In 2010 Audrey Assad released a worship album entitled “The House You’re Building.” At the time, she was a gospel singer gaining in popularity among evangelical audiences. I purchased the album and very much enjoyed it. One of my favorite songs on the disc is “Restless.” “I know You’re more than my salvation,” Assad sings, “Without You I am hopeless.” And then the chorus:
I’m restless, so restless
‘Til I rest in You, ’til I rest in You
Oh God, I will rest in You
It’s a beautiful song. Yet sadly, over the last decade, Assad’s “restlessness” appears to have gotten the best of her.
In early April of 2021, the artist tweeted that her current spiritual pilgrimage has taken her into experimentation with hallucinogenic drugs. In that thread, she writes that “psychedelic mushrooms” helped her meet “the Divine Love that undergirds this universe.” She’s thankful that “plants have helped [her] get there” and is bothered that “these ‘beings’ are ‘illegal.'”
Assad is just one of many evangelicals who have re-examined their faith only to abandon many of the shared theological orthodoxies that have historically defined the parameters of Christianity.
The contemporary term for the process behind such spiritual migration is “deconstruction.” In Assad’s case, deconstructing the Fundamentalism of her childhood led to her conversion to Catholicism (in 2007), which she soon abandoned, surrendering to nihilism (which she talks about HERE). Assad eventually admitted, “I don’t know if I believe in God if I’m honest. I don’t know if I believe in meaning.”
Within a decade, Assad went from proclaiming her need to “rest” in God to ingesting hallucinogenics in hopes of encountering Something like Him.
Like many of those who begin deconstructing their faith, Audrey Assad has ended up in a bad place. She might not believe it’s a “bad place.” Indeed, much of what I will henceforth describe as a “spiritual wasteland” some will view as an oasis. But as someone who has found existential solace in that “anchor” of hope Who is Christ (Heb. 6:13) and also experimented with psychedelics and religious exploration before becoming a Christian, I can testify to the spiritual darkness such searches like Assad’s inevitably tap. Frankly, it’s hard to imagine that abandoning Christianity for a world without God or meaning is an actual upgrade. But such are the trade-offs for ex-evangelicals.
Ex-evangelicals (or exvangelicals, as they are often called) tend to share many common traits. For those seeking freedom from religious uniformity, exvangelicals are an unusually homogenous bunch. For one, they are predominantly of the Millennial or Generation Z demographic (born 1981 – early 2000s). Raised mostly by evangelical Baby Boomers, this group has not completely abandoned religion but is reconstructing their faith so as to distance themselves from the perceived fundamentalism of their parents. Not coincidentally, the newly “reconstructed” faith of the ex-evangelical is mostly to the ideological Left of their starting point. In some ways, this could be a simple extension of the “progressive values” they already embrace. Nevertheless, the “transition” that results from said “deconstruction” is almost always a radical event. And typically takes familiar form.
For example, this podcast features 11 evangelicals who describe why they left their faith. The answers are varied, but similar. Like Brady Hardin, 32, podcast host of The Life After, who said, “I consider myself an atheist now because I can’t logically look at anything in the Bible, and say, ‘Oh, that’s worth me believing.’ Literal interpretation of Hell is just so outrageous.” Or Steena Marie Brown, a sexual embodiment coach, who “started asking questions that fell outside of the bounds of evangelicalism. Intuition and psychic gifts and trying to make sense of my experiences of God in that realm, things started to blur, and people couldn’t understand me or couldn’t handle my exploration.” The rejection of political conservatism is the default for most exvangelicals. Blake Chastain, host of #Exvangelical podcast, said, “Engaging with my faith was making me more politically and socially liberal. I rejected evangelical Christian conservatism and the default Republican stances.” LGBTQ-affirmation is another common thread binding exvangelicals. For example, Emily Joy now attends a “very gay Episcopalian congregation” while Brady Hardin’s faith deconstruction led him to coming out as homosexual.
Of the reasons cited for why millennials are leaving the evangelical church, the most common is political differences with the status quo.
According to a 2014 Pew Research Center study… 45 percent of millennial evangelicals support same-sex marriage (compared to 23 percent of previous generations); 51 percent (versus 32 percent) believe society should accept homosexuality; 41 percent (versus 27 percent) favor stronger government involvement in providing services; and 45 percent (versus 36 percent) think aid to the poor does more good than harm.
