you have been on quite the journey since graduating from SCS in 2005. How did it all start?
After SCS, I took a year off to work, save money, and attend a missions program called YWAM that I learned about at chapel. Then I went to Bridgewater College, a small school in Virginia I chose because they offered a full ride. That choice and the AP classes I took at SCS allowed me to graduate in three years without debt, which gave me flexibility to pursue writing-related work following graduation. After several years doing communications for political nonprofits in Washington, I realized I needed an advanced degree to write about ideas instead of logistics, so I got a master’s in Christian Thought from Bethel Seminary in Minnesota and began freelancing as a journalist while studying there.

Since then, your writing resume has become truly impressive! What are some of your current publications and projects?
Right now I’m focused on my second book, which will release in the fall of 2022 with Brazos Press, a Christian publishing house. We haven’t settled on a title yet, but the topic is the knowledge crisis in American faith and politics. It's about how we increasingly don’t know what’s true, what’s knowable, or who we can trust—how our whole information environment is chaotic and overwhelming, how it's breaking our brains, polluting our politics, and harming our Christian discipleship and community.

Outside of book work, I’m a contributing editor at The Week, where I write opinion articles on foreign policy, religion, criminal justice, urbanism, and more. I have a column, “The Lesser Kingdom,” in print and online at Christianity Today. And I’m a fellow at a foreign policy think tank called Defense Priorities, which places op-eds I write at an array of outlets including USA Today, CNN, and Time.

We can’t wait to hear more about this upcoming book! In the meantime, would you tell us a bit about your first book, A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today?
A Flexible Faith is a readable exploration of the diversity of theology and practice within orthodox Christianity. We should know how faithful Christians in other branches of the church—both historically and around the world today—work out their faith. It can nourish or even save our own.

What would you say is your favorite subject matter to address in your writing, and how does that interest interact with your faith?
While I’m working on this second book, a lot of my writing (including in my other work, because the book research often has relevance to the news cycle) is linked to epistemology, which is the part of philosophy that seeks to understand understanding itself. Epistemology asks questions like: What do we know? How do we know it? If truth exists, as Christians affirm it does, can humans access it rightly?

This has me writing a lot on traditional and social media, practices of public shaming, conspiracism, and public rejection of expertise, among other related subjects. Christian faithfulness requires sincere pursuit of truth in love, but epistemic confusion doesn’t make us more loving. It doesn’t bear good fruit. It doesn’t help us “live a life worthy of the calling [we] have received” (Eph. 4:1). It is not of Christ.

You have clearly pursued with vigor your passion for writing. Did you always dream of a career path as a writer?
I don’t remember exactly when I decided I would write for a living, but I know I had the general idea settled by my junior year at SCS at the very latest. That was when I became fascinated with copies of World Magazine a classmate’s mom would pass on to me, which directed my longstanding interest in writing toward politics and journalism. My senior year, I wrote a pair of essays—one on privacy rights, if I recall correctly, and one a more reflective, personal piece—which were the best work I’d done to date and helped point toward what sort of writing I’d do in the future.

Well, Bonnie, SCS is certainly proud to call you one of our own and we will certainly continue to follow your journey! In what ways do you think SCS helped prepare you for the life you now lead?
SCS provided a solid academic foundation for college and gave me opportunities to hone my writing skills. In retrospect, my senior year Bible course—which was taught, at our class’s insistence, by our science teacher, Mr. Fears, and mainly consisted of a verse-by-verse study of Galatians—was a crucial early moment for developing my interest in theology.