Whenever I say anything critical about evangelicalism on social media, I receive three kinds of responses. The first is an angry attack essentially accusing me of being a traitor to my God and my “tribe.” One person even pronounced that I am demon possessed. I usually respond with levity to these attacks because it is difficult to grant them any gravity. The second category of response can be summarized as “not all Evangelicals . . . “ suggesting that I am not aware that I am making generalizations that will not apply in every case. To these comments I respond that I am glad to hear that they’ve had a more positive experience than mine. The third group of responses would fall in the category of “that was my experience too. It feels good to say it out loud.” It is particularly for this group of people I want to share my story.
Evangelicalism has come under increasing attack for being out of touch with contemporary culture and for engaging in partisan politics while denying the realities of social injustice.
I was immersed in the evangelical culture for 50 years until I came to the realization that I must leave evangelicalism in order to rekindle my first love for Jesus Christ.
It’s All About Jesus
Despite my current disillusionment, I have many wonderful memories of my evangelical upbringing, I was born into a small rural church in Montana where the people were much more extended family than “congregation." Evangelicalism introduced me to Jesus. When I was five years old, Jesus appeared to me in my room at night. I had heard so much about Jesus that I knew immediately who he was, and when he asked me to abide in him for the rest of my life I answered with an unhesitating and wholehearted “yes!" I wanted nothing more than to become like Jesus.
While evangelicalism taught me who Jesus is it also taught me to be prepared that turning my life over to Jesus would change everything, indeed, it did! Everything was transformed from that night forward, I was always aware in a very tangible way that Jesus was right beside me, with me always. The world looked different to me. I began to see it in new ways as my friend Jesus walked with me. I had a constant profound sense of wonder and connectedness to the world around me, especially when I looked at my fellow human beings but also when I was with animals or in nature.
I found that I had a strong sense of discerning or reading others' hearts, a gift which often caused great discomfort but, eventually, led me into the field of Psychology. This talent often led to relational conflict when I could discern the truth behind the false image that people wanted to present. I learned quickly to stifle or hide this discernment when dealing with adults, especially in the church, where I was sometimes considered impertinent. I spoke my mind when I saw hypocrisy. so, when the church elder speaking to the youth group told us that he knows rock music is from the devil because when he listens to it it causes him to have sexual feelings,I whispered, too loudly, to my friend "he hasn't told us anything about rock music but he's told us a lot about himself.” I learned to be more circumspect.
I also saw that the evangelical church put inordinate emphasis on male leadership. This was not at all what I saw Jesus doing.
When I was a teen one of the men of the church was teaching our youth group. When he said"of course God doesn't intend for women to be in positions of leadership, look around and see how few women leaders there are.”I responded "You can't take the cultural result of hundreds of years of women being told they can't lead, and use it as evidence that women shouldn't lead."
With the eyes that Jesus gave me I understood early that evangelical men were protecting their power and asserting the right to have women serve them. Because of this conflict of interest their objectivity in interpreting the Bible could not be trusted. As I considered the gifted girls that were my peers and the women I saw who, despite the men’s claims, were really running the church,, I resolved that I would never take up that particular mantle of Evangelical masculinity.
While I saw the sexism of Evangelical culture very early, Sadly, it would be many years before i also could clearly see the inherent racism, white supremacy and homophobia that I was soaking in.
The Fundamentals
While it is, now, common to distinguish between evangelicalism and fundamentalism, the church of my youth confidently straddled the fence. I remember sermons in which the pastor said "they" think they are insulting us by calling us fundamentalist but we are proud to protect and promote the fundamentals of the Christian faith. I was very intrigued as a child by these fundamentals. I remember wanting to know what they were but the pastor seemed to wink and nod as if all the adults in the sanctuary knew already what that meant. since no one listed the fundamentals I began to ponder over them myself. I concluded, using childlike logic, that since the two main things I kept hearing in church and Sunday school were the centrality of Jesus and the authority of the Bible, the fundamentals must be the things that the Bible tells us that Jesus said and did. I wish that it had remained that simple.
