Many today who identify as “exvangelicals” are deconstructing their faith. What’s keeping them from reconstructing that faith in a new tradition? Exvangelicalism.
An exvangelical is a sojourner, a person who came from one place and headed to another—a place, he hopes, more true, good, and beautiful than the one of his youth. The danger for deconstructing exvangelicals is that they make their home in a way station called exvangelicalism rather than settling into a new ecclesial home in which they might spiritually grow. The exvangelical temptation is to forever fixate, with great resentment, on what’s in the rearview mirror, giving little attention to the destination ahead.
Reactionary Identity
As the name suggests, the identity of exvangelicalism is inherently reactionary. What is it? It’s not evangelical. When I talk with my exvangelical friends about what they believe, it typically revolves around what they no longer believe: evangelicalism.
The identity of exvangelicalism is inherently reactionary. What is it? It’s not evangelical.
While I’m proud of my evangelical bona fides, I know evangelicalism isn’t above criticism. Moving out of a tradition isn’t sinful; we all develop and change. But change should never be an end in itself, it should be a means to an end—namely, maturity. And nothing breeds immaturity like reactionism.
Appreciate the Tradition You Leave
Moving from one faith tradition to another need not follow the path of reactionary resentment. It’s possible to appreciate much of the goodness of our past even while we pursue a different future.
We have plenty of examples of people who reconstructed their faith in this sort of healthy, positive way. Read the empathy with which Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft interacts with the Reformed tradition of his youth or the affection with which the Reformed theologian Richard Mouw engages his fundamentalist upbringing. Does their charity make either Kreeft or Mouw somehow less in their respective traditions? To the contrary.
It’s possible to simultaneously appreciate much of the goodness of our past even while we pursue a different future.
It’s actually hard to embrace a new tradition without first naming and appreciating the charism of one’s former tradition. Why? Because sin is everywhere.
I had a friend in fourth grade who received regular beatings from his atheist dad. I had another friend who was abused by her fundamentalist parents. Sure, these people would justify their abuse in different ways, but that’s all it was: post hoc justification.
Ideas have consequences, to be sure, but more often than not people aren’t really motivated to abuse others by ideology. Abusers grab the nearest idea at hand to justify their sin after the fact.
Of course, this doesn’t make the sin of evangelicals less egregious. Insofar as evangelicals emphasize the self-giving love of Christ, their selfishness is worse than that of their unbelieving counterparts. There’s no question that some evangelicals have turned their backs on the sacred commands passed on to them. On the last day, it would have been better for them to have never known the way of righteousness (2 Pet. 2:21).
No Tradition Escapes Sin
Evangelicalism hasn’t cornered the market on sin and abuse. This mistaken notion might keep exvangelicals in exvangelicalism: they think by rejecting evangelicalism they can reject sin once and for all. But there are megalomaniac priests in the Eastern Orthodox Church. There are domineering fathers in the United Methodist Church. In the coming years, we’ll read more and more stories of those who were manipulated and repressed by “woke” curriculum, just as we’ve read of those harmed by the worst examples of anti-intellectual “Christian” textbooks.
If you’re joining a tradition with the hope of escaping sin, you’ll only stay in that tradition as long as it takes to get to know the people who inhabit it. The bad you’re deconstructing is likely present, albeit in another form, in the tradition you’re embracing. But to see the sin present in the tradition you’re entering, you have to be honest about the good that existed in the one you’re leaving.
If you’re joining a tradition with the hope of escaping sin, you’ll only stay in that tradition as long as it takes to get to know the people who inhabit it.
Compare the best and worst of both traditions and make your choice accordingly. Be charitably appreciative of the good parts of your faith upbringing, not just brutally critical of its bad parts. Then, be honest about the failings of the new tradition you’ve discovered, not just infatuated with its novelty.
Don’t stay in exvangelicalism. Find your way to a stronger, healthier expression of faith in which forward-moving growth looms larger than backward-looking angst.
The Gospel Coalition