Exvangelical Meditation: A Path Forward

I wanted to give my readers an update: Writing has slowed down here at Surviving the Spirit, but it isn't because I'm taking a break. It's because I've been busy writing an exvangelical memoir, in which I rework much of what I've written here while both expanding existing content and writing entirely new material. With …

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Dispatches: Making the Safe Place by Royce Snyder

I met Royce when I was a college student at the University of Alaska, during the waning days of my evangelical journey. We had a few classes together, and his perceptive and uncouth contributions to our class discussions impressed me and made me chuckle in about equal proportion. For my undergrad thesis in 2006, I …

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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 …

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Exvangelical Meditation: The Courage to Question

Growing up as Christians, we were taught from childhood that our theology was the "Absolute Truth," and that it would never change not collapse under scrutiny. When doubts arose as they inevitably do, it was explained to us as God "testing us" or Satan "tempting us." This is framed in a way that suggests that …

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Dispatches: “Religious Trauma is Trauma” by Andrew Pledger

It is my pleasure to present a new voice in our Dispatches column.  Self-proclaimed "ex-fundie" Andrew Pledger reached out to me this week to see if I was interested in sharing his story at Surviving the Spirit; after reading his "testimony" (maybe it's time for exvangelicals to take that term back), I was deeply moved and knew …

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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, …

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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 …

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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 …

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Dispatches: Cognitive Dissonance in Cattle Country

Our courageous exvangelical warrior on the ground in Texas, Shana Nielsen, has graciously provided us an update about how life has been down there since signing their anti-trans bill into law. As I've stated before: This is the theocracy that the Moral Majority wants, and it is only going to continue to escalate as they …

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Exvangelical Meditation: Global Center for Religious Research

"The Global Center for Religious Research (GCRR) has established the world's first and most comprehensive psychiatric research group to study the causes, manifestations, and treatment options for those suffering from religious trauma (RT). GCRR has built a team of approximately 30 licensed psychiatrists, therapists, sociologists, university professors, religion scholars, and Ph.D. candidates from around the …

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