Growing up Evangelical was like being subjected to a kind of gaslighting. I strongly identified with the character of Paula in the 1944 classic film Gasligtht as her husband slowly convinced here that she could not trust her own senses but must trust him instead. I was often told, though not in so many words, that I could not trust my own judgment or even my own experience of Jesus. The dualistic, Evangelical worldview instilled a fearfulness and a constant sense of responsibility to judge everything and everyone outside of the “approved boundaries defined by those in authority. I vividly remember the words of a Bible college teacher who spoke at our Evangelical youth banquet: “I would rather give my children pornography than let them read Camus!” By that time I had already read The Stranger by Camus and I knew how stupid his statement was. however, the message was always clear that independent thought was not only discouraged, it was forbidden. I remember the Sunday evening when our pastor came down from the pulpit into the congregation to emphasize his point as he told how his son, my close friend, had come home from school that week and mentioned that he had been reading about Communism in Government class and that the core principles of communism were not that far from Biblical principles. Livid with rage, he shouted “I fell to my knees then and there and prayed that God would either miraculously change his mind or take him home right now.”
If your mind leads you from approved thoughts and beliefs it was clear that you would not be welcome in this community. Because of this I learned what I, now, see as an essential evangelical skill: Finding biblical proof for what you already know to be true. Your assent to the approved truth is considered a prerequisite to membership in the community and also to eternal salvation.
in Evangelicalism I learned to redefine reality based on my worldview rather than adjust my worldview to reality. The Evangelical world consistently demanded that I ignore what my senses and my mind told me and believe, instead, a narrative that had been constructed by humans.They called this faith. Undermining what faith truly is. In this way I was slowly taught to stop focusing on the things that Jesus said and did and to focus, instead, on the taboos and attitudes that were culturally prescribed.
For example, I was taught that the reason that “science” concludes that he earth is millions of years old is because God created the earth with a built in illusion to fool carbon dating. that way we would have to choose whether to put our faith in what the bible said or what science said.
Enemies everywhere
Science was one of many villains. I remember a constant theme in my evangelical childhood that we are at war with "them" the others, the different ones, the ones who are not like us, the ones who could not pass the theology quizzes. Depending on the day or topic "they" could be other Christian denominations, communists, secular humanists, scientists, academics, liberals, or an especially heinous group, homosexuals. For some reason that I never understood we were given a special dispensation to hate these groups even though we normally should love others. The most hated group, homosexuals, were not only optional to hate, it was our responsibility to hate them. No one said this explicitly, of course, but the message was clear. In fact, the only jokes i ever knew ridiculing gays, I heard in sermons.
These memories all came flooding back to me, recently when I attended the annual Gay Pride parade, in Chicago. I attended, with other Christians, to stand in front of the cordoned official area for protesters, basically Evangelical street preachers with a stepladder and a bullhorn. we were there to provide a buffer between their hate and those in the parade. For hours I stood praying against the hate behind me, trying to show love to those who walked by. I winced and groaned as I listened to him shouting the most filthy names and language I have ever heard peppered with hundreds of shouts of “God Hates you!” At one point, inexplicably, he shouted “I only say these things because I love you.”
My understanding of love was undermined as I was indoctrinated into the fear and hatred of outsiders. in fact, a severe form of gaslighting came in the game of wordplay around loving. The underlying message, that I heard, was that you can do anything you want to someone as long as you call it love. you could treat someone hatefully provided you say that you're doing it for their own good. You could even beat your wife and children. The most common disguise for this charade was the phrase “loving the sinner and hating the sin” which was a get out of jail free card for many kinds of hateful behavior. I see now that this early teaching that abuse can be a form of love was very destructive to my young soul. I saw it show up in the obsession that my evangelical church had with complementarinism. when I heard the men talk about “headship," the descriptions were different but it was clear to my young heart that the underlying message was still the same. those who are in power do not have to question their own motives. as long as they say they are doing it “for your own good” whatever they do must be accepted as right. Without my even noticing, it became second nature for me to extend this power to being white, straight, cisgender male, American and evangelical. Pride became second nature, an entitlement that came with my inherent superiority.
