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(WARNING: There will be spoilers throughout.)
“You and I are in a day and age where deconstruction and the turning away from and leaving the faith has become some sort of sexy thing to do. I contend that if you ever experience the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, actually—that that’s really impossible to deconstruct from. But if all you ever understand Christianity to be is a moral code, then I totally get it.”
This was said by Matt Chandler, pastor of Village Church, back in 2021 in a sermon entitled “The Depth of the Gospel.” That particular chunk of the sermon went viral and sparked some online backlash. It was pointed out at the time that Chandler was misusing the word “deconstruction” to mean leaving Christianity altogether and while deconstruction can lead to deconversion, a person doesn’t always begin that journey with the intent of abandoning their faith. For me, deconstruction started as a desperate attempt to hang onto mine. The last thing I wanted to do was leave. I never set out to question my faith; it just happened naturally when I couldn’t square certain things away anymore. And it was one of the most painful, unsexy decisions I’ve had to make.
Back in 2016, Blake Chastain starting tweeting with the hashtag #exvangelical to promote a podcast he was launching with the same name. The hashtag became a space for people within evangelical Christianity to talk about their doubts and deconstruct their faith. I recommend reading Chastain’s piece on what he intended with the term “exvangelical.” It’s not a label I use often in reference to myself, but I do think it’s a helpful term when having these kinds of conversations.
#Exvangelical spawned others like #EmptyThePews, launched by Crissy Stroop in response to the white evangelical support of Donald Trump. In response to the #MeToo reckonings happening in Hollywood and Washington, Emily Joy and Hanna Paasch created #ChurchToo for people to share their stories of sexual abuse in churches. You don’t put that kind of work in and risk getting dragged through the mud if it’s just “some sort of sexy thing to do.”
I don’t bring up Matt Chandler1 to dunk on him over a two-year-old video. Putting all that aside, he’s expressing something I heard regularly growing up. It was phrased differently (the word “sexy” was too profane for our kind of church) but essentially the same idea: people only leave church because they’re trying to be cool. If someone were to be more generous, they’d say, “They’re just confused.” I also bring it up because I thought of it again a couple of months ago when I watched Higher Ground for the first time, a film about a woman going through a crisis of faith in a fundamentalist Christian community.
Higher Ground is directed by Vera Farmiga, who also plays the lead Corinne Walker. It’s based on This Dark World: A Memoir of Salvation Found and Lost2 by Carolyn S. Briggs, who also co-wrote the screenplay. Corinne Walker is Briggs' fictional counterpart in one of the most honest portrayals of fundamentalist Christians I’ve seen in a while. The temptation to veer into satire or mockery is all over a story like this and thankfully Farmiga had the discipline to not take it in that direction. I felt it the most during a scene where one of the characters starts speaking in tongues and rather than being a punchline, it’s treated as a genuine spiritual experience.
By taking an open, uncynical approach, the first half of Higher Ground is a great illustration of how a person gets drawn into this kind of community. The film starts with young Corinne going to VBS as a young girl and not really taking the bait. Years later, she’s a young mother married to Ethan, an aspiring young musician in a rock band. After a close call where they nearly lose their infant daughter, Corinne and Ethan see it as a sign from God and turn to Christianity. Set during the Jesus Movement of the late 60’s/early 70’s, the young couple enthusiastically falls in with a fundamentalist Christian church. They’re welcomed with open arms and eventually their whole world revolves around this church, which makes leaving an even harder decision to make.
The turning point in the film comes about forty minutes in when Corinne speaks up during a service and goes beyond just a simple testimony. She’s quickly shut down then later pulled aside by the pastor’s wife for correction. “You came very close to preaching just now,” she’s told. “We have to be so careful not to appear as though we’re teaching the men.” A few scenes later, Corinne’s pulled aside again by the pastor’s wife again at a Bible study after one of the men3 compliments her maternity dress that happens to show off her shoulders. “The scriptures tell older women to teach the young women,” Corinne is told before getting dressed down (no pun intended) once again.
