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 …
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 …
As someone working through my own religious trauma, I have come to both comprehend and try to own the fact that both our bodies and our souls carry our history, often in ways we do not expect. Working through my trauma is therefore a lifelong process in which I am learning how to pay attention …
Continue reading Exvangelical Meditation: How Our Bodies Carry Our History
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 …
Continue reading My Story: “Keep My Sister Safe” – A Tale of an Exvangelical’s Prayer
"Signs of the Times" is a popular Evangelical phrase derived from a speech Jesus gives in Matthew 24 in which he foretells of "wars and rumors of war" as the way to know that the Kingdom of God is at hand. The chapter -- along with strange apocalyptic imagery in the Old Testament books of …
Continue reading Exvangelical Meditation: “The Signs of the Times”
You may be surprised to learn that many of my greatest exvangelical heroes are Christians. In fact, it was an evangelical whose writings walked me through the process by which the Moral Majority came into power – how Nixon dabbled in creating a voting base out of the religious right, and how Reagan ran with …
Growing up in the Southern Baptist Church was basically life in a bubble in which we pretended the world we created for ourselves was the only one truly worth living in for everyone. Sometimes, people would just leave and we'd hear they were “backsliding,” but it's okay – we were prepped in Sunday school and …
Continue reading Exvangelical Musings: How to Talk to an Evangelical When You are Deconstructing
Surviving the Spirit 