Exvangelicals : loving, living, and leaving the white evangelical church / Sarah McCammon.

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"An intimate window into the world of American evangelicalism. Fellow exvangelicals will find McCammon's story both startlingly familiar and immensely clarifying, while those looking in from the outside can find no better introduction to the subculture that has shaped the hopes and fears of millions of Americans." --Kristin Kobes Du Mez, New York Times bestselling author of Jesus and John Wayne

The first definitive book that names the growing social movement of people leaving the church: the exvangelicals.

Growing up in a deeply evangelical family in the Midwest in the '80s and '90s, Sarah McCammon was strictly taught to fear God, obey him, and not question the faith. Persistently worried that her gay grandfather would go to hell unless she could reach him, or that her Muslim friend would need to be converted, and that she, too, would go to hell if she did not believe fervently enough, McCammon was a rule-follower and--most of the time--a true believer. But through it all, she was increasingly plagued by fears and deep questions as the belief system she'd been carefully taught clashed with her expanding understanding of the outside world.

After spending her early adult life striving to make sense of an unraveling worldview, by her 30s, she found herself face-to-face with it once again as she covered the Trump campaign for NPR, where she witnessed first-hand the power and influence that evangelical Christian beliefs held on the political right.

Sarah also came to discover that she was not alone: she is among a rising generation of the children of evangelicalism who are growing up and fleeing the fold, who are thinking for themselves and deconstructing what feel like the "alternative facts" of their childhood.

Rigorously reported and deeply personal, The Exvangelicals is the story of the people who make up this generational tipping point, including Sarah herself. Part memoir, part investigative journalism, this is the first definitive book that names and describes the post-evangelical movement: identifying its origins, telling the stories of its members, and examining its vast cultural, social, and political impact.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction (1)
• 1 People Need the Lord (13)
• 2 A "Parallel Universe" (31)
• 3 An Exodus (45)
• 4 Unraveling (53)
• 5 "Were You There?" (64)
• 6 Alternative Facts (77)
• 7 Whose "Character" Matters? (91)
• 8 "Leave Loud" (104)
• 9 Whom Does Jesus Love? (122)
• 10 A Virtuous Woman (141)
• 11 Naked and Ashamed (161)
• 12 Be Fruitful and Multiply (174)
• 13 Suffer the Little Children (185)
• 14 Broken for You (197)
• 15 Into the Wilderness (217)
• 16 Wrestling Against Flesh and Blood (231)
• 17 Into All the World (248)
• Acknowledgments (269)
• Further Reading and Listening (271)
• Notes (277)
• Index (303)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Exvangelicals are former evangelicals who, for social, political, or theological reasons, find themselves at odds with the current state of the conservative American evangelical ethos. NPR political correspondent McCammon is well-suited to exploring exvangelicalism in this memoir, having been raised in a deeply religious evangelical family. She says her environment fostered a fear of the outside secular world, and her homeschooling kept any doubts or questions under wraps. As she began to experience life outside her religious cocoon, she realized that some of what she had been taught--that dinosaurs roamed the earth with Adam and Eve, for example--were not just "alternative facts." Her circumstances eventually morphed into religious trauma, where obedience born of fear was the norm. Her breaking point came with the campaign and presidency of Donald Trump, whose vitriolic rhetoric seemed likely to repel evangelicals. And yet, little that Trump said or did could dissuade her family and religious friends from their enthusiasm for him. Out of such cognitive dissonance came a real break with the Church, although McCammon says that her healing is ongoing. VERDICT A much-needed look at evangelicalism from a perspective that's both investigative and personal. It offers intriguing, compelling insight with expert reporting.--Sandra Collins

Publishers Weekly Review

NPR political correspondent McCammon debuts with a clear-eyed look at the mass disaffiliation from evangelical churches and culture in recent years. Drawing on her experience growing up in a deeply religious evangelical family in Kansas City, Mo., as well as interviews with former evangelicals, McCammon charts conservative Christianity's explosion of cultural power in the late 1970s, '80s, and '90s, as the evangelical movement veered into fundamentalism, aided by seismic cultural shifts and accompanied by a sea of televangelists who preached a prosperity gospel. In more recent years, evangelical support for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and intolerance for other groups have caused growing numbers of believers to break off into a group of "exvangelicals"--loosely defined here as millennials and Gen Zers raised in white evangelical Christianity who are now "trying to make sense" of a more interconnected world, and "who they are in it." Chapters cover the evangelical movement's flash points, including its failures at racial reconciliation; rejection of the LGBTQ community (including the author's grandfather, who came out as gay as a widower); and strict parenting advice that included corporal punishment. McCammon carefully dissects the lasting emotional impacts on those who've left the church and the role of social media in helping former evangelicals to deconstruct their prior beliefs. It amounts to a lucid picture of life inside the evangelical community and the complicated choice to leave. Agent: Margaret Riley King, WME. (Mar.)Correction: A previous version of this review misidentified the state where the author grew up.

Booklist Review

Exvangelicals, the author explains, are a loosely organized, largely online movement of former Evangelicals trying to make sense of the world they are navigating as they deconstruct--and in some cases, reconstruct--their faith. A self-avowed Exvangelical herself, McCammon writes a kind of spiritual memoir of her growth, from her childhood as a student at a private Christian school to attending a religious university to her current life as a journalist. The author's reporting skill provides context as she examines the present state of white evangelical Christianity: as she sees it, a culture and a way of life that consumes everything in an era already characterized by a growing evangelical alliance with Christian nationalism, conspiracy theories, and science denialism. McCammon addresses the political power of white Evangelical Christianity and the zealous support of ex-president Trump, who was called "God's chosen one"--a phenomenon that made her start questioning everything. The result is this informative, thought-provoking, and enlightening book.

Kirkus Book Review

Through the lens of her personal and professional experiences, an American journalist describes the rapidly growing social movement abandoning fundamental evangelicalism. McCammon, a national political correspondent for NPR and co-host of the NPR Politics Podcast, vividly describes her evangelical-based childhood and education in suburban Kansas City in the late 20th century. The author also explores the significant social and political influence of the evangelical movement in the U.S. that she witnessed as a correspondent during the 2016 presidential election and how she came to grips with the inherent contradictions and distortions preached by self-appointed arbiters of God's word. McCammon is at her best when describing the construction of the evangelical infrastructure via TV and radio by figures such as James Dobson and Jerry Falwell, and what she and many others raised in the evangelical culture gleaned from the lessons and warnings espoused in churches and schools concerning the afterlife, human sexuality, and the role of women in the family. The element of fear seems ever-present--fear of not being a fervent enough witness for Christ, fear of doubting the inerrancy of the Bible, and even fear that she would miss the Rapture because she wasn't truly a believer. Throughout the book, McCammon deftly weaves the story of her immediate family's marginalization of--yet urgent concern for--the soul of her kind, successful, and agnostic grandfather, a brain surgeon who happened to be gay, together with her own questioning of everything that had been drilled into her during childhood. She also discusses "religious trauma" among exvangelicals and how she and others have experienced it and treated it. This fascinating and enlightening aspect of the consequences of a fundamentalist upbringing is only now beginning to be thoroughly explored, and McCammon's poignant book serves as a launchpad to learn more. A bold, intriguing, intimate read. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.