I Stopped Believing
I was an exvangelical long before it became a hashtag.
Decades ago, as I began deconstructing my faith, I had no idea where I belonged, what I actually believed, and how much it even mattered. I didn’t talk about it much, and living in Texas, I knew very few who traveled the same path. As a post-evangelical, I had no desire or need to convert anyone to my belief system, or lack thereof.
In the last few years, I’ve sought to gain a deeper understanding of my religious experience. Writing has been key to that process, and I’ve also interacted more with people in the exvangelical community.
When I was a young girl in East Texas, the thorny spiritual issues with which I struggled seemed like my cross — and mine alone— to bear.
But I’ve been interested to learn in the last few years that the experiences of many exvangelicals dovetail with mine. This has led me to think more about telling my story to a broader audience and to be the person I needed long ago.
I was genuinely surprised to learn that many others have carried, and still carry, the burden of religious trauma. And many who opened the door to explore their nagging doubts couldn’t — or simply did not want to— shut it again.
Questioning the dogma of my youth brought me an unexpected and profound sense of peace. The peace I originally sought through faith and spirituality came, instead, from deeply questioning that same faith and spirituality.
I came to realize that when something is genuine, questions and scrutiny are key to the process of authentication. The shady alchemist always has more to fear than the reputable goldsmith. Ultimately, I think the evangelical church — if it is to endure — could benefit from earnestly listening to and really hearing the stories of exvangelicals.
For now, I choose to share my deconstruction story for those who’ve realized there is a lot that just doesn’t add up for them when it comes to fundamentalist and/or evangelical beliefs.
This is for those who admired the Emperor’s New Clothes because it felt too dangerous to admit they saw nothing but skin.
And for those who’ve felt gaslighted into believing that there is something wrong with them or that their cognitive dissonance is the work of a supernatural being hellbent on their destruction.
And, especially, to those who are afraid of losing family, support systems, and entire social networks — I feel you. I see you.
It’s not easy, by any measure, to step out there. It’s difficult to acknowledge that our faith is slipping away and even more difficult to admit we don’t believe when it seems like everyone else does. It’s especially hard when we fear the loss of family, friends and, maybe, even a livelihood when the questions and doubts just don’t abate.
As a child, I mustered up the courage to tell a few people at church that I was having doubts and that I didn’t feel saved, but I was always told to believe more, to pray more, to have more faith, and to rebuke Satan who was surely working his wiles against me. The burden, it seemed, was always on me to do more.
The implication was that I didn’t have enough faith so, essentially, there was something wrong with me, and that is a message I internalized.
I was not doing enough or, maybe, I just wasn’t enough.
Despite having soldiered down the aisle to the tune of “Just As I Am,” declaring I wanted to give my life to Jesus, and praying the sinner’s prayer — and really meaning it — I continued to be plagued by doubt, fear, and uncertainty. So, a year or two later, I decided to purchase a little salvation insurance and got myself saved — and baptized — a second time just in case the first wasn’t good enough.
Still, the doubts continued to taunt me like the most obnoxious middle school bully, and I just couldn’t escape no matter how hard I tried. I became obsessed with salvation and compulsive with my prayers thinking maybe something would finally work, and I could find the peace others said they experienced.
Despite this daily torment, I would spend another decade and a half — and many more sleepless nights and fearful days — before I allowed myself to question in earnest.
Like a lot of exvangelicals, I’ve been told I wasn’t really a Christian. Or that I never really had faith to begin with — or I never had a “relationship.”
For a long time, words like this opened a festering wound. I gave it my all — and I’m certain a lot of other exvangelicals did, as well — only to come up empty. I attended church religiously. Multiple churches. I read the Bible routinely. And I prayed constantly when I should have been doing other things — like studying. I was a very devout child and young adult. No one had any idea how hard I tried.
Subsequently, I felt gaslighted — and stung — by the attitudes of evangelicals, and while I still believe there are earnest Christians who genuinely and selflessly strive to walk a Christlike path, hearing “you were never a Christian” only hammered a few more nails in the coffin of my belief.