So in many ways, the ex-evangelical movement is only peripherally religious, more similar to a political realignment with Millennial Christians moving from the traditional conservatism of their parents to progressivism. Ironically, exvangelicals bring a religious fervor to their newfound political alignments.
In The Rise of #Exvangelical, Bradley Onishi, himself a former pastor and exvangelical, chronicles the movement:
Recently, those who have left evangelicalism have begun organizing themselves online under the hashtag #exvangelical. Spurred on by white evangelical support for Donald Trump, the #exvangelical movement is providing the type of group I, and so many other ex-evangelicals, longed for during our deconversion process: a welcoming community that helps the disenchanted work through the process of deconversion.
More importantly, Onishi notes the ideological machanations behind #exvangelicalism:
“#exvangelical isn’t just a support network. It’s an activist movement full of individuals trying to reshape the political and moral narrative surrounding evangelicalism by subverting its claims to moral and patriotic authority.” (bold, mine)
So for many ex-evangelicals, their spiritual journey is not just about interrogating their own faith, but joining an “activist movement” whose mission is to “reshape the political and moral narrative surrounding evangelicalism by subverting its claims to moral… authority.” This is a fascinating admission inasmuch as it highlights the ideological roots from which the impulse to “deconstruct” one’s faith often spring.
“#exvangelical isn’t just a support network. It’s an activist movement full of individuals trying to reshape the political and moral narrative surrounding evangelicalism by subverting its claims to moral and patriotic authority.”
Yet the real casualty here is not ex-evangelicals’ political affiliations, but the unorthodox and often anti-biblical assumptions this movement appeals to. Whereas evangelicalism is tethered to certain “fundamentals of the faith,” exvangelicalism is a free-for-all of religious gobbledygook, a wasteland of atheism, occultism, immorality, and heresy.
For example, a significant number of exvangelicals have become atheists or agnostics. Like Assad, former Christian musician David Bazan is now an agnostic. Mike McHargue, better known on the debate circuit as “Science Mike,” tells a similar story of deconstruction. He now believes “it is possible to be both an agnostic and an atheist.” Bart Campolo, son of famous Christian teacher Tony Campolo, left his faith to become an atheist and “secular humanist.” Interestingly enough, Campolo admitted that Progressive Christians ALWAYS become atheists. Popular YouTube comedy duo Rhett and Link “both said they are no longer Christian with Rhett saying he would call himself ‘a hopeful agnostic’ and Link saying he would call himself ‘an agnostic who wants to be hopeful’.” Ojo Taylor went from Christian Punk Rocker to Agnostic Professor. In the world of #exvangelicals, deconstruction often leads to deconversion.
Religious synthesis and spiritual DIY-ism is another feature of ex-evangelical belief. Take former worship leader Michael Gungor who, after his deconstruction, now identifies himself as an “Apophatic mystic Hindu pantheist Christian Buddhist skeptic with a penchant for nihilistic progressive existentialism.” This kind of religious patchwork blankets the exvangelical landscape. For example, Micah Murray blogged about the deconstruction of his faith in real-time before eventually chucking it. Now, Murray describes his beliefs this way: “I am a believer convinced of nothing. I am agnostic who doubts my own unbelief. We are fleeting flesh-organisms on a fleck of dirt in an infinite universe that is mostly cold and dark. Maybe God loves us very much. Maybe God doesn’t exist and we make all of this up so that we can get through one more meaningless spiral around our dying star. If there is a God out there at all, any energy force or divine spark or current of Love at the heart of the universe, I want to find it. ” Despite Murray’s existential unsurety, he provides deconstruction coaching for those similarly in process. Then there’s Rose Rosetree, another ex-evangelical, who now appeals to others like herself who’ve left the Church, but are still seeking to fill that spiritual void. Rosetree offers classes in something called Energy Spirituality, which correlates to a “planetary shift” that occurred in 2012, launching us into an Age of Awakening. Using “innovative systems at the leading edge of mind-body-spirit,” she employs “aura reading,” something called “Psychic Coercion Removal,” “Soul Energy Awakening Hypnosis (a form of past-life regression),” and “Vibrational Re-Positioning.” Sadly, many exvangelicals have swapped their faith for a convoluted, self-styled mishmash of religious ephemera… and can coach you to do the same.
