Every autumn, my small hometown starts to look like a battlefield of beliefs, and I don’t mean the kind fought with debates or door-knocking. I mean the kind fought with lawn signs. They sprout up in yards, on medians, in empty lots, sometimes tucked into Halloween tableaus or zip-tied to fences like tiny declarations of allegiance. By their signs you will know them, at least for a few months each fall. There’s something almost charming about that ritual, a civic spectacle as familiar as pumpkin spice and crisp air. But there is another sign of election season here in Newberg, Oregon, and it is far more troubling. It’s the disinformation machine, cranked up to eleven once again, churning out ad hominem attacks against candidates and their supporters, poisoning the public square with the kind of lies that don’t just fade away after Election Day. It’s the sign not made of cardboard or plastic, but of suspicion, rumor, and rage. And this year, as in recent years, it’s threatening to tear apart a community that was never meant to be this fractured.
I know what that machine can do because I have been caught in its gears before. After the 2021 election of far-right school board members in Newberg, a disinformation campaign created deep channels of distrust that still run through this town. I had publicly stood against the new, Christian nationalist-tinged board, and for that, I was swallowed whole by the maw of online falsehood. A writer with a national right-wing audience accused me of being “anti-Christian,” claimed I taught “Marxist and Gestapo Tactics,” and called me a “pathological liar.” I’m still not entirely sure what teaching “Marxist and Gestapo tactics” would even look like in a classroom, but the accusation was enough to get me targeted, harassed, and threatened in ways that no teacher should ever have to endure. It was all lies, every bit of it, but the lies didn’t care about the truth. One of his exposés led to death threats against a city councilperson, and still, local leaders with the power to stop him did nothing. His disinformation was convenient. It helped some folks consolidate power. And so the lies were allowed to stand, repeated, amplified, laundered through social media and whispered conversations until they took on the weight of accepted fact.
Now, a month before local elections, the disinformation machine is operating at full tilt once again. Community Facebook groups have become daily arenas of character assassination, where the rumor mill grinds away trying to deepen the divides in an already divided town. I’ve mostly stayed out of those spaces—I no longer post in small-town social media groups, knowing how easily anything I say can be twisted into a weapon—but I’ve still been impugned, simply for writing an opinion piece in support of a mayoral candidate I truly believe is best for the place I love. That candidate, Elise Yarnell Holloman, along with others running to unseat an incumbent mayor and city councilperson, has been the target of relentless attacks. The machine is working overtime to discredit her and her supporters, painting reasonable people as radicals, honest people as liars, and caring neighbors as enemies. It’s exhausting, watching good people be dragged through the mud by strangers who have never met them, who know nothing about their character, and who seem less interested in truth than in victory. What makes it worse is that so many of the people spreading or tolerating these lies claim to be Christians. They talk about truth and morality and righteousness, but scripture is clear: lying comes from the Evil One, and Christians are commanded, in both the Old and New Testaments, to speak the truth and not bear false witness. And yet some folks would rather accept lies, platform them, even celebrate them, than insist on telling the truth.
In my Introduction to Journalism class at George Fox University, we’ve spent the past week wrestling with all of this. We’ve talked about how deceit has become more acceptable in our media environment, how the lines between fact and fiction have blurred, and why no one seems to care about lying anymore. I’ve shared my own story of being “exposed,” of having someone tell lies about me to the internet, and then watching those lies be repeated in a public space by a person who had never met me, never spoken to me, and who is now a politician running for re-election. I’ve told my students what it feels like to be talked about by strangers as if they know you, what it’s like to have your reputation smeared by people who have zero interest in the truth. And I’ve asked them to think carefully about how they can be responsible consumers of media, how they can resist the pull of outrage and tribalism, and how they can help turn the tide toward a world where people actually care about lying again. I don’t have easy answers for them. The problem is too big, too systemic, too entrenched. But I do believe that the answer begins with individuals, with ordinary people deciding that they will not participate in the destruction of another person’s character, that they will not share a post without checking the source, that they will not let their desire for political victory override their commitment to basic human decency.
One of the most powerful reframes I can offer my students comes from George Fox, the founder of the Quaker movement and the namesake of the university where I teach. Writing from prison in 1663, Fox urged his followers: “Go through the world, and be valiant for the truth upon earth; tread and trample down all that is contrary. You have the power, do not abuse it. You have the strength, presence, and wisdom of the Lord.” Those words have echoed through centuries, and they feel almost impossibly relevant right now. To be valiant for the truth means more than just telling the truth when it’s easy. It means standing up for it when it’s costly. It means refusing to stay silent when lies are being spread, even by people in power, even by people who share your faith, even by people who should know better. It means recognizing that lying is not just a political strategy or a social media habit; it is a spiritual sickness, a betrayal of the very values so many claim to hold dear. And it means being willing to be uncomfortable, to be attacked, to be misunderstood, in order to defend what is real and honest and good. What a different world we would live in if our leaders and their followers were valiant for the truth. What a different community Newberg would be if the people who claim to care about Christian values actually practiced them in the public square.
There is no sign that such a transformation is coming this election year, at least not from the top down. The disinformation machine is still running, the Facebook groups are still churning, the attacks are still coming, and the silence of leaders who should know better remains profound. But I remain hopeful, because I know that truth-tellers are out there. I see them in my classroom, in the students who ask hard questions and refuse to accept easy lies. I see them in the candidates who keep running for office even when their reputations are smeared. I see them in the neighbors who quietly refuse to share the rumors, who stand up for the targeted, who keep their heads and hearts clear in the fog of falsehood. The truth will not win overnight, and it may not win every battle. But it is still there, underneath all the noise, waiting for people brave enough to speak it. Telling the truth begins with my students, and with you, and with me. It begins in the small decisions we make every day: to fact-check before we share, to resist the temptation to demonize those we disagree with, to remember that behind every name being dragged through the mud is a real person with a real life. It begins with being valiant for the truth, even when it costs us something. It begins now, in this season of signs and lies and fear, with the quiet, stubborn refusal to let falsehood have the final word.