Escaping white American evangelicalism

Over the past few years, I’ve heard more stories of faith deconstruction, abuse, and pain coming out of the Church than at any other point in my life. The common denominator in these stories is the presence of white evangelical theology and culture.

And there are so many stories. Stories of people realizing that the cultural beliefs they accepted as “Gospel-truths” aren’t actually grounded in Scripture. Stories of Christians coming to terms with the fact that their church is really just a social club rooted in white identity politics. Stories of abuse stemming from an ideology that is obsessed with authority and believes cultural warfare in the pursuit of political power is real Christianity.

The hardest stories are of those coming to terms with the reality that they were never really serving Jesus, but a hierarchical system that serves itself. Christians with this particular experience seem to be in the most danger of losing their faith entirely. After all, white evangelicalism teaches its adherents that they are the elite of Christianity. Those who leave often do so believing what they were taught: that there are no good, alternative ways to be a Christian.

This is what makes escaping white evangelicalism a journey, not an event. Leaving means shattering old belief systems and losing friends. It means unlearning culturally embedded “biblical claims” that aren’t actually rooted in Scripture. It is a disorienting experience that comes with grief, anger, and compassion. Many feel alone as they process the life they are leaving behind. The steady stream of refugees fleeing white evangelicalism the past 15 years or so now means that more post-evangelical Christians are around to help those escaping find safe passage out.

But even this silver lining only makes the journey marginally easier.

*Photo by* *Hannah Busing* on *Unsplash*

I began my journey out of white evangelicalism in the mid-2000s. Despite being raised in a church with the word evangelical in the title, I never was a “true believer” in the sense that the cultural aspects that define white evangelicalism began making me uncomfortable as early as high school.

A big part of that had to do with the church I grew up in. While it was politically and culturally conservative, there was a high level of intellectualism in the teaching and a heart for helping others in the congregation. I didn’t really see much of the Islamophobia that many other churches have been plagued by in our post-9/11 world. Questions about faith and God were encouraged, and people who had doubts were treated kindly.

Still, there was an emphasis on strict gender roles. Purity culture was partially entrenched in our youth group. As I progressed through high school and deepened in my faith, I became more uncomfortable with these two intertwined ideologies.

Many people look back on the 2000s as a particularly wild time in white American evangelicalism. Abusive men like Mark Driscoll were rising stars and “mainstream” white evangelical leaders like John Piper platformed them. Survey data showed that white evangelicals supported preemptive war and torture more than any other religious group. Fear and full-blown hate toward Muslims, the LGBTQ community, and many others was rampant.

Looking back, the church I grew up in shielded me from a lot of that. When my wife and I married, we landed at a church that we thought was insulated from these tendencies and leaned toward the intellectual side of evangelicalism. Joining a community that was progressing toward the love of Jesus and away from the culture wars made sense for us.

The first few years felt like we had joined such a community. There was a growing contemporary service for younger generations. Terms like justice and love your neighbor were regularly talked about. The church was mostly white, but people who didn’t look like us were slowly trickling in. Teaching was heavily intellectual. The culture war mentality that existed in pockets of the congregation felt like a lingering hangover from a bygone era, destined to continue its slow decline into nonexistence.

In hindsight, there were plenty of warning signs that most of this progress was only surface-level.

I saw the first cracks in the facade emerge in 2015 as the presidential campaign heated up. Talking about justice-related issues was suddenly frowned upon. The elders had ended the contemporary service, jumpstarting a slow exodus of young people from the church. An us vs. them mentality set in as the election approached. The church’s vision began to fracture into multiple ones that competed with each other.

With the election of Donald Trump, the conservative streak that ran through the church morphed into vile Republicanism. I began having confusing experiences that I should have seen as red flags instead. For example, the Sunday after white nationalists invaded Charlottesville, I mentioned to a few people that we should pray for the safety of the community there and that local churches would help bring healing. The atmosphere became tense and the conversation quickly moved on to other things. No one wanted to even talk about it. I was baffled.

A lot more happened between then and the hell of 2020. Liberals and moderates, thoughtful women with smart opinions, and younger people who were eager to serve Jesus were increasingly silenced and sidelined. The church’s fractured vision collapsed under the weight of a resurgent right-wing. Child safety issues were uncovered, money began mysteriously disappearing, and elements of the church’s finances began to not add up. Most of the elders hid their decision-making processes and retreated from the congregation. Those who didn’t began lashing out at congregants who demanded they try to fulfill their responsibilities. Communication became disjointed and misleading. I increasingly heard anti-semitic, racist, and sexist language on Sunday mornings in the hallways of church.

What made all of this odd was that, despite everything, most of the teaching actually became more Gospel-centered. As the senior pastor tried to pull the congregation toward unity in Christ and loving our neighbors, some of the elders and powerful congregation members pushed for forced cultural insularity and political idolatry instead. Mental and emotional abuse, gossip, and gaslighting were their preferred, highly effective weapons.

As a young family eager to serve Jesus, it was becoming clear that our family was no longer welcome at the church we called home.

When 2020 arrived, my search for whatever elements of white evangelicalism remained in me was almost complete. Whenever I found a piece of this ideology, I beat it out of myself. It was a kind of final self-inoculation against the destructive disease building up around us.

As the country veered into a pandemic, a racial reckoning, and a dangerous election season, the far-right and culture-worshipping elements at our church went on the offensive. An elder attacked our marriage and told me I was inferior to him, and that came shortly after he voluntarily told me he found certain women at the church more physically attractive than the women in our Sunday School class. That same elder also tried to gaslight me into believing that our legitimate concerns for the safety of children at the church was actually the result of “trauma” that did not exist. Even more alarming were his balled fists and the rage in his voice as he tried to gaslight me.