Tied closely to this is a denial or diminishment of the authority of Scripture. Tragically, Rachel Held Evans’ last book, published posthumously after her untimely death, focuses on the authority (or lack thereof) of Scripture. Evans was one of the early adopters of today’s exvangelical trend. In her book, she wrestles with stories of genocide, rape, and slavery in Scripture by concluding it’s a very man-made book. She writes, “What business do I have describing as ‘inerrant’ and ‘infallible’ a text that presumes a flat and stationary earth, takes slavery for granted, and presupposes patriarchal norms like polygamy?” Evans’ reduction of Scripture is shared by most post-evangelicals. The Red Letter Christians movement is over a decade old. Tony Campolo and Shane Claiborne came up with the idea in 2007. According to the “values” section under the “What is RLC?” tab, “the words of Jesus are authoritative and they provide the lens through which we understand the Bible.” In other words, Red Letter Christians position all of Scripture against the words of Christ. If what Paul or John or Moses taught appears to contradict Jesus, we are to side with the words in red. This, of course, has led to much debate about what Jesus actually said. Likewise, many exvangelicals assume a “pick and choose” posture to Scripture. This often takes the form of denying miracles. I learned this years ago in a brief exchange with Jay Bakker on Twitter in which the pastor denied that Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale and that Jesus actually walked on water. Some progressives employ this as an hermeneutical strategy, saying “Anything in the Bible that looks miraculous or contrary to the normal functions of the natural world is not factual, but rather is mythological.” Blake Chastain admits that it was in “biblical literature” courses in a Christian college that he began “questioning whether the Bible was inerrant.” This subversion of biblical authority — replaced typically by one’s individual interpretation — is status quo for ex-evangelicals. By under-cutting the authority of Scripture, many ex-evangelicals are free to construct a belief system of their own choosing.
LGBTQ-affirmation is another foundational creed for ex-evangelicals. Jay Bakker, who abandoned his fundamentalist evangelical roots for progressivism, is now a vocal advocate for LGBTQ-inclusion in the Church. Joshua Harris, author of the book “I Kissed Dating Goodbye,” famously divorced his wife and announced that he was leaving Christianity. In a post at Instagram, Harris announced, “I have undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus. The popular phrase for this is ‘deconstruction,’ the biblical phrase is ‘falling away.’ By all the measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian. Many people tell me that there is a different way to practice faith and I want to remain open to this, but I’m not there now.??” Shortly after this announcement, Harris tweeted from a LGBTQ Pride Parade in Vancouver. In 2016, popular evangelical women’s leader Jen Hatmaker announced that she now affirmed same-sex marriage, even referring to them as “holy.” Four years later she would announce that her daughter is gay. Such transitions — from affirming LGBTQ to identifying as LGBTQ — is not uncommon. For example, Christian children’s author Matthew Paul Turner recently announced that he was divorcing his wife of 16 years and coming out as gay. After “unlearning everything she was taught about family, gender, sex, love, motherhood, God, and Christianity,” popular Christian mommy blogger Glennon Doyle divorced her husband of 14 years and declared herself in love with another woman. Emily Joy is described as another influential voice in the exvangelical campaign. Her recently released book ChurchToo chronicles incidents of sexual abuse and mysogynism in evangelical churches. Following her faith deconstruction, Joy also came out as a lesbian. Chrissy Stroop is also considered one of the early leaders in the #exvangelical movement. Before her deconstruction, she was called Chris Stoop and identified as a biological male. She has been called the #exvangelical movement’s “prophetic voice.” LGBTQ affirmation, inclusion, and/or identification is often central to the exvangelicals’ new profession of faith.
As if that weren’t enough, another thread woven through the exvangelical web is its drift towards occultism. For example, Kevin Garcia wrote the book “Bad Theology Kills,” which one reviewer described as the author “guid[ing] their readers through the process of creating a life-giving theology of their own.” In this podcast, Garcia is favorably described as a “digital pastor,” a “queer theologian,” a “witch,” a “tarot card reader,” an “intuitive soul coach,” and identified by the pronouns “they/their”. As you can guess, the “bad theology” that Garcia describes is, basically, historic Christianity. Tarot cards seem to be a thing with ex-evangelicals, Like MJ Corkern whose Twitter bio describes her as both a “Tarot Reader. ExEvangelical.”
“…progressive millennials have appropriated the rhetoric, imagery, and rituals of what was once called the ‘New Age’—from astrology to witchcraft—as both a political and spiritual statement of identity.”
