📧 to ERB

Chris (and Shane),

I'm writing regarding ERB Press's publication of Shane's Of Grace and Bombs. In April 2022, Chris informed me that ERB declined to review God is a Grunt with this explanation:

"the primary audience for this book (active military/veterans) is narrower than the previous books, and doesn't intersect well with our readership."

You can both curate your audiences - I understand editorial discretion. But the extent to which yall're engaged in excluding military families from (your version of) Christianity is striking. Churches, families, neighborhoods, and workplaces, without military families, do not exist in America. Engineering a Christian readership "focus" to match that fantasy might be a federal crime.

Under 18 USC 1389 (The Soldiers Amendment, 2009), military service members and their families are a federally protected class on "equal footing with other protected classes" - military families have the same protected status as race, religion, and national origin.

When Chris wrote that military families don't "intersect well" with ERB's readership, he was making the same kind of exclusionary audience assumption that would be immediately recognized as biased if directed at any other protected class. Consider these substitutions:

• "the primary audience for this book (Black readers) doesn't intersect well with our readership"

• "the primary audience for this book (LGBTQ readers) doesn't intersect well with our readership"

Do you also feel people with these character traits don't have a place in your email newsletters or bookshelves? If not, then why is ERB promoting a manufactured Christianity by excluding the protected class whose service secured the freedoms you exercise?

Now ERB Press is publishing Shane's Iraq journal. The contradiction demands an answer:

• If military families, with their vested interest in the morality of violence, aren't ERB's readers (2022), who is Of Grace and Bombs for?

• If they are your readers, what changed to make the moral significance of war welcomed within ERB web and print pages?

• Or is the issue that ERB only wants military content confirming progressive Christian assumptions about war?

I'm asking you to acknowledge the bias in the 2022 decision or at minimum, explain coherently how publishing Claiborne's Iraq journal aligns with your stated position that military affairs don't intersect with ERB's readership.

I'm following Matthew 18 by bringing this to you privately first. But if you fail to respond substantively or evade the contradiction I've named, this correspondence - including Chris's 2022 email - will be made public on GIJustice.com.  At least do the right thing by accurately advertising who you serve and what books you think deserve your audience's attention. The real-world Christian community deserves to know when bias operates under the cover of editorial discretion.

I'm a combat veteran and a professed monastic who has spent my adult life trying to help the Church hear veteran theological voices. ERB's 2022 decision told me those voices aren't wanted. Your decision to publish Shane's book suggests that veteran voices are only welcome when they confirm what you already believe about war. Help rank and file believers understand how this makes any (moral) sense. 

-brother logan