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 …
Continue reading Dispatches: Cognitive Dissonance in Cattle Country
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 …
"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 …
Continue reading Exvangelical Meditation: Global Center for Religious Research
For many of us in the exvangelical and deconstruction communities, navigating the holidays can be a very tricky and even triggering time. Even though it is considered to be a season in which we are expected to be giving off the perpetually positive vibes of holiday cheer – “peace on Earth, good will toward men,” …
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 …
To My Readers Who Are Fellow Exvangelicals: On Sunday, September 12, 2021, one of our forefathers passed – Episcopalian Bishop John Shelby Spong. He was a ripe old age, as the Old Testament would say, having turned 90 in June. When I call him a forefather, I mean that he was a pioneer of our …
Continue reading My Deconstruction Heroes: John Shelby Spong
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 …
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
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 …
Surviving the Spirit 