Why I Left Christianity
Wrong Answers Only Edition
Lately, I’ve noticed a new version of Wrong Answers Only making the rounds. It’s basically evangelicals attempting to explain why a growing number of Christians are choosing to deconstruct their faith and, often, leave the fold.
I find the Wrong Answers Only meme far more entertaining when amateur comedians create hilarious new titles for movies or give wrong answers to other trivial queries. It’s far more disheartening when evangelicals — especially clergy — attempt to explain why we are leaving.
Not surprisingly, those same clergy are concerned about the growing deconstruction and exvangelical movements and are obviously struggling — if their social media posts are any indication — to explain this phenomenon to themselves, their churches, and their followers on social media.
In 2019, the Pew Research Center reported that the number of adults who describe themselves as Christians dropped by 12% in the previous decade while the group known as “nones” — or those who describe themselves as atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular” — increased by almost 10%. On the part of evangelicals, it appears there is a growing sense of urgency to stop the hemorrhaging.
These posts are frequently shared and dissected in exvangelical groups. Occasionally, these missives seem earnest but, more often, they’re self-serving, arrogant, and mostly ignorant of the deconstruction experience. It’s difficult to understand how so many can get something so wrong.
It’s seems clear that evangelicals don’t understand deconstruction, and I often wonder if they even want to understand. The wrong answer I hear most often is also one of the most personal for me. It strikes at the very core of the spiritual trauma I suffered as a young girl and that many other exvangelicals have suffered and continue to suffer.
“You weren’t really a Christian.”
Despite years of work and feeling infinitely more peaceful than I ever felt in Christianity, I still bristle when I hear those words because faith wasn’t something I just dabbled in. I’ve only begun in the recent past to talk about my struggles with Christianity and the spiritual torment I experienced as a child, a teen, and a young woman. But I did all the things. I was active in my churches, I studied the Bible and other Christian literature, and I prayed — a lot.
Nevertheless, I experienced what I eventually began to understand as cognitive dissonance, and the accompanying doubt, fear, and turmoil with theological constructs that, ultimately, just didn’t add up for me. Eventually, I could no longer try to believe what I didn’t believe.
Like me, many of the exvangelicals and former Christians I’ve interacted with were hardly “dabblers.” They were all in and deeply involved with their faith and many sacrificed greatly to deconstruct their beliefs and, eventually, walk away. In no way was it “easy” to deconstruct as one pastor recently declared, and it wasn’t a decision anyone I know has made without a great deal of forethought.
I won’t lie. When someone says, “You weren’t really a Christian,” my first reaction is a flash of anger and an almost primal urge to lash out — it feels like they are denying my trauma and my lived experience — but when I dig a little deeper, I know this belief is most likely a defense mechanism.
For someone deeply involved with their faith, witnessing the deconstruction of others and the growing exvangelical movement has to be unnerving. I’m not surprised they would seek a non-threatening explanation.
It’s far easier to believe we were never really Christians instead of acknowledging any flaws with the institution of Christianity and how it is practiced by many believers and churches.
“You focused on religion instead of a relationship.”
When I dare to verbalize some of my issues with Christianity to practicing Christians, I often hear these words and I’ve known earnest Christians who place a high value on what they characterize as a relationship but, sometimes, this wrong answer seems to be tinged with arrogance as in, “You poor thing. You just really didn’t get it.”
The implication with this wrong answer seems to be that we wouldn’t leave the church if only we had focused on the relationship. When I was a practicing Christian, I felt like I was very focused on the relationship, but it felt very one-sided to me. Like praying into a void. As a child, without the means to question, this felt like stone-cold rejection. I don’t think the fear-based theology, prevalent in the evangelical church, was helpful. So much was riding on getting it right.
As an adult, I became better equipped with resources and critical thinking and reading skills to more fully evaluate whether this belief system was for me. It wasn’t.
I think most evangelicals really want their brand of Christianity to work for everyone. I think, for some, this is a genuine desire and urgency to “save” everyone from what they truly believe is an eternity in hell. For others, perhaps there is the need to reinforce their choices and life path. Still others seem really put out when “non-believers” are living it up, so to speak, and not following the rules.
And I get that their belief is completely structured around the ideas that evangelical Christianity is for everyone, it is the one true religion, the only path to God, and the only way to avoid eternal suffering.
But I beg to differ.
According to a Christian blogger, I am, apparently, committing the sin of disbelief but, again, I can’t believe what I don’t believe.
And I can no longer be swayed or scared back into Christianity by the construct of hell. Not anymore. Hell was a powerful motivator for me for a long time, and I’ve seen many evangelicals use the idea of hell as a sort of Hail Mary into the end zone, if you will, when other aspects of their belief system aren’t convincing potential recruits.
If Christianity and the relationship with God is all that evangelicals assert it to be, why is there the need to scare people into it?
As I allowed myself to fully explore, study, and dissect the construct of hell, my belief in — and extreme fear of — a place of physical torment or any type of literal hell began to dissipate. Often, when the end result of disbelief is discussed and hell is questioned, I’ve seen evangelicals “downshift” into the concept of a less cruel, less horrifying but eternal separation from God, rather than the literal hell.
But here’s the thing. I often felt painfully separated from God when I was trying so hard not to be. So that doesn’t work for me either.
Often, Christians liken their relationship with God to a parent/child relationship urging us to, “Think about how much a parent loves a child, well, your father in heaven loves you so much more — even more than you could possibly comprehend.”
But, imagining this incredibly profound, all-encompassing God-love juxtaposed with the threat of eternal damnation or separation is deeply problematic for me. This sounds more like an abusive relationship than an all-consuming parent-love.
