Straight Deconstruction: My Escape from Evangelical Homophobia. Part 5 – “The Church of Denunciation”
Read Part Four — “An Exiled Christian and a Genderqueer Walk Into a Bar” here. It is 2010. I am 29 years old and living in Mount Vernon, Washington where, for the last eighteen months or so, I’ve been working through my shit with gloriously backbreaking manual labor on a farm.And I think I’m falling…
Straight Deconstruction: My Escape from Evangelical Homophobia. Part 4 – “An Exiled Christian and a Genderqueer Walk Into a Bar”
Read Part 3 — “Qualm of Conscience” here. It is a chilly night in Auke Bay, Alaska – December of 2007. Chance and I are staying toasty by the electric fire stove, the shadows of which dance all about this wide space around us filled with rows of books, exotic plants I’m responsible for watering,…
Straight Deconstruction: My Escape from Evangelical Homophobia. Part 3 – “Qualm of Conscience”
Read Part 2 — “Only Humans” here. It is February of 2006. I’m living in Juneau, Alaska – and I sit in anxious anticipation of the conversation that I’m about to have with Earl, my friend and pastor of the last few years. He’s currently on the phone in the other room, and our chat…
Straight Deconstruction: My Escape from Evangelical Homophobia. Part 2 – “Only Humans”
Read Part 1 — “Sea of Sin” here. It is fall of 1998. We’ve moved again – we do that quite a bit in my family, due to Dad’s music minister job. I’m not sure if it is the nature of all ministers to move their family around so much, or if it is just…
Straight Deconstruction: My Escape from Evangelical Homophobia. Part 1 – “Sea of Sin”
It is 1994, and I am thirteen years old. My family is living in Mill Valley, California, where my father is attending Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. It’s an island of conservative evangelicalism surrounded by a sea of sin. San Francisco is just across the bridge, and we are very careful when we venture out…
My Story: What God and the Pope Talk About – A Tale of Broken Rules
I worked in various teenage residential treatment facilities for many years, under many different titles – case manager, behavioral health associate, mental health technician, residential counselor, etc. I never really cared what my handle was – I was there to be an advocate for kids who were in these facilities primarily because they hadn’t had…
My Story: The Ones We Worship – Processing My Childhood as a Preacher’s Kid, and the Greatest Lesson My Father Ever Taught Me
As a preacher’s kid, we are instructed that our first order of business is to worship and devote our lives completely to God. When you are very young, being told to worship God is, admittedly, an abstract idea. It’s like being shown a picture of George Lucas and having it explained to you that this…
My Story: The Vanishing Act – A Tale of an Exvangelical’s Monster
“If I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice.” – The Joker It’s taken me a long, long journey into healing and a brave, unexpected confession from someone dear to me to realize that it is time to tell this particular chapter in my story. Because it is not just…
My Story: When God is Love – The Tale of an Abusive Parent and the Kid Who Kept Me Safe
I have worked with young children for far too long to not learn from their example and sometimes stand in awe of the wisdom found in their innocence. By observing them, I’ve come to some conclusions about the way humans work. I believe that people are inherently born with a sense of not only self-worth,…
My Story: God’s Strange Love; Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tribulation – An Exvangelical’s Tale of Childhood Religious Trauma
I feel compelled to make clear that what follows is a personal story about Religious Trauma Syndrome in action. It crescendos with a 15-year old me in a fetal position, rocking back and forth under a tree as I sob for God’s mercy. It is an epic night for a anxiety attack: The winds howl…
My Story: “Keep My Sister Safe” – A Tale of an Exvangelical’s Prayer
It has never been easy for me to define family. I find this to be a common struggle among exvangelicals, not least of all because those in the evangelical community with whom we share DNA often simply cannot understand the reasons that we have decided to walk away from this path. For so many in…
My Story: The Tiger-Eyed Kid – An Exvangelical’s Tale of Amazing Grace
Some of my favorite people are evangelicals. Unless they are using their authority and influence to actively take advantage of others, I’m really not angry at the folks in the pews at all. I’ve learned that the primary difference between evangelicals and exvangelicals is that the latter have simply realized that we are all victims.…
My Story: Walking Away is Only the Beginning – A Tale of that Time I Accidentally Joined a Micro-Cult
After walking away from a childhood faith that taught me that it holds the absolute Truth (about God, life, the universe, your eternal soul, and everything else), transitioning out took more than simply walking away from it all. It required a complete deconstruction of the way that I was taught to think – all things…
My Story: A Dream of a Million Feathers – A Tale of A Repentant Abuser
In 2018 — 12 years after walking away from the church — I finally went to therapy and confronted what I came to understand was trauma I still carried from my religious upbringing. The more I realized that I still carried so much trauma within myself, the more I knew that I needed to confront…
Surviving the Spirit 