ironically, although I was taught not to trust my own perceptions when it comes to prayer or listening to God, what was modeled was trusting one’s own Perceptions when it comes to interpreting God's word. I am grateful for the Evangelical emphasis on being intimately familiar with God’s Word. Sadly, the Bible was not really seen as a living, active conversation with God.
The Bible, in fact, was presented as a facile answer book, no complexities or paradoxes were allowed. As long as you approach it with the correct preconceived filters every question could be answered and the answer would always be the one pre approved. if not, then someone who knows better would need to correct you.
I don’t remember my request to hear the fundamentals ever being granted but, as I studied the things that Jesus said and did, I saw that time and time again someone came to Jesus with a difficult theological question hoping to corner him into being judgmental, in those instances Jesus skillfully deflected the question and focused instead on the heart of the antagonist, exposing their motive in asking the question. As a young believer I became fascinated by Jesus' ability to see through the deceptions of the human heart, Jesus obviously dealt directly with sin many times in the accounts of the Gospels, most of the time however he did not condemn or judge the sinner with the notable exception of the Pharisees and money changers whom he judged to be deceiving the people and trying to keep them from God. If this is Jesus’ example why would I want to do anything different?
I assumed that everyone else in church had had the same experience of Jesus that I had and could see the kingdom of heaven around us as I could see it, but over time I learned that wasn't true. For example, Although There was much said and taught about prayer in my childhood experience of the evangelical church it was not like my experience. Growing up on a farm in Montana I spent uncountable hours wandering on hundreds of acres of prairie with Jesus and my dog. we conversed comfortably and so when others spoke of prayer I assumed they meant ongoing conversations with our friend Jesus. But fairly soon I began to be told by Sunday school teachers or even from pastors at the pulpit that while listening to God is a good phrase we don't really need to because God will not say anything that he hasn't already said in the Bible.prayer is hard work, they said. It is structured and organized. You keep notes and lists. If I questioned these things I heard “someday you'll understand. until then just submit to authority” because leaning on your own understanding will only lead to danger
In many ways in my childhood upbringing in the Evangelical church I was told that there is an official evangelical story that encompasses everything about who you should be, how you should live and what your culture should look like, and when things seem to be happening in a different way we need to remember that the story is true and return to it. That story was not seen as one Christian tradition’s understanding but as the only right and acceptable way to believe. When I got out into the world, especially when I went to College, It became clear to me that many things were not as facile and one-sided as I had been led to believe. For several years my experience of evangelicalism was primarily a sense of betrayal. I discovered a world full of wonders and a diversity of people and ideas and love of Jesus that I had always been craving. I had been led to believe that all these things were dangerous, that there was nothing good “Out There.”
My new friends were not scary, they had stories of walking with our friend, Jesus, too, only they walked in places I had never been and did things I had never experienced. The language they used was a little different from the White-Evangelical-speak that I was used to and their version of the story that explains everything was not always the same .
I had been trained to be suspicious and resistant to anything different and to not trust my own judgment so I was ill prepared for the beauty, depth and richness that I had been missing. My deepest loss in growing up evangelical is these brothers and sisters in Christ that I never knew I had. my life before seems so drab in comparison. I realize that much of my life was stunted by fear of what lay “outside” I resent the lies that were told to keep me captive.
Recently, I have especially enjoyed deepening relationships with my LGBTQIA brothers and sisters. They have had much to teach me about the narrowness of the story I had been told.
