This is a guest article written by my friend and fellow exvangelical Shana Nielsen, who currently lives in Texas and is witness to the appalling attack happening right now on women's reproductive rights in that state. Shana's insightful story links these current events with a manipulative scare tactic that happened to her during a childhood …
Continue reading Dispatches: Under Attack –Evangelical Christianity’s Reverse Victimhood
Earlier this year, a poet friend of mine and I had a conversation about returning to normalcy after the chaos of 2020 and beyond. It stirred some speculations on what "normality" looks like and how it is defined. I was in therapy at the time for work-related PTSD, which I was processing both in its own …
One of the most profound and delightful surprises since I started my public exvangelical exploration has been the opportunity to reconnect with family members whom I didn't realize had also deconstructed. When you live in an Evangelical vacuum that roots your family deeply into its traditions, it is often difficult to know who you can …
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 …
“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 …
Continue reading My Story: The Vanishing Act – A Tale of an Exvangelical’s Monster
The following is based on the parable Jesus tells in Luke 10: 25-37. Historical context has been added to provide readers with some perspective on this parable -- which, in its essence, is a story about religious deconstruction. ---- A man comes up to Jesus as he is preaching. He asks Jesus how to inherit …
Continue reading Exvangelical Meditation: The Good Samaritan — A Deconstructor’s Retelling
This is not the exvangelical musing that I intended to write this week. But let me tell you about a brief conversation that I overheard in the break room a few days ago, so you may understand why this particular topic was suddenly one that I simply couldn't resist. Seriously, it was basically handed to …
Continue reading Exvangelical Musings: Tree-Huggers for Christ – An Ecocritical Bible Study
Today's dispatch comes from my friend Shana Nielsen, who like me grew up in the Evangelical Church and is now walking a path in which she is processing her experiences within it and coming to recognize its theology and practices as emotional and spiritual abuse that we carry with us long after leaving. She has …
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, …
If you were an evangelical teenager in the 90s, you listened to DC Talk. They were the compass by which all Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) was measured. There are plenty of explanations for their surge to the very top of our greatest rock stars, but the primary reason was because they were more wickedly talented …
Surviving the Spirit 