Dispatches: Deconstructing Santa Claus

This exvangelical deconstruction of Santa Claus comes courtesy of Baptist Accountabilty co-founder Megan South Benninger (read her story here). This fascinating exploration reminds me of the "deconstruction" essays I wrote for grad school in which I searched for the historical roots of Dracula and Frankenstein. Really fascinating stuff, to find the kernel of truth in …

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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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