Once I had many deep and loving relationships with LGBT friends I realized many Evangelical preachers lied about homosexuals to make it easier to reject them. The biggest obstacle to rejecting homosexuality lies in t he fact that the Evangelical view of sin lies heavily on the side of will and personal responsibility. I heard innumerable preachers and speakers authoritatively insist that same sex desire is an unnatural perversion of the way that God made every human being. that homosexuals choose to indulge same sex desire and embrace that identity. of course, they say, God would not damn those who could not choose differently.
as I came to know more and more people with same sex desire, both in friendship and as a therapist, the falseness of this assertion became transparent. I realized how many times men had used the power of their position to tell lies. insisting that they know these things to be true. I even heard some of them imply or state that psychological science supports their claims,,.which, as a psychologist, I know was a lie.
If this line of reasoning is not true, I was told, then homosexuality is an aberration or disease, a kind of birth defect which should be remedied, i possible. In short, thy were not meant to exist.
I was conditioned into homophobia by the Evangelical church, conditioned to feel loathing and disgust for those who did not fit the proscribed script for men and women from the Evangelical story.
Once I knew real LGBT people, however, that conditioning broke down. I had been trained to think that they should not exist, but that reasoning became abhorrent to me. Everything that Jesus said and did confirmed that my heart was right, these dear brothers and sisters are made in God’s image as completely as I and are just who God meant them to be. Once the conditioned loathing dissolved the only obstacle that remained to my acceptance of gay marriage was the countless voices insisting that the Bible condemns homosexuality. “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.” Because I had discovered the other lies, I decided that I would no longer believe anything just because of bullying and threats of rejection.
For years I had told my students that i had studied the Scriptures and concluded that the Evangelical position on homosexuality was correct. But when I uncovered the lies that Evangelical authorities had told me, it shamed me into acknowledging that I had passed those lies on to others. It is easy to see why people are taken in by fake news, We assume the good intentions and integrity of those telling us the things we want to hear. The truth was that I was afraid. I knew that if I said anything other than the “party line” I would be fired from my job and rejected from my faith community. I had seen it done to others.
I resolved to study the Scriptures myself with the help of commentaries and helpful theologians and, most importantly, prayerfully guided by Jesus. I found what many have been finding. Once I was free from the conditioned loathing of LGBT people and from the fear of reprisal if I thought forbidden thoughts I was able to examine the Bible's position on homosexuality with new eyes and I found that the facile interpretations that I had always been fed were not compelling, in fact, the "nuclear" verses that people use to make especially vehement attacks on homosexuality are interpreted quite inappropriately when used for that purpose.
For those who, like me, want to take a new look at what the Bible says about homosexuality, there are many helpful resources which I will list in a separate post. A summary would be too extensive to do here. This is already long enough.
I have always wondered why evangelical culture singled out the issue of homosexuality to be of such central importance, worthy of fighting and rejecting one another. I’ve come to the conclusion that it is a combination of many factors. 1) the conditioned loathing is passed on from generation to generation. 2) Like me, many are afraid that if they explore the scriptures and come to a conclusion that differs from those in authority they may face rejection. 3) Evangelical culture is established on a commitment to complementarianism which emphasizes hierarchical authority within the marriage. Systemic patriarchy would obviously be threatened if marriage is allowed to be anything other than one dominant man and one submissive woman. From my own study, years ago, I came to the conclusion that egalitarianism is the only model of marriage consistent with Jesus’ teaching.Wouldn’t it be something if the divorce rate among married gay Christians is lower than that among Evangelicals, which is already higher than the general population! 4) In recent years evangelical culture has gravitated toward the use of power and authority rather than love to propagate itself. This was abundantly evident in the recent election when white evangelicals put in office a president that promised to use his power to support their agenda despite the clear voice of gay Christians and their brothers and sisters of color telling them that he was an inappropriate choice. It has become clear to me that There is too much resistance to return to my first love for Jesus Christ and his fundamentals within the kingdom of evangelicalism. So I can no longer, in good conscience, be associated with its name.
