The Rise of #Exvangelical
I left evangelicalism in 2005 after years of struggling with my church’s stringent theology and narrow approaches to politics. In a matter of months, I went from having an expansive network of church brethren who claimed to love and support me to living in social and emotional exile. As one of the youth ministers at my church, I was used to playing the role of moral exemplar and community leader. Soon, I became persona non grata—the guy my former evangelical kin would awkwardly ignore in the coffee shop or at the grocery store. This experience led me into a deep sense of isolation. I didn’t yet know how to navigate the world outside of the strict evangelical bubble in which I’d spent my teenage and young adult years, but my crisis of faith meant I could no longer exist in the evangelical movement. To make matters worse, I could find no community of fellow deconverts for me to join—no support group with which to work through the conflicting feelings of guilt, freedom, sadness, and hope. Leaving the church meant being alone.
It also meant being immoral. People at my former church expressed grief over my leaving and hope that someday I would someday return to the righteous path. In their eyes, I had transformed from someone their kids should look up to into someone their kids should stay away from. Soon church members began asking my parents if I was an alcoholic or cheating on my wife.
History is rife with evangelicals like me who have grown disenchanted with their born-again faith. When the passion of piety flames out, converts are too often left to wander in the wilderness, lacking the ready-made community that their prior churches offered. But things are changing. Recently, those who have left evangelicalism have begun organizing themselves online under the hashtag #exvangelical. Spurred on by white evangelical support for Donald Trump, the #exvangelical movement is providing the type of group I, and so many other ex-evangelicals, longed for during our deconversion process: a welcoming community that helps the disenchanted work through the process of deconversion. But #exvangelical isn’t just a support network. It’s an activist movement full of individuals trying to reshape the political and moral narrative surrounding evangelicalism by subverting its claims to moral and patriotic authority.
Blake Chastain started the #exvangelical hashtag in 2016. Chastain grew up in a strict conservative evangelical community and felt a call to ministry during high school. During his first year of college at Indiana Wesleyan University in 2001, his religious and political views began to change. Some of his doubt formed in reaction to the invasion of Iraq and the way evangelicals supported George W. Bush’s hawkish policies. After a prolonged period of questioning, Chastain left evangelicalism. He now attends an Episcopal church, though he identifies as an “agnostic to some degree.”
https://religionandpolitics.org/2019/04/09/the-rise-of-exvangelical/
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...understand the evangelicals. I understand the person who doesn't watch much news, follow Twitter and just think politics is bad but this "businessman" Trump might be different - but the evangelicals are aware of what Trump is... they must now he's not "born again" too... they say God picked Trump? it makes no sense...
Do they brag about Evangelical Ted Haggard, user of methamphetamines and rent boys?