The next big blow comes when Annika, one of the women in the church and Corinne’s best friend, is diagnosed with a brain tumor. She survives the operation to remove it but suffers brain damage and is confined to a wheelchair. As a result, Corinne becomes even more doubtful and withdrawn.
After getting into a fight where Ethan physically assaults her, he and Corinne go to see a Christian marriage counselor. After claiming to be a Prophet of God, the counselor pulls Corinne aside and speaks bluntly about her salvation. “We want to see you in heaven with him and the kids,” he tells her. “And not outside with the dogs.” There’s some incredible acting from Farmiga when Corinne looks back at him, full of contempt, and says, “Inside with you or outside with the dogs” as she feigns weighing the two.
Going back to the Chandler video, I watched some of the sermon it was clipped from to get a better idea of what he was trying to say. Right after the clipped section, Chandler says, “And if you find yourself in that spot, I’m telling you, I love you right now, and we’ll sit down with you and you don’t have to punt on this thing. You might not have ever tried it.” It’s another piece of well-intentioned but misguided advice: maybe you just haven’t gone to the right church.
It’s been ten years since I left my home church and for the last five years or so, I’ve been attending an Episcopal church. It was actually four years ago today that I received my confirmation and officially became an Episcopalian myself. Putting aside the people who didn’t cut me off after leaving, I’m always on my heels when talking to someone from my old denomination. Over the decade since my wife and I left, I’ve had a few people reach out to grab coffee or lunch, already signaling that we were going to be discussing my spiritual life. The last time I agreed to one of these, I had higher hopes because it was someone who’d left the same church. They hadn’t left the whole denomination like I had, but we both agreed that our old place of worship was harming us spiritually. Then we both spent an hour sharing our experiences with leaving and dealing with the fallout.
I spent the whole lunch thinking we were on the same page until we were saying goodbye and the other shoe dropped. “I really think you’d like my church, man. I know you’ve had a bad experience and all, but I really think you need to give this another chance. You need to ignore all that other crap. I just don’t feel like God’s done with you yet.”
Before leaving, they assured me with a big smile that they didn’t think I was going to hell4. I didn’t get a word in edgewise until I said goodbye and walked back to work. They clearly had a pitch planned and were waiting for the right moment to spring it on me. After spending almost an hour letting my guard down and bonding over escaping a spiritually abusive environment, I felt like an idiot. I got a few Twitter DMs over the next couple of weeks, reminding me of the standing invitation to visit their awesome church. After a couple of weeks went by without me responding, I noticed they were no longer following me.
When I started writing this, I sent a message out in one of the Facebook groups I’m in5 asking to hear from exvangelicals who did not come back to church, for one reason or another. I heard from a few atheists, agnostics, people in between, and one person who converted to Judaism. As I read through them again preparing for this, I started to notice a pattern.