In her essay “The Rise of Progressive Occultism,” Tara Isabella Burton concludes that “…progressive millennials have appropriated the rhetoric, imagery, and rituals of what was once called the ‘New Age’—from astrology to witchcraft—as both a political and spiritual statement of identity.” Burton writes,
Progressive occultism—the language of witches and demons, of spells and sage, of cleansing and bad energy, of star and signs—has become the de facto religion of millennial progressives: the metaphysical symbol set threaded through the worldly ethos of modern social justice activism. Its rise parallels the rise of the religious ‘nones,’ and with them a model of spiritual and religious practice that’s at once intuitional and atomized. Twenty-three percent of Americans call themselves religiously unaffiliated, a number that spikes to 36 percent among millennials (Trump’s white evangelical base, by contrast, only comprises about 17 percent of Americans). But tellingly, few among this demographic identify as atheists or agnostics. A full 72 percent of “nones” say they believe in God, or at least some kind of nebulously defined Higher Power; 17 percent say they believe in the Judeo-Christian God of the Bible. Suspicious of institutions, authorities, and creeds, this demographic is less likely to attend a house of worship, but more likely to practice the phenomenon Harvard Divinity School researchers Casper ter Kuile and Angie Thurston have termed ‘unbundling’: a willingness to effectively ‘mix and match’ spiritual, ritualistic, and religious practices from a range of traditions, divorced from their original institutional context.
This “mixing and matching” of spiritual practices includes everything from practicing Buddhist meditation, to reading Tarot cards, to cleansing one’s apartment with sage, to attending Shabbat dinners.
In her article in The Atlantic on the growing trend of “black witchcraft,” Sigal Samuel notes, “Young black women are leaving Christianity and embracing African witchcraft in digital covens.” She writes about what some consider a possible synthesis of Christianity and witchcraft:
While some witches told me they were finished with Christianity, others said they still attend church, and argued that Christianity and African witchcraft are complementary, not mutually exclusive. As Omitola put it, “The Bible ain’t nothing but a big old spell book.”
Jeanna Kadlec divorced her husband and broke from evangelicalism at the age of 25. “In Brooklyn, she discovered tarot, astrology, and witchcraft, with it a world of queer women who also wanted to practice spirituality in a new way and enjoy the freedom of making decisions for themselves.” One exvangelical has even published “An Introduction to Witchcraft for Exvangelicals.” The author describes the book as, “An easy-to-read, relatable book about deconstructing fears around witchcraft for former Christians who want to learn introductory rituals and magical concepts.”
Of course, not all who leave evangelicalism end up as atheists, religious progressives, or occultists. Nevertheless, by denying the authority of Scripture, its core creeds and tenets, and the testimony and traditions of the early Church, many former evangelicals untether themselves from theological mooring, leaving them adrift on the ebb of the age. The inevitable shipwreck is evidenced in lost faith, broken families, nihilism, despair, drug use, gender dysphoria, pagan beliefs, and even witchcraft.
It is not a coincidence that those who embark on the deconstruction of their faith often end up in a spiritual wasteland.
But perhaps the greatest irony of the ex-evangelical movement is its militancy. Many who have left evangelicalism because of its fundamentalist rigidity and fervor end up espousing contrary beliefs with equal fundamentalist zeal. They have swapped their former evangelical dogmas for more progressive ones. Rather than Scripture being the locus of authority, the ex-evangelical deifies the will, making personal experience, personal choice, and personal preference the most sacred of all energies. Their new creeds may not be as prohibitive as their former, but they are enforced with equal piety. Their new enemies are no longer the “libs,” the godless, or reprobate, but those who dare to teach traditional sexual morality and Original Sin. The exvangelical simply replaces the world, the flesh, and the devil with the GOP, FOX News, and Young Earth Creationism as the real axis of evil.
Please do not understand this piece as an attack on the spiritual seeker. I sympathize with those who wrestle with their faith. In fact, I’ve chronicled my own “unconventional pilgrimage” within evangelical culture — a journey that led to my leaving the pastorate and rethinking my religious beliefs — in my memoir “discipl-ish.” I’ve experienced both the good and the bad of evangelicalism. Trust me. But one thing I can confirm — as Augustine famously said, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.” In this, Audrey Assad was correct when she said, We are “restless… until we rest in God.”
Heartbreaking. Well researched, Mike. Thank you for writing this. Gutsy.
