A Redeemed Journey: Standing Firm in a Cancel Culture World

Discovering Identity, Resilience, and Faith in Christ

"When I think about who I am and what I stand for, I first think about being a redeemed child of God. This is the identity I celebrate most, and all other aspects of who I am are enriched by that distinctiveness. Having a Christian identity in today's post-Christian culture is not always easy. The world abhors it, rejects it, and mocks it, leaving me feeling isolated and beat down at times. My own fleshly nature resists it, and I sometimes forget who I am, letting my old self of sin rear its ugly head.

I have faced moments of depression and allowed despair and trauma to steal my joy. I've failed others and said things I regret. I've stumbled along life's path, sometimes falling. But God never lets me go, even as my hand slips from His. He enables me to press on toward the prize of glory that awaits all His children, never allowing trouble, strife, or earthly powers to rip me from His loving hands. His Spirit holds me close so I don't lose complete hope, even in the darkest times. His Son teaches me every hour that I have no strength in myself and must lean on Him—a lesson of humility I often need.

He comforts me daily, promising, 'Even to your old age and gray hairs I am He, I am He who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you' (Isaiah 46:4).

Isaiah 46:4 (NIV) ⁴Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.

As a woman whose dark hair is turning gray, whose wrinkles are deepening with age, and who looks back on too many years of wandering, faltering, and falling, I weep with gratitude at such a promise, resting in the certainty that my Heavenly Father carries me through every trial and will always rescue me, bringing my weary soul home.

As for my vocation, I am an author and journalist. One of the greatest gifts God has given me is the ability to be a bold and fearless truth-teller through writing. I write both fiction and nonfiction, secular and religious, as a way to touch the lives of others, sharing God's truths in a culture filled with lies, challenging individuals to be who God has made them to be (not as the world expects them to be), and comforting them with shared stories of a common humanity riddled with sin yet redeemed by God's grace and sustained by His unfailing love.

My most significant achievement is raising six children, three of whom are not my own. Families of divorce are never easy, but God has been gracious and has given me the strength to face the challenges of being a mom to so many children. I haven't been perfect by any means, but I am proud of each of our children and have raised them with love, despite moments when I wanted to give up. This, to me, is an incredible and humbling achievement. Professionally, my greatest accomplishment is starting with nothing—no connections, no environment conducive to success, and no extensive support system to sustain my writing career. Despite these challenges, I became a national voice that speaks truth in an age of lies.

I've faced two particularly challenging times in my life that tore me from my community, shattered my reputation, ended my career, and sent me into a spiral of doubt and depression. In both situations, I became stronger by learning to die to self, trust in God, and grow in humility. The first was in 1999 when I was a pastor's wife at a local church. I had become unhappy in my marriage and committed adultery with a man who also attended our church. I won't justify this terrible sin, for it's something I deeply regret, but God used it to change me and shape me into a better person. He also blessed me with a beautiful daughter in the midst of it, for which I'll be forever grateful. The challenges that arose from this situation were overwhelming at times and often terrifying, but God guided me through it, using it as a refining fire in my life.

My adultery and subsequent unplanned pregnancy from that relationship elicited a swift and harsh response from the leaders of my church. They demanded not only my excommunication and public shunning but also the loss of total custody of my two children. The church pressured my husband at the time to take my children from me and never let them see me or talk to me, arguing that I had stopped being their mother when I committed adultery. If my husband were to remarry, that woman would become the 'real' mother of my children. The church insisted that, to reconcile with my husband and be restored to my children, I would have to give up my baby for adoption, never see her, and never make any claim to her.

No matter what choice I made, a child (or children) would lose their mother—at least that’s how I saw it at the time because I had not considered going to court to fight for shared custody of my children. I wanted to work it out with my husband (without the intrusion of the church or the courts), even though, for a time, such a goal seemed impossible. After a long struggle, however, including briefly contemplating getting an abortion as a way “to solve” all my problems, I chose to divorce my husband and keep my baby. Instead of going along with the demands of the church, my husband agreed to joint custody of my children. My choice to go ahead with a divorce and keep my children, including my baby, resulted in public shunning by my friends, my former employer, my church, and my community. I accepted some of this, for I could not deny that I had sinned and had to face the consequences of it without complaint.

But many of the actions of the church were cruel and unjustified—to me and my children—and they nearly destroyed me. I was alone, jobless, penniless, with two children and one on the way. This plunged me into deep depression for many years, but God refused to let me go. He healed me, nurtured my relationship with my children, brought a wonderful daughter into my life, gave me a new family and a loving husband, reconnected me with a new church family, and restored my career—or rather brought me into a new one.

I had been a Christian author prior to my public excommunication—a career I lost—but over time and with a lot of hard work, building on my education and training as a journalist, I went in a different direction and became a political and cultural commentator. I was unexpectedly successful, rising through the ranks of national media, becoming a senior contributor at The Federalist, contributor at The Daily Wire and PJ Media, and a guest commentator on Fox News, BBC, NPR, The Sean Hannity Radio Program, and countless radio stations and podcasts throughout the nation. I was invited to be a speaker at pro-life events, address audiences at conferences, ghostwrite books for celebrities, and even coauthor a New York Times bestseller with talk show host Dan Bongino. I also fulfilled one of my dreams and authored my own book on relationships between men and women in celebration of masculine sexuality. God had graciously provided a vast platform from which to speak biblical truth.

