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 …
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 …
Continue reading Dispatches: Making the Safe Place by Royce Snyder
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 3 — “Qualm of Conscience” here. It is a chilly night in Auke Bay, Alaska – December of 2007. Chance and I are staying toasty by the electric fire stove, the shadows of which dance all about this wide space around us filled with rows of books, exotic plants I'm responsible for watering, …
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've found many wonderful anthems for my deconstruction – from artists who were once part of the evangelical crowd and now have the courage to ask questions publicly (Kevin Max, Derek Webb), to artists who clearly grew up in the Church as seek to find meaning in its symbolism while breaking free of its confines …
Continue reading Exvangelical Meditation: “Plowshare Prayer”
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