I Read Jocelyn Benson’s Book So You Don’t Have To. You’re Welcome!
- 1 day ago
- 9 min read
A “true believer’s” unexamined life
By Kristine Christlieb, MFEI News & Commentary Editor
May 19, 2025
Many of you will remember Rick Warren’s 2002 blockbuster book, The Purpose Driven Life. The graduation gift staple has sold millions of copies for helping readers discover their God-given purpose in life.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s new book, released earlier this month, The Purposeful Warrior: Standing Up for What’s Right When the Stakes Are High, might be described as the secular equivalent of Warren’s book, showing people how to live a Godless life in service to the State.
Published by The Open Field — Maria Schriver’s imprint at Penguin Life for authors “offering insights, inspiration, and guidance for moving beyond the fears, the judgments, and the masks we all wear” — Benson’s book is part feminist self-help and part Democrat political memoir.
The book’s publication and statewide book tour are perfectly timed to launch Benson’s run for Michigan governor, the obvious next step in her determined climb up the political ladder, a climb that began in 2010 when she first ran for Michigan Secretary of State.
Benson is also a one-note ideologue, a civil rights warrior who found "religion" her junior year at Wellesley and hasn't reexamined any assumptions since.
The self-help part of the book invokes all the inspirational clichés of our day. Here’s a sample: Benson asks herself, “How can I be the hero of my own story, and help others become the heroes of theirs?” Then Benson promises, “In the pages ahead I’ll show you the benefit of finding your strength as a purposeful warrior and how to harness it to propel you into a more powerful future.”
Like so many secular self-help books, this author encourages people to believe they can accomplish their self-identified goals in their own strength. All they need to do is “find their courage” and keep putting one foot in front of the other. That works for some people. It worked for Benson, and she thinks it’s a model for everyone.
Give the Devil Her Due
Without question, Jocelyn Benson is an extraordinarily disciplined and intelligent woman who did indeed propel herself “into a more powerful future.” But she is also a one-note ideologue, who found secular religion in her junior year at Wellesley and has not since seriously questioned any of those youthful beliefs.
When a person thinks of Wellesley, it is impossible not to think of Hillary Clinton, the elite school’s most well-known graduate. Benson graduated exactly thirty years after Clinton, and the two women are cut from nearly the same ideological cloth. In fact, it is entirely possible this soft serve, “inspirational” title from Benson is designed to deflect from critics who might call her too politically ambitious and power hungry.
Political radicals often have a moment-of-truth story similar to religious conversion narratives. Benson’s road to Damascus story begins in Boston at Wellesley and ends in Montgomery.
My journey began a few months into my junior year in college, when I learned about Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Viola Liuzzo, Rev. James Reeb, Jimmie Lee Jackson, and so many others who lost their lives fighting for voting rights in the Deep South in the 1960s.
She also learned the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) had erected a memorial to these civil rights martyrs in front of its Montgomery, Ala., headquarters. She writes, “I immediately made plans to visit the memorial in person during my spring break that year.” When other college students were heading south to Fort Lauderdale, Benson and a girlfriend were making their pilgrimage to Montgomery. On that trip, Benson met with SPLC staff and attorneys “to hear about how they were working on the front lines to address racially biased hate crimes and teach the next generation of children to stand up to hate in all its forms.”
During that spring break in 1998, Benson found her purpose. She says, “I prayed to be someone who would choose to stand at the foot of the Edmund Petrus Bridge and march forward to further a cause that I believed in.”
Upon graduation at 19 years old in 1999, she took an unpaid, undercover position with SPLC “to track the activities of violent extremist organizations throughout the country.”
Timeline Problems in Benson’s Book – Is her date of birth wrong or her year of graduation? Twice in her book, Benson mentions being 19 when she moved to Alabama to work for the SPLC after her 1999 graduation. Certainly, it has been done, but it is very unusual for someone to graduate from college at 19, much less graduate at such a young age from an elite university. The problem is, Benson’s date of birth is widely cited as October 22, 1977. If that is her date of birth and if Benson graduated in the spring of 1999, she would have been 21 years old when she moved to Alabama, not 19. How does someone make a timeline error like that? And not just once but twice? It’s possible there is an explanation for the discrepancy, but such an obvious error of fact seriously undermines the author’s credibility. |
The unpaid internship was her mission year, her immersion into the civil rights movement. She calls the move to Montgomery her “leap of faith.” As it turns out, the only mention of Christian faith comes in this period. While working as a waitress, Benson became unlikely friends with a co-worker, a single mother whose Christian faith shone so brightly even Benson was pulled into the light, at least for a time. Except for that brief interlude in Montgomery in 1999, Benson’s account of her own life is entirely self-driven and achieved in her own strength with the support of friends and colleagues.
