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 …
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 …
Continue reading Dispatches: “Religious Trauma is Trauma” by Andrew Pledger
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 …
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 …
It may have been the Church that taught me the necessity of accepting Jesus as my Personal Lord and Savior, but it was a movie that introduced me to Him. I started really paying attention to movies the same time that I learned to read. Before, they were just background noise – like how words …
One of the questions I often get asked when in dialogue with evangelicals who have found out that I've left the faith is, what do I now use as a standard for truth in my life now that I no longer believe in the Bible? This question usually comes from a very sincere place that …
Continue reading Exvangelical Meditation: My Internal Compass
“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” —Sinclair Lewis A Christian Fascist country disguised as freedom and democracy has always been the Moral Majority's plan, and their greatest asset is that the public believes that evangelicals are such buffoons that we don't need to take them …
Continue reading Dispatches: “In a Christian Nation State” – A Plea from Texas
Just for purposes of complete transparency, there are a few irrefutable facts that really aren't up for debate in my exvangelical essays. We can move forward with the confidence that they are so obvious that they are assumed. Here are a few examples: The Earth is round, Nazis are bad, vaccinations save lives, and the …
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 …
Continue reading My Story: What God and the Pope Talk About – A Tale of Broken Rules
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 …
Surviving the Spirit 