Great article, Mike. I find that the common difference between the seeker and the deconstructionist is that the seeker is looking for answers, while the deconstructionist wishes to be rid of them, often after finding an answer he just doesn’t want to hear. So the very concept of a concrete, definite answer, a universal truth, is anathema to the religion of exvangelicalism. They see this principle as freedom, but I only see them walking into the enemy’s cage of confusion, bondage to emotion, and the hurt that always comes with miscommunication.
I’m not one for conspiracy (just kidding…I am), but I’m wondering if these evangelical superstars eventually hit a ceiling in their career, and certain gatekeepers don’t let them rise any higher unless certain “agreements” are made. It can’t be a total coincidence that these people have suddenly have a change of heart because of their mid-tier fame.
How many of them “rose any higher” after their deconstruction? For most of the ones named, especially the musicians, leaving the faith was setting their careers on fire, alienating the large evangelical subculture for the much, much smaller “exvangelical” audience. Nobody sold their souls for that.
Almost entirely missing from this article is any sense of responsibility on the part of the (White) Evangelical churches. There is no remorse for Evangelicals’ undying support for a president who couldn’t stop lying (35,000 times). It is to be expected that fundamentalists continue to be fundamentalists when they reject their initial fundamentals. That’s quite human. We should be paying a great deal more attention to why they are rejecting their roots. They have been given more reasons than I dare to count. They may have chosen one wasteland over another.
There’s such a thing as over-correction when it comes to alleged evangelical abuses. The person who has been abused in an evangelical church has reasonable cause to be suspicious of evangelicals. However, rejecting God, the Bible, Christ, or traditional sexual mores because of said abuse is over-reach. Many rejected Christ because of something He said or did. Does that implicate Him as an abuser? Likewise, some people are leaving evangelism simply because they don’t agree with its essential message. It’s not so much that the Church doesn’t have good answers, but that they don’t like the answers being given! The large percentage of #exvangelicals who embrace LGBTQ inclusion is proof of that. Evangelicals can hardly be blamed for holding to a biblical position that the church (and most human societies) have held to for centuries. Also, I’d add that much of the critique against evangelicalism is conflated. This isn’t to diminish legitimate cases of abuse, but to say that there is an entire industry now intent on slandering evangelicals. Which is one of the reasons why I did not reference the alleged causes for exvangelical migration — the charges are greatly inflated and the “cure” (apostacy, atheism, occultism, etc.) is far worse than the perceived disease.
Fascinating article. Thank you. I left Evangelicalism about 20 years ago but journeyed “tradition-wards” to Eastern Orthodoxy. I found everything I was looking for: solid theology beyond my intellectual capabilities, rich tradition and liturgical worship, and path that I could walk that would help keep me sane.
Paul Kingsnorth, the author, recently wrote about his conversion to Orthodoxy in First Things. It’s a great story: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2021/06/the-cross-and-the-machine
Thanks for this. I’m quite interested in those who have deconstructed their faith and moved deeper into orthodoxy, as this seems atypical for the movement.
I think you’d be very interested in reading Scott Hahn and Bradley Jersak. Many of us who have experienced a deconstruction of Evangelicalism end up in either the Catholic or Orthodox church.
“It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen[c] away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.” – Hebrews 6.4-6 (NIV)
Article well done. Automnomy of freedom is what got humanity in trouble in the first place. There is no freedom apart from God. It seems the artist is following Kirkegaard’ “authenticating themselves by an act of the will”. It is sad state.
The only thing in your post that I will contest is the inclusion of Shabbat dinners in a paragraph that discusses occultic practices that these exvangelicals are embracing (unless there is an occultic dinner with the same name as a Jewish Shabbat dinner that I’m totally ignorant about?). There are many in the faith that are returning to a more Jewish context in which to worship their Messiah. These areas include observing a Friday night to Saturday night Shabbat, Shabbat dinners, observances of the biblical festivals, and embracing the Hebrew Bible as part of inerrant Scripture when many pastors are telling us that it is no longer valid or worthy of consideration, and we should only read and adhere to the New Testament. As a Messianic believer, I am thrilled to be able to embrace a faith that is inclusive of my Jewish heritage and my Messiah without feeling like I have to choose one or the other. However, in no way is this a progressive deconstruction of the Christian faith. If anything, Messianics and those who join these churches or Messianic synagogues are more orthodox than ever.