Benson says she remains in touch with her angel friend from Montgomery, but throughout the rest of the book, there is no mention of faith playing a role in Benson’s life. Her passion for justice is admirable. The civil rights movement was an important cultural adjustment in American history, but organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center ultimately went off course.
By prominently highlighting her association with the SPLC, Benson is signaling she is writing to a partisan audience. The SPLC is, for most conservatives, the non-profit poster child for hatchet jobs. The group has faced an avalanche of criticism over the last ten years. Most famous/infamous for its “Hate Map,” the SPLC has been sued by various organizations for defamation.
Benson includes a "me too" section in which she relates being sexually harassed by a colleague, but she continues to laud the SPLC even though it was rocked by scandal in 2019. SPLC founder Morris Dees was forced to resign over what one former employee said was the “unchecked power of lavishly compensated white men at the top.” There were allegations of sexual harassment, gender discrimination and racism. The fact that Benson has not revised her opinion of the SPLC is telling and suggests she isn’t able to re-evaluate closely held beliefs even when presented with evidence to the contrary.
Benson’s single-minded focus on civil rights has not always served her well or the organizations to which she has been affiliated. In 2016 she was recruited to lead the Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality (RISE). Founded by Miami Dolphins owner Stephen M. Ross, RISE partnered with the NFL to educate the sports community on racial discrimination. During her tenure at the head of RISE (2016-2017), the NFL experienced record low viewership. A study published in the Journal of Sports Economics explains why.
The National Football League’s (NFL) television ratings decreased by approximately 8% during the 2016 season, then a further 10% the following season. These declines coincided with league-wide national anthem protests initiated by Colin Kaepernick at the beginning of the 2016 season.
The study goes on to say, “Our results show protests are statistically significantly associated with lower TV ratings.” After Benson’s resignation, viewership began to climb but fell again to record lows in 2020 during COVID.
One has to wonder how the state of Michigan would fair under the leadership of a single-minded, civil rights radical as governor. Would she be able to broaden her scope and focus on economic development or education? Can the crusader for civil rights care about energy costs? Can she broaden her warrior purpose to fight for all Michiganders?
Benson’s Favorite Story
Benson says she began writing her book in February 2021. The opening chapter is her version of what happened the night of December 4, 2020, when she claims, “Dozens of armed individuals, some shadowy, others clear as day,” were “standing just outside” her home.
Fred Nienstedt of Macomb County was among the protesters outside Benson’s houses. He told this author that the group consisted of about 20-30 people, and none of the protesters were armed.
Benson frequently tells this story. She opens her book with it, and she repeated it at a Congressional hearing in September 2024. In her version she was hanging Christmas decorations that evening with her four-year-old son nearby watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas. By her account, she was enjoying a perfectly normal family evening, even though Attorney General Dana Nessel had called her earlier, saying “police” were expecting a group of “armed protesters.” Notice: She had warning but made no effort to leave her house or to have her son taken to a safer location. How worried was she about the “armed” protesters?
Crucial to Benson’s version is that the protestors were armed. That claim should be investigated more thoroughly because Benson refers to this incident so frequently. It is how she garners sympathy and smears conservatives.
Fred Nienstedt of Macomb County was among the protesters outside Benson’s houses. He told this author that the group consisted of about 20-30 people, and none of the protesters were armed.
Nienstedt said Detroit police responded to the call that night. No arrests were made. Detroit station WXYZ reported, “Lt. Mike Shaw believes [my emphasis] some of the protestors were openly carrying guns.” Both the Detroit police report and Lt. Shaw’s official statement should be requested and reviewed for any evidence the protesters were carrying weapons.
Benson has been known to get the facts wrong.
For example, she claims in her book windows were broken at the TCF Center on Election night. No windows were broken. Just as she exaggerated what happened on election night, it is possible she exaggerated the threat on December 4. But even if some of the protestors were armed, no one was arrested, so if they were carrying weapons, they were carrying them legally.
At least part of the motivation for this book is Donald Trump and critics of the 2020 election results. Benson continues to claim, “When the polls closed on election night in November 2020, I was proud we had administered a smooth, seamless, secure election.” That claim is an outrage to a significant percentage of Michigan voters who saw the chaos at the TCF center on election night, who saw election workers covering the windows with pizza boxes so the vote counting couldn’t be observed.
Benson is unable to hear the concerns of Michiganders who do not share her view of the 2020 election. The fact that she so easily dismisses the concerns of her opponents makes her suspect as a leader. In her book she often speaks of empathy, but she has no empathy for citizens who have sincere concerns but who don’t share her views.
She’s focused and she’s willing to fight … but apparently only for citizens who share her ideology.
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