Why my book is called Exvangelical *and Beyond*

Available 9/24/24.

In just a few days, my book Exvangelical & Beyond: How American Christianity Went Radical and the Movement That’s Fighting Back will be released. It is my first book, and as I’ve said so many times in the past few months, absolutely surreal.

Emotionally, I’m all over the place. I’m anxious in both senses of the word—eager for people to read it, and nervous about all the things well beyond my control like sales and critical reception.

Exvangelical & Beyond is being published in a vastly different publishing landscape than when I started my podcast eight years ago. It joins a host of other books on topics like deconstruction, post-evangelicalism, and Christian nationalism, all of which have become steady genres in their own right.

Throughout that same time, the term ‘exvangelical’ has become commonplace and gained just as much cruft and association among people who follow these online cultural discussions closely as ‘evangelical’ itself.

I’ve always maintained that the term ‘exvangelical’ has natural limits, and doesn’t seek to encapsulate your whole life as evangelicalism does. (You can read my full thoughts in this essay from 2019 that I republished here.)

Exvangelical - A Working Definition

You can use the term for as long as it serves you, and move beyond it whenever it is time. But I hope that my book illustrates that exvangelicals too, are part of a lineage. To quote Caedmon’s Call, “I come from a long line of leavers.”

My book shows how the leaders of white evangelicalism have consistently resisted moderating influence and attempted reforms—on issues such as racial justice, gender justice, the full affirmation of LGBTQ+ people—in service of whiteness, capital, and power. This staunch refusal to change in the name of ‘orthodoxy’ has led to considerable harm, enabled abuse and the cultivation of authoritarian cultures, and empowered a vindictive form of politics.

People continue to leave evangelicalism, just as they have been leaving for decades. Yet with the maturation of social media, that exodus from evangelicalism and dispersal into other forms of spiritual and non-spiritual community is more visible than ever.

But this is just the beginning, not the end, of the story.

Human culture is a part of the natural world because we are part of the natural world—and is subject to the same patterns of growth, decay, and renewal as everything else. This includes religion & philosophy. We are at a point in history in the US where many people feel unseen, unrepresented, and uncared for by societal institutions like church and government—and are often victims of their actions. Disaffiliation is an understandable response.

At the same time, we are rapidly evolving how we understand and express our individual identities, and this is happening amid a period of rapid technological change, climate crises, and economic inequality.

I believe that people who use the term exvangelical to describe a part of their story have something valuable to share in this moment. As I write in the book, “exvangelicals demonstrate that it is possible to change your mind, and in doing so, change your life. In our current polarized state, this is no small feat.” And I hope that even as we heal and prioritize our needs, we can find ways to build meaningful alliances in the future.

Because if you are exvangelical, you are also more than that - you may be exvangelical and Christian, and secular, and queer, and BIPOC, and so on. Some will maintain their connection to religious institutions and beliefs, while others will have no interest in doing so, and yet others will flit in and out of groups throughout their lives.

My hope is that my book can contribute to these conversations and help us consider what lies ahead.

It’s available everywhere next Tuesday, September 24, 2024.

---