Op-Ed in Religion News Service

On the unsatisfied nature of evangelical critique.

Over the weekend I was given the opportunity to write an op-ed for Religion News Service. In it, I try to identify the dismissiveness of exvangelicals that we’re seeing from white evangelical leaders and pundits:

In the span of a few short years, entire cultures, communities and followings have been built around a constellation of related hashtags — #EmptyThePews, #ChurchToo, #SlateSpeak, #Decolonize, #faithfullyLGBT, #exchristian, #exmormon and others — all of them dedicated to talking about what it’s like to grow up in — and leave — your faith of origin. 

Yet, even with this deluge of digital content flowing from multiple perspectives, I could sum up the evangelical reaction to exvangelical perspectives in one word: unsatisfied.

Evangelical leaders are unsatisfied with the personal and theological reasons exvangelicals give for leaving their faith communities. Instead, they assert their own varied theories on the exodus. It is merely “trendy” to leave, they say. Those were never “real” Christians to begin with, they assure themselves. They only left because they wanted to have sex with someone the Bible said they shouldn’t, they opine. The reasons are nearly always cast as personal, moral failings. Or perhaps the seductions of “culture.”

I would like to challenge that. 

Head over to RNS to read the rest.

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