Other than that, I agree with your post 100%. This whole deconstruction thing is either a) a sign of the times, b) the result of a Church that has lost its way and is casting off orthodoxy altogether, or c) a combination of A and B. The number of people leaving the faith and trying to construct a god that better fits their own wants and desires and have essentially elevated self above the Creator is heartbreaking and concerning. It’s in this type of vacuum where tyrannies and despots arise.
Exvan Fundie with eschatological interest here . This article is typical blame those who are fed up with the liars, grifters, con men, hustlers, false prophets, heretics, Trumpers, NARS and domionist etc, The falling away may well have started with the reformation and all manner of false teachers Calvinism etc. The bible warns us about the times we live in ,take care that no man deceives you when you trash every Godly princible from the pulpit true believers will leave. This is a Laodecean age there is nothing left but judgement and it will start in the white evangelical church!!! American christianity is a farce Jesus said he will spit you out. Repentance must start with the apostate church or He will say I never knew you. I pray for those of us that have left it all behind as we sort out the lies and seek Jesus as he wants us to follow him and not the mess that is evangelical apostacy. EVEN SO COME LORD JESUS
I appreciate the tone of this article even if I don’t agree with the substance. As someone who grew up in the Southern Baptist tradition and has slowly, agonizingly been working my faith out with a LOT of “fear and trembling” I take issue with the assumption that most exvangelicals’ completely throw out the inerrancy of the Holy scriptures. Through many conversations and in my own experience, it’s not a matter of not believing in the authority of the scriptures but rather questioning WHOSE authority has been shoved down our throats our entire lives. The American church is in crisis because it has practiced the religion of whiteness-not Christianity. The lense through which all evangelical doctrine is seen is one that assumes the superior interpretation of scripture is made by white, heterosexual men. The same people who have always had all the power. If that was working and producing much fruit in the world then YAY! But it’s not. Earnest seekers are looking around at the absolute wreckage that is the current state of the American church and we see fear that leads to a dangerous “othering” of all those who don’t conform to a narrow interpretation of who God is. They see the marriage of the church to worldly power rather than the humble serving of those in love and trusting that GOD is their provider, not an earthly king. We see that time and time again, the focus is set on being In Control of the narrative of what is right and wrong. This is ironic because that same subset completely ignores, and gets incredibly defensive when confronted by the cries of huge swaths of people who have ACTUALLY been harmed and persecuted for centuries. This unwillingness to repent of historical sins and the ways certain groups of people still benefit from the outcomes of those sins, will be the church’s undoing. We look at Jesus , who came as the great reconciler, and don’t see anything close to true reconciliation. We see a sweeping under the rug of all the ugliness of the past and present. Those are the truths that I hold as authoritative, that Jesus stood with the marginalized, not those with wordly power. Jesus loved his enemies rather than giving in to paranoia. I don’t see that Jesus in the majority of evangelical culture. I chuckled at the assumption that it’s exvangelicals that are mostly responsible for cherry picking scripture. I think you and I can both agree that every human being on earth does that, and evangelicals are famous for it. I can’t speak for anyone but myself but even though it’s scarier and more confusing, being able to humbly say what I believe but holding it in tension with the fact that I could be wrong, has been the most healing thing for me. As someone whose spiritual doubt has often led to actual suicidal ideations bc I couldn’t reconcile what I was told I MUST believe in order to be accepted, all the while knowing I couldn’t MAKE myself believe something, the freedom of trusting that God’s grace is enough for the unknowing, has literally saved my life.
Where I absolutely agree is that exvangelicals can be just as militant in the unbelieving/unraveling. That shouldn’t be surprising. It’s human nature to be tribal. That doesn’t make it right though. We have to come to the table, both “sides” and admit that not a single one of us fallible humans has the last say about the mysterious nature of God. Jesus seems to have given us a precious glimpse though. And he seemed the most concerned about loving others more than right belief.
Thank you for your thoughts and gentle posture.
Oh Karen, thank you so much for these words- I think I would say that I have the same understanding. I’ve felt so confused- I don’t want to lose my faith and I can’t imagine walking away from delighting in Jesus. But white evangelicalism has some serious skeletons in the closet and I’ve been wrestling with my view of the American Church. I’m so glad that your suicidal ideations have been healed, sister. Praise God! Happy Easter! Jesus is RISEN.
