"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
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 …
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 