In 'The Exvangelicals', Sarah McCammon tells the story of how she lost her religion

The term “ex-evangelical,” a reference to evangelicals disillusioned after Donald Trump captured 81% of the white evangelical vote in 2016, has always struck me as artificial and a little too cute. It's a variation (an inversion, I suppose) of Ronald Reagan's famous lament for not abandoning the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party abandoned him.

In “The Ex-Evangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church,” Sarah McCammon defines ex-evangelicals as individuals who (like her) were raised evangelicalism but who have come to “deconstruct” their faith due to “their disillusionment with Trumpism, anti-LGBT+ sentiment, racism, religious abuse, science skepticism, and a host of other concerns about white evangelical beliefs and culture.” Many were homeschooled or students of Christian schools. Some have abandoned the faith completely or have tried other expressions, such as Catholicism, mainline Protestantism, or Orthodox churches; others persist in their efforts to reform evangelicalism.

Although the author, NPR's national political correspondent, claims to tell “the stories of millions of Americans,” this book is actually an autobiography with a few cameos. Yet McCammon's story is compelling and well-told: a pampered childhood in the evangelical subculture, with schools and sermons preaching the Christian nationalism that is fueling so many culture wars now.

In “The Exvangelicals,” McCammon's evolution unfolds as a series of steps, chapter after chapter, on a descending ladder toward disillusionment.

It begins by questioning the conviction that only Christians (by which evangelicals mean evangelicals) go to heaven, then rejects creationism and embraces the veracity of science before moving on to issues such as female submission and sexual identities.

“Having a female body carried great responsibility and fear,” she writes, referring to warnings at home and at school to dress modestly so as not to inflame ungodly passions.

Perhaps not surprisingly, McCammon devotes a lot of attention to his own sexual awakening, much of which occurred at the small evangelical college he attended (which, coincidentally, is where I was a student a couple of decades earlier). The “purity culture” of evangelicalism demanded that women be modest, while young men were presented as warriors and defenders.

“On our wedding night, we didn't know how to have sex,” an insider tells McCammon, who adds, “That experience is not unusual for young evangelicals who begin their honeymoons with little or no sexual experience and, often, years.” of sexual shame.”

Many ex-evangelicals testify to religious traumas endured, some of them caused by corporal punishment or perhaps fear of the Rapture, the popular belief among evangelicals that Jesus will soon return to collect the faithful and that those “left behind” They will face a terrible judgment. One psychotherapist cataloged the symptoms of religious trauma as “anxiety and depression, chronic pain and intestinal symptoms, feelings of shame, and a tendency toward social isolation.”

Religious trauma leads many evangelicals, including the author and one of her brothers, to therapy and to abandon evangelicalism, although not necessarily in that order.

McCammon is especially effective at juxtaposing condemnations of Bill Clinton's womanizing with forceful defenses of Donald Trump's sexual predations: the condemnations and defenses come from the same evangelical sources without apparent self-awareness and without any hint of irony. Even more devastating is the author's examination of her Christian school textbooks and memories of conversations in those schools about slavery. A textbook recalled happy days on the plantation – “The southern climate was warm and the slaves stayed healthy” – and one student recalled his teacher's comment that slavery “was a pretty good job for them.” ; they got free accommodation and all their meals were taken care of.”

However, if these textbooks lack historical accuracy and context, those qualities are also missing from McCammon's narrative, although his errors are not as egregious. She talks about evangelicalism reaching its peak of influence “beginning in the late 1980s,” ignoring the fact that evangelicals set the nation's social and political agenda for much of the 19th century, especially in the years prior to the Civil War, although with very different sensibilities. .

The author could have explored how white evangelicalism was different before its far-right turn in defense of racial segregation in the late 1970s. Could an understanding of the generally laudable social agenda of evangelicalism in past centuries (abolition, prison reform, public education, and even women's suffrage were evangelical concerns) have provided McCammon and her compatriots with a standard to which they could appeal? in your quest to reform your churches? ?

As in many coming-of-age narratives, those who leave the safety of the subculture rarely have a soft landing. McCammon's marriage to a classmate three months after her college graduation “felt awkward and surprisingly lonely,” she writes; She ended in divorce. The author talks about her parents' forced estrangement from her grandfather because he was gay. The two mended their relationship and became close during the final years of her life, although McCammon's advances toward him created a rift with his mother and her father.

The author's schoolmate, Jeff, came out as gay, breaking off his relationship with his parents, who refused to recognize her husband at their son's seminary graduation. “I'm not an evangelical largely because in most American evangelicalism there is no place for queer people,” he told the author. “I'm angry about that. “I am angry and sad for the children still in evangelical churches who are told they cannot be themselves.”

All of these factors and more, along with what many evangelicals consider a hypocritical embrace of Trump, are driving some evangelicals out of the fold. But leaving is traumatic, both for the people and for the family members left behind.

McCammon cites a former South Dakota evangelical's angry letter to Focus on the Family, the organization partially responsible for the subculture's shift to the right in the decades surrounding the turn of the 21st century. He cultivated a deep Christian faith outside of evangelicalism. “But thanks to you,” he wrote to the group, “my mother believed I was living a sinful lifestyle because of the way I voted.”

“Leaving conservative evangelicalism means giving up the security of silencing some of the most perplexing and anxiety-provoking questions with a set of 'answers': about the purpose of life, human origins, and what happens after death,” McCammon writes. “It also means losing an entire community of people who could once be trusted to help celebrate weddings and have new babies, organize meal trains when one is sick or bereaved, and provide an integrated network of support and socialization around a shared set”. of expectations and ideals.”

McCammon insists that the challenge for her and others is to define themselves in positive rather than negative terms (they don't want to be known for what they're running away from), in which case the “exvangelical” label isn't exactly helpful. However, these “expats” are finding security, or at least comfort, in numbers.

“Many of us who have been expelled are examining the nature around us,” he writes, “and discovering that we are not alone.”

Randall Balmer teaches religion at Dartmouth College. His most recent book is “Saving Faith: How American Christianity Can Reclaim Its Prophetic Voice.”