Even if my beloved child, my only begotten daughter, rejected me — even if she hated me and never wanted to see me again — I would still love her with every cell of my being and want only the very best for her. Wanting her to have a happy, productive, non-punitive life would never change. I would never choose punishment for rejection. I cannot reconcile — I’ll never be able to reconcile — eternal torment or eternal separation with a loving, benevolent creator. It just doesn’t work for me.
Profound love does not punish for not being reciprocated.
Profound love does not reject for being rejected.
Profound love grants freedom to love in return — or the freedom not to love.
“You wanted to be sexually immoral.”
“You just want to sin!”
Plenty of lay Christians and clergy have proven that one doesn’t have to leave the church to participate in what it deems to be “sinful” and sexually immoral. It’s one thing when only consenting adults are involved and, yet another, when “sexual immorality” and “sin” become sexual harassment and sexual assault. If you believe church sex crimes are a Catholic phenomenon and a rarity in the evangelical church, please visit the “Baptist Accountability” Facebook page. It’s an eye-opening, soul-crushing deep dive into this topic.
Interestingly, many of us exvangelicals believe we are better people with a more finely-tuned sense of ethics and morals after we leave the church, as well as finding that we are more accepting, loving, and less judgmental of others which seems almost, I don’t know… Jesus-like?
Pondering this apparent phenomenon, I recently asked fellow members of an exvangelical group if they thought they were more, less, or equally as moral and, overwhelmingly, hundreds of respondents felt they were more ethical and moral after leaving the church. This is hardly scientific research, but it dovetails with my beliefs about myself and what I’ve heard others say.
Of course, it must be acknowledged that there is most likely considerable disagreement among evangelicals and exvangelicals about what constitutes moral and ethical behavior and evangelicals tend to view “sin” and “immorality” in stark, black and white terms while those of us who’ve left the church often become more comfortable with ambiguity and the inevitable shades of gray that occupy our head space.
One theologian whose tweets I occasionally read seems to be pretty stuck on the idea that we leave the church to engage in sexual immorality. Is this a projection? Is Christianity the only thing keeping them on the straight and narrow? I often wonder. As someone involved in a marriage, involving one man and one woman, for decades — who left the evangelical church as a young, married woman —the evangelical definition of “sexual immorality” as a reason for leaving does not resonate with me.
From my interactions with other exvangelicals, I don’t think sexual freedom is often a reason, or at least the primary reason, why most leave the church and/or Christianity. There are certainly those who, as a result of leaving the moral judgment of the church and Christianity behind, enjoy a new found freedom of sexual expression, and certainly many in the LGBTQ+ community have felt alienated by the evangelical church and leave to live a more authentic life.
As I’ve grown in my lack of faith, I’ve come to believe that how we treat others is far more important than worrying about how and who someone loves.
“Your mind became so open your brain fell out.”
“You educated yourself right out of Christianity.”
In I Stopped Believing, I wrote, “The shady alchemist always has more to fear than the reputable goldsmith,” and discussed how, if something is real and true, it can withstand any level of examination. After all, intense scrutiny is key to the process of authentication, so it’s baffling why so many churches discourage questioning to the extent that they do. Could there be a deep-seated fear that it all might not be true, and that is too terrifying to contemplate?
While I did not deconstruct in college or for a few years beyond, college did teach me to evaluate sources of information and how to think more critically. These skills have served me well after my deconstruction began in earnest, but I don’t view my education as a primary reason why I deconstructed my faith and, ultimately, left it behind.
In retrospect, I have come to believe that evangelicalism and fundamentalism do themselves no favors, in the long-term, by not changing and evolving over time and by refusing to acknowledge the historical inaccuracies and scientific errors in the Bible. Having continued to study the Christian Bible post-deconstruction, I believe that the adherence to the idea of an inerrant, literal interpretation of these ancient stories, histories, allegories, and genealogies is a factor in the decline of Christianity.
Evangelicals who earnestly care about those in deconstruction would do well to realize that it is a complex and multi-layered process for most of us. It cannot easily be explained or interpreted for the masses, especially those who possess little or no concept of what it is to experience profound doubt, pain, trauma, grief, and loss related to their spirituality.
Explaining deconstruction simply does not yield itself to a tweet or even a hastily written blog post. Likewise, those who have never experienced systemic racism or sexism, or at least studied them in depth and talked at length with those who have, should not attempt to quickly explain — or explain away — the concepts and the lived experience of others. It’s never OK to take someone else’s experience and center it around ourselves and our agendas.
What a lot of evangelicals — clergy and otherwise — get so wrong about deconstruction is they approach it from a position of teaching and explaining rather than listening and learning. Is there a benefit for evangelicals learning from exvangelicals? While I believe there is, that question will need to be answered by evangelicals.
In the end, there is a seemingly impossible-to-reconcile reality and that is most who’ve deconstructed possess not the faintest desire to return to their former belief systems while evangelicals, by definition, seek to convert others — and control others — based on their beliefs. I think I speak for many exvangelicals when I assert that we do not wish to be re-converted nor do we wish to be governed by ancient beliefs, ideas, inaccuracies, and/or misconceptions. In other words, people of faith are free to believe and worship whomever and whatever they want but when they decide everyone else must adhere to and be governed by their beliefs, we have a problem.
Connect with me at steph@stephdromainn.com, on Instagram and on Twitter.
Need support for deconstruction?
Recovering from Religion has many great resources including peer support and therapy referrals. Exvangelicalpodcast.com features, along with the podcast, an active Facebook group and a number of sub-groups. Chrissy Stroop provides some amazing resources, and there are many other great podcasts, Facebook groups, and Instagrams.