“I think what's galling to me is a profound lack of genuine curiosity about why people leave…” - Peter
“I’d say the big misconception about non-religious exvangelicals that gets under my skin is the concept that since I left the church I never really believed to begin with. I understand why that’s a knee jerk reaction that feels safe to those still in the church but it still bothers me. I believed really deeply. In fact, actually reading the Bible wanting to understand it was a big part of me questioning my faith.” - Carly
“I get this vibe that evangelical Christians think that those of us who deconstructed chose to do so. Like we were totally fine, and then one day said screw it. In my experience, I deconstructed because I had to for my mental health. I couldn’t handle the constant anxiety of being afraid. Afraid of God’s wrath, afraid of hell, afraid that if I didn’t proselytize that it would be my fault people went to hell.” - Brenda
“I get so frustrated at the effort to paint exvangelicals as uninvested in faith, or as noping out because we wanted to live licentiously. Every single exvangelical I know is deeply thoughtful about religion, God, ethics...everything. No matter where they wind up on the religious spectrum.” - Kirsten
“The discussion never includes any honest acknowledgment of wrongdoing or failure on the part of the church folk. The most they might admit is something like, ‘maybe we didn’t instill the beliefs enough.’ But the problem is the opposite. The beliefs were instilled and they were antithetical to and inconsistent with a life of reason and empathy. The people who hold those beliefs refuse to improve them.” - Zachary
When my doubts started to manifest and I tried opening up about them, I was asked how often I was praying, fasting, reading the Bible, etc. The truth is, I was doing all of those furiously. There’s this automatic assumption that you just haven’t gone at it hard enough. I could not have been more bought in. Very similar to what Keith wrote me:
“I think many Christians think Exvangelicals never were true Christians. So they write us off as ‘well, you never really believed so you don't count.’ But for me at least, I believed HARD. I was all in. I prayed the prayers, I did the missions trips, I cried during worship, I felt God's presence so many times. The more I look into it, the more I see that the people who were all in as youths, tend to be the biggest deconverts/exvangelicals.”
These conversations will never be productive as long as Christians assume that exvangelicals haven’t put in the work and continue to downplay the reasons they left in the first place. As Em wrote to me: “It’s obviously true that trauma/spiritual abuse triggers A LOT of deconstructing (it definitely did for me), but I’m seeing it co-opted by the mainstream church as a way to dismiss people. It’s like, oh, you’re just so broken and wounded, we can’t really take anything you say seriously because it’s coming out of your trauma.”
My feeling is that if some of these people had to sit and really listen to how harmful their beliefs have been to other people, they may be forced to go on a spiritual journey of their own. As Higher Ground demonstrates perfectly, it’s a lonely endeavor that most people are uncomfortable taking.
All of that was my long-winded way of saying I recommend the film Higher Ground. Sometimes it’s hard explaining stuff like this and I appreciate there being a movie that shows you glimpses of it without condemning either side. To date, this is the only film Vera Farmiga has directed and it’s impressive that she’s did so while pulling off a really strong performance.
There’s an interview in TIME Magazine promoting the movie where Farmiga talks about being raised in a family that converted from the Ukranian Orthodox church to Pentecostalism. She doesn’t share what her present-day (as of 2011) beliefs are, so I won’t presume where she’s at today, spiritually speaking. But there’s a quote in here from Farmiga that expresses what I’ve been trying to say much more concisely, so I will close with that:
"Doubt is the middle position between knowledge and ignorance. It encompasses cynicism but also genuine questioning."
(A special thank you to Carly, Kirsten, Peter, Keith, Em S, Heather, Hannah, Brenda, Aaron, Debbi, and Zachary for seeing my Facebook post and being willing to share your stories with me. It can be a tricky thing opening up about something like this, so I appreciate you answering all my questions.)
Besides, there are bigger things to dunk on the guy for. There’s the time he placed a woman under church discipline when she tried to leave her husband who had confessed to having an addiction to child pornography. The whole thing was covered in a NYT story here. Then a year after the “deconstruction” comments, he went on pastoral leave after confessing to DM’ing a woman who wasn’t his wife. He told his church before leaving that the messages weren’t romantic or sexual but still “unguarded and unwise” and “revealed something unhealthy in me.” It’s possible the whole thing is less scandalous than it sounds, but the further explanation of what transpired doesn't make it sound any less weird. I think the Billy Graham Rule has really broken a lot of people’s brains.
If you’re interested in reading the book, it’s since been re-released with the title of the movie instead of This Dark World. It’s now Higher Ground: A Memoir of Salvation Found and Lost.
The man is played by a young Ebon Moss-Bachrach, currently starring on The Bear. I knew him first as Desi on Girls, so it’s weird seeing him play a genuinely nice guy and not a sleazebag.
What a relief.
The only things keeping me on Facebook are FB messenger to stay in touch with my family and these groups.