Several congregation members questioned my faith because I refused to support Trump and bow to their nationalism. I was told I was “engaging in child sacrifice” by not voting for Donald Trump, a dark reminder that many evangelicals will eagerly abandon Jesus and manufacture reasons to brutalize their neighbors at the smallest chance to fight in the abortion culture war.

Others purposefully misrepresented my personal beliefs, weaponizing them into gossip. Even more openly worshipped the church itself, saying things like “This is a place for real Christians.” Critiquing the church’s downward spiral was increasingly met with open hostility.

We weren’t the only family to experience these realities. A loosely organized, populist cleansing of those who didn’t conform to and worship white evangelical hierarchy was underway. Following Jesus and taking the Bible seriously were now seen as being incompatible with the culture of the church. The full decadence of white American evangelicalism had arrived.

The big implosion finally hit a few months ago. To make a long story short, our senior pastor basically quit on stage one Sunday morning out of frustration. Alongside of a few other families, we issued a call for unity and tried to jumpstart a Bible-centered process to have some difficult, needed conversations about the multiple crises unfolding. Instead, people gossiped that we were trying to “stir up trouble.” An elder sent us a grim message through another elder: he wasn’t going to talk to us. He wasn’t willing to fulfill a core responsibility of his eldership and was too cowardly to tell me that to my face. Then he started telling others they needed to admonish us. Unsurprisingly, I soon learned that he and his wife had been leading a gossip ring about me for months.

We left several weeks later and, just like that, the last shackles of white evangelicalism began to fall off. The burdens of frustration and pain began to fade. We’re visiting a Gospel-centered, multi-ethnic church near our home now and — for the first time in years — I’m free to live for Jesus and others.

*Photo by* *Anastasia Petrova* on *Unsplash*

Like many others who have escaped this subculture, I’m discovering that the aftermath brings on its own set of challenges. White evangelicalism casts a long shadow over those who leave. Even though I began rejecting parts of this culture over a decade ago, I only now find myself in a space where I can fully come to terms with what I was a part of.

For many who leave white American evangelicalism, there’s a lot of grief to process. Some struggle to find compassion for their former selves, all the while feeling an obligation to help those who are still hurting in this subculture. Others realize they have trauma stemming from all kinds of abuse. I feel many of these realities, too.

What I find myself struggling with the most though is that my own hands are dirty. Even as I tried to generate change in a local expression of white evangelicalism these last several years, I’ve come to understand that by merely being in this culture I was part of the problem.

I was complicit because I believed this system could change. I fell for the listening traps: those moments when an elder tried to make me feel heard as a means to shut me up. I don’t even remember how many times I held my tongue when women were silenced or talked down to. I heard racism and misogyny that I failed to push back on, sometimes because I honestly didn’t know how to do so.

Still, I always told myself to focus on the bigger picture. Looking back, I don’t believe that was wrong, it was just an incomplete approach. What I now understand is that the bigger picture included those smaller moments — added up together — over time. Simply put, I should have been more focused on the people suffering under this ideology, not just the ideology and those wielding it. More of my resistance should have been reserved for helping those who were being purposefully hurt.

I know deep down that my time inside white evangelicalism wasn’t wasted. Some of my closest friends today are post-evangelical Christians. We helped each other escape from broken churches and the oppressive culture hovering over them. Experiencing how the local church is not supposed to be does have its benefits in helping to learn what the local church is supposed to be.

A handful of people from our former church contacted me after our departure to say they now see the same problems we did and wouldn’t have noticed without our voices. Others reached out to let us know that our family left a loving impact on them — sometimes from conversations I don’t remember — and that our departure was a red flag that their community really is broken. Most of them have since left as well or are seriously considering leaving.

I imagine these shadows and flashes of personal realizations will linger over me as I continue coming to terms with…everything. There’s no such thing as a clean break with white American evangelicalism. I’m sure I have wounds that I’m not even aware of yet. But in these last few months, the warmth of the proverbial sun has chased away one small shadow after another.

And after being in a church subculture that was so devoid of hope for so long, the sunlight feels truly wonderful.

I wish my story was unique, but it’s not. The hardest thing to grapple with these past few years was knowing that all across the country — in faith communities I’ve never even heard of — my experiences were being shared by countless others. Many of us left and are now working toward a Jesus-centered, more open form of faith. Others have lost their faith entirely.

Right now, countless faith communities are sealing their own fates as they drive loving believers away in the pursuit of cultural idolatry. White evangelicals will continue vandalizing the witness of the Church with their nationalism, and they’ll keep doing it the name of Jesus. All of it will continue spilling out into the public square, wreaking havoc in our politics and pitting neighbor against neighbor.

Post-evangelical Christians are in a unique position to contain some of the coming damage. We understand this subculture better than anyone else. We know what words can help lead people out of white evangelicalism. I’d argue that we even have a responsibility to play a positive role here.

Exactly what that role is though is a question we have to answer within the context of our own circumstances.

For me, I think it’s doing a better job of speaking out against the abuses stemming from white evangelical culture in the moment and, more importantly, helping to guide those who are being harmed out of these places as I come across them. In Matthew 9:36–38, Jesus says:

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

It feels like applying this mindset from Jesus to those inside white evangelicalism is an appropriate next step. Maybe there is healing to be found in helping others who share similar pains that so many others feel.

If you’re a member of First Evangelical Church and want to know more details, feel free to reach out. You can email me at markchristopherhackett@gmail.com.

I explore faith and American church culture from Memphis, TN. Never miss an article by signing up for my free newsletter or becoming a member. You can also subscribe to my podcast.

Escaping white American evangelicalism

What happens to Christianity if there is life beyond Earth?

A conversation with Dr. Kristin Kobes Du Mez