I was the promoter of an Audrey Assad concert here in Marshall, Michigan. Her booking agent also booked shows in the Detroit area at a church and Grand Rapids at a youth center at the relative same time. Those shows got canceled for lack of sales and the $1500.00 booking fee was not refunded. I bought $1500.00 worth of tickets for my show and gave them away. So Audrey Assad was out there ripping off churches and children and wondering why she can’t handle being Catholic any more. Try going to confession and admitting to your sin. Instead she makes the Church wrong. What a bunch of crap.
Found this article while learning more about Audrey Assad. I come across Christians still promoting her music, but I knew about her walk away from the faith, so I was confused by the lack of discussion or awareness.
I have peers who became exvangelicals. For one, it was Rob Bell’s book “Love Wins” that led to his gradual deconversion. It is fairly predictable.Usually it begins with arrogance and perhaps some bad experiences in the Church. And from there it removes everything brick by brick until the foundation Himself is removed and they have nothing left but a ground littered with lies and self-indulgence and brokeness. It is not deconstruction, but destruction – of themselves, not the Church.
I think there is nothing wrong with Christians educating themselves about other religious ideas or alternative teachings. Actually, we ought to do so. However, some are not ready for this, either because they have no solid theological grounding or because they are not yet Christians at all.
Another former evangelical Christian here who migrated into the Orthodox Church 25 years ago. I’ve always been deeply grateful for my Protestant years, but I came to believe in a more ancient way. I didn’t leave evangelicalism because I lost my faith; on the contrary, I wanted to deepen it. My journey isn’t as unusual as you might think.
That said, I’ve watched all too many Christians recently — from throughout Christendom, not just evangelicalism (though primarily from there) — become unmoored in exactly the ways you list here. Many are people I would never have imagined would lose their way and become so caught up by the spirit of our age. It’s heartbreaking. And sobering. Lord have mercy on us.
I too left the Evangelicalism I was raised with, which I suppose makes me technically “Exvangelical,” though I was not identifying as Evangelical by 2013 at the latest, and Exvangelicalism wasn’t really coined and much of a movement till 3 years later.
My initial departure from Evangelicalism was into some sort of denominational agnosticism, “mere Christianity” mostly defined by an opposition to Evangelicalism more than anything. I was never pro LGBT or abortion, but I was an Evolutionist, more libertarianish on those social issues. As for biblical interpretation, I was not sure. I identified as post modern Christian and in denominational limbo at this stage. However for me my post modern deconstruction was pointed at human narratives rather than divine revelation.
Eventually by the Grace of God I was led to the Church He established, the Orthodox Church. The portion I had joined actually fit with these sorts of views I acquired in my time between Evangelicalism and Orthodoxy. However, with time I came to see that, when one deepens their grounding in the Orthodox faith, these sorts of opinions are incompatible on a deeper level.
At this point I am so “far gone” that I would probably be thought of as too far on the right by usual Evangelical standards. But I also appreciate Evangelicalism more than when I was at the more shallow beginning stages of joining the Church. And in this Exvangelical movement arising particularly with Trump, I see mostly a dangerous obsession of this-world concerns over the one thing needful. And indeed, in perfect parallel to this, an Exorthodox movement, albeit smaller given our fewer numbers in the west, sprang up the very year of the Ukrainian invasion, again showing a fanatical obsession with politics over Christ.
I appreciate not just some values of Evangelicalism, but even more their more extreme cousins, the Independent Fundamentalist Baptists. I have found that much of what they say concerning culture and its externals is right, although I appreciate the Church’s patience and less categorical, demanding approach to those in the world. And absolutely crucially, after condemning the things, the media and so on, of the world, rather than providing no alternative (IFBs) or a campy, cringy similcrum of the world (Evangelicalism), it provides such beauty that the things of the world appear a shallow similcrum of them.
But IFBs especially and also to an extent normal Evangelicals do grasp many of the problems of this world, and I was instilled with that from an early age. The solutions leave something to be desired, and their analysis is lacking, but there is something that should be appreciated in that. Oftentimes I see that those that leave Evangelicalism for Orthodoxy in bitterness to their past, either in turn become apostates or else they join those antichrist revisionists seeking to conform the Church to their liking.
So indeed, I see a problem with Exvangelicalism, and it is really difficult for me to identify at all with the label, even though I technically fall under it, as the spirit behind it is anti Christian.