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 …
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 …
Read Part 2 -- "Only Humans" here. It is February of 2006. I'm living in Juneau, Alaska – and I sit in anxious anticipation of the conversation that I'm about to have with Earl, my friend and pastor of the last few years. He's currently on the phone in the other room, and our chat …
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 …
Forgive me if the tone of this particular meditation. But you see -- I'm angry. In a speech delivered on today -- April 1, 2022 (the timing of which shouldn't be lost on anyone), Pope Francis finally got around to apologizing for the Catholic Church’s participation in Canada’s long and tumultuous residential school system, which …
Continue reading Exvangelical Meditation: “For Those Members.”
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
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
Surviving the Spirit 