Recently, a theologian prayed on Twitter for God to visit unbearable pain upon us exvangelicals which served as a good reminder of why I deconstructed my faith in the first place. The last thing a lot of us in the exvangelical community need is more pain.
Fear is central to my story and foundational to the trauma I experienced in the church. I strenuously reject its use as a tool to convert people, especially children — many of whom don’t have the capacity to fully understand and evaluate theological constructs.
I was young and vulnerable and, in retrospect, I recognize that hearing from adults that I could choose to believe and follow a loving savior OR I could spend an eternity burning in hell wasn’t, actually, much of a free choice.
Fear should not be weaponized to control and prevent us from exploring our questions and doubts and shouldn’t be used to force a choice to follow a religious or spiritual path.
As for me, now that I’m on the other side of my religious experience, I believe that the use of fear cheapens a message that purports to be about love — and salvation.
Fear is a frequent conversation in the exvangelical and religion recovery community. Many of us have emerged from fear-based theology traumatized and in literal disbelief. Unfortunately for my mental health and well-being, my childhood church did not spare the hellfire and brimstone theology — or the rapture horror movies for that matter — and I lived in terror for years.
I was terrified of a literal hell where I would be dispatched if I somehow botched the whole salvation prayer.
What if I said the words a little bit wrong? What if God thought I really didn’t mean it? Would my name be left out of the Book of Life? Would I burn in hell? That was my fear. That was my daily angst for years — starting at the age of nine.
The constant spiritual torment ravaged my young, still-developing psyche. The promised everlasting peace eluded me.
As time went on, I began to question more. Much more.
My family was going through a lot of tough stuff, and why would a loving god allow an already suffering child to suffer even more? Why was the enslavement of humans condoned in the Bible and practiced in the very Christian Southern US? Where was the spirit of God then?
And why on earth didn’t slavery make God’s favorite top ten list? “Thou shalt not own slaves,” seemed like a worthy addition.
Why did my church seem more concerned with the don’ts rather than the dos? Loving one another. Taking care of the sick. Feeding the hungry. I viewed these as major tenants of the faith. That is what appealed to me from an early age. Yet, Sunday sermons seemed more about the don’ts — and the sins — as opposed to the Jesus-like acts that resonated with me.
Sodom and Gomorrah were trotted out regularly as cautionary tales and as, what seemed like, a convenient way to bash on gay people. I would later become much more informed about and supportive of LGBTQ rights but, back then, I was terribly ignorant and bewildered as to why this was such a frequent topic.
Ultimately, it felt like there was an awful lot of picking and choosing. The same people who railed against gay people and quoted the Old Testament to do so said that the old law had been fulfilled and they didn’t need to follow every nit-picky rule found in those pages.
It all began to feel hypocritical to me. So many platitudes. Even more excuses. So much, “Yes, but…”
There simply became a time when I couldn’t pretend I believed anymore. I had to admit to myself — even if I didn’t yet admit to others — that I no longer accepted a literal interpretation of the Bible.
A subsequent deep dive into the Old Testament reinforced, for me, that the Bible was not the inerrant word of god or the inerrant word of anyone else for that matter.
I had been sold the notion of a fair, just God. A loving God. Yet, the Old Testament God often struck me like an angry overlord who continually demanded burnt offerings and blood sacrifice. He played favorites and demanded blind allegiance and constant worship, as well as presiding over multiple events of wiping out large swaths of people.
And, again, the multiple opportunities to condemn slavery that went unchecked? What about the Egyptian firstborn who were reportedly slaughtered? Infanticide is not exactly “pro-life.” And the obsession with foreskins in the Old Testament seemed downright perplexing. The deeper I dove into the Bible, the more I began to see it differently, and I couldn’t unsee it.
There is much more I could say but, mostly, I want those who have doubts, those who think — as I once did — that there is something wrong with you, to know that there is actually something right with you.
And, if you’re anything like me, your salvation may lie in questioning everything you once believed.
Helpful resources for “deconstructors” may be found at
https://www.recoveringfromreligion.org/
and on Chrissy Stroop’s page at https://cstroop.com/
If you absolutely insist, buy me a coffee — or a Pinot, I’m not picky — at buymeacoffee.com/stephdromainn
