Faith for me didn't provide a set of easy answers or certainties: It raised more questions than I was ever comfortable with.

Respectable Protestant denominations retreated inside...leaving...unaffiliated madwomen to evangelize alfresco...

I'd gone to Central America because I didn't think politics was simply a matter of opinion. It wasn't about having the right "line," having an ideologically pure analysis. It had to be incarnate. And now I was seeing the same thing with faith. It couldn't be about wrangling over the Bible to find justification for your convictions. Like politics, faith had to be about action.

There's no way to be a Christian at home by yourself.

I wanted to stand on the kind of holy ground that wasn't curated by church professionals, where a burning bush could blaze forth in defiance of safety regulations and outside of regular office hours.