This, however, came crashing down in 2019 when I lost my career, most of my friends and associations, and my reputation after I was canceled for getting into a Twitter fight with a liberal writer at New York Magazine. I had written a tweet honoring my husband’s “masculine space” in a humorous way, and the writer from New York Magazine, along with hundreds of thousands of his followers, descended on me, mocking my marriage, my sexual relationship with my husband, and falsely accusing him of abusing me—all because of a joke I made about respecting his space while he watched a sporting event. I received death threats and messages warning me that the police were going to show up at my house to arrest him or that social services was going to be called with reports of domestic abuse—all based on lies because I had been targeted by a devious and fraudulent man infamous for getting conservatives canceled.

It was social media insanity at its worst, and I became very angry in defense of my husband, firing off a true but disparaging tweet about the writer’s sinful sexual choices in response to his mocking of mine. I was immediately canceled by every paying outlet in conservative media, shunned by all my conservative/libertarian associates and peers, fired from my writing jobs, banned from Fox News and other media outlets, and driven from the society of everyone I worked with at the time, even fellow Christians. I lost my livelihood, my reputation, my income, my dreams—all in a moment, all in a tweet.

I once again plunged into despair and even became suicidal. Since I suffer from Complex PTSD due to childhood abuse and rape, the situation triggered every flight mechanism within me, driving me into isolation and self-loathing. Through it all, however, God held firm. I never lost my faith, and my dependence on Him grew daily. Gradually, I overcame the loss, though I still experience the practical effects of my canceling, including no paying work and shunning by former friends and associates—even people who say they oppose cancel culture. Through it all, however, God has shown me that I cannot cling to things of this world and look for self-worth and esteem in them, for they are like grass that burns away in a moment. True security, true certainty of who I am as an individual and a woman, can only be found in Him who never changes and who has promised to love me through the storms of life.

Hebrews 13:8 (NIV) ⁸Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

I am now continuing to speak out on social media—even more boldly than ever—in defense of the Christian faith, though, as I said, I have no paid platform any longer. I have, however, started to write again for myself, having completed a work of fiction that I hope to publish one day, and I’m looking for ways to return to my first love—teaching and writing about the Bible to equip the church in these very dark days. Mostly, I am constantly reminded that my hope is in Christ alone, who gave up everything for me, who died on a bloody cross before mockers, and who was reviled and hated by the world. Because He was persecuted, I will be too—a promise given to those who seek His righteousness. I embrace this truth and never let the fear of it—or of the world—stop me from standing for Him, speaking His truth, loving others as Christ loves us, and spreading the gospel, which is the only salvation for all who believe.

I speak out on social media and in various forms of writing in defense of human sexuality as God has designed it, which includes a significant message to women. Respecting God’s design for men and women means celebrating the essential order, beauty, and glory of being uniquely female. We are not the same as men, and we should celebrate that fact, not shun it in the name of a perverted notion of “equality” or personal "liberty." God created us in love, and there is no greater honor than to emulate that love, especially by respecting ourselves as women and honoring our husbands, fathers, and sons as men. Those relationships help shape us and develop us into godly women, and we only hurt ourselves when we neglect or belittle them.

Women are truly glorious creatures, for many reasons, but one of the most amazing is our ability to create life and raise children with self-sacrificial love. Sadly, we live in a society that no longer values this aspect of womanhood. In fact, motherhood is often denigrated in our culture, either through abortion, casual sex outside of marriage, single parenthood that shuns the need for a father, or contrived “family” constructs that purposely leave out a child’s parents (mother or father), who are so necessary in the development of a child’s own sense of identity.

Because of the damage done to children, I work tirelessly to protect the life of the unborn and speak on behalf of children intentionally raised without ever knowing their mother or father. Too often, adults make selfish decisions, not caring about the children they bring into this world. This is a humbling lesson I learned in the midst of my own sinful choices and is one I hope to share with other women—don’t let selfishness, a false sense of sameness posing as equality, your own failings, the opinions of others, or man-made constructs about the nature of the family rob you of the joys of living according to God’s ways and being the woman God made you to be. God defines you—not other people and not even yourself in your darkest moments.

To women in general,

I want to convey a heartfelt message of self-discovery, empowerment, and unwavering faith. Each of you, as women, has a unique and divine design, created in the image of God. Embrace this truth and live authentically within this design, free from the pressures of societal expectations or even institutional norms. Your path should be one of honor, ultimately glorifying God, not seeking the approval of others. Remember that you are inherently beautiful as God's creation. Take pride in this identity and never let anyone shame you for standing for truth, love, and a life well-lived.

What sets my story apart is the resilience with which I've clung to my identity in Christ, despite the numerous trials and tribulations that life has thrown my way. I've remained unyielding in my commitment to God's truth and bound by His love, all thanks to His grace. I refuse to let others or my own mistakes define me. My sole definition comes from my Creator, who knows me best.

Acts 17:28 (NIV) ²⁸‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’

In the end, my uniqueness stems from God's own remarkable nature. I am made in His beautiful image, a reflection of His grace and dignity that can never be erased, no matter the challenges, temptations, or judgments we face from those who oppose our faith and values. These are the very values that I hold dear, the values of the God who saved me through His precious Son, Jesus Christ.

In conclusion, we are all remarkable because God is remarkable, and we are His beloved children, bearing His image with grace and dignity. Our identity is unwavering and unshakeable, firmly rooted in our faith, love, and commitment to the One who loves us unconditionally.”

Psalm 139:14 (NIV) ¹⁴I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

With faith and love,

Denise McAllister, Author, Journalist, and Redeemed Child of God

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