Diana Lesperance

I first became involved in apologetics after hearing a C-Span "Booknotes" interview with the atheist Christopher Hitchens, who accused the church of several historical atrocities. Because I have degrees in religion and history, and for over two decades I was a homeschool mom who was able to learn and teach history from a Christian perspective, I knew there was another perspective on church history, so his argument upset me greatly!

One of the main truths about Christian history that I think he neglected to fully understand is that there have always been factions in the church. The church has never been a single entity. For example, while the Inquisition was persecuting heretics, they weren't attacking unbelievers, they were actually attacking other believers who disagreed with their views. John Huss, William Tyndale, Martin Luther, and John Wycliffe, etc. were all committed Christians who were persecuted by the Roman Catholic Inquisition because they opposed Roman Catholic doctrine. Is it fair to accuse the “church” for burning people at the stake when fellow believers were the ones who were persecuted or burned at the stake?

In the same way, is it fair to accuse the “church” of slavery when it was members of the church (the abolitionists William Wilberforce, John Newton, William Lloyd Garrison, etc.) who fought most fervently against slavery?

Or is it fair to accuse Christians of being Nazis when the only organized opposition to Adolph Hitler was the Confessing Church (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Niemoller, Karl Barth, etc.)?

I also discovered that those who opposed the evils of totalitarian theocracy, slavery, and Nazism (and other evils) were all BIBLE-BELIEVING Christians who refused to cherry-pick the scriptures or ignore the whole counsel of God, while those who became a shame to the faith had corrupted the truth of the Word with other sources such as philosophy, pseudoscience, or faulty interpretations of the Word. I try to document this in all of my writings.

My latest endeavor is a booklet on Critical Race Theory, the ideology behind Black Lives Matter and identity politics. Because of my perspective on history, I have a real concern that if the church embraces Critical Race Theory (as the Southern Baptist Convention voted in 2019) that history will repeat itself and the church will again leave behind a corrupted and evil testimony.

I’m the blessed mom of eight kids and six granddaughters. I enjoy debating atheists, talking with my husband about Jesus, and playing board games with my family. Greg and I live with our little dog Rascal in the frozen tundra of northeastern Wisconsin.