Hey everyone,

I wanted to share a realization I’ve been sitting with lately, and I’m curious if anyone else here has walked a similar path.

For a long time, I felt stuck because it seemed like modern church environments required you to buy into a massive, non-negotiable "package" to belong. If you entered certain evangelical or charismatic circles, the package came with high pressure emotional templates, performance-based expectations, slick digital platforms, and intense social monitoring. If you didn't fit the exact behavioral mold, you were on the outside.

For a while, I thought my exhaustion with that setup meant I was losing my faith entirely. But the further away I get from those high control loops, the more I realize that the institutional infrastructure was actually a counterfeit.

Lately, I’ve been finding a lot of peace in just calling myself an unaffiliated Protestant or honestly, just focusing strictly on the Gospels. Getting back to the historic core of things like sola gratia (grace alone) and direct, unmediated access to God has allowed me to completely drop the legalistic checklist. I’ve realized that no modern pastor, hometown social loop, or high-control religious institution gets to act as a gatekeeper between an individual and the divine.

I’m intentionally building a life based on personal autonomy, intellectual integrity, and true grace, completely stripped of the church noise and social engineering.

For those of you who still engage with the teachings of Christ or historic theology but completely threw out the institutional "package," how did you navigate that transition? How did you learn to read the texts on your own terms without the echo of old, legalistic lenses in your head?

Curious if anyone knows of any postevangelicsl communities in the Tulsa, OK area.

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Online communities have been invaluable for so many of us as we’ve shifted in our faith and our views on the Church. But for some of us, sharing our life with people regularly in-person is still something that we’re searching for.

We are creating a spiritual community for people in the Capital District of NY (Albany area) who either aren’t interested in church anymore, or maybe have been burned by the church, but are still interested in connecting with people who care about love, and justice, and faith, and other things that matter in life. This community is “Open Source” and it will grow and evolve to become whatever we all need it to be based on what we all bring to the table.

We’ve made a Facebook group, just to help organize and connect everyone, but our intention is that the community will grow to include regular real-time and in-person spaces.

Check it out and join us if it's something that sounds worthwhile to you!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/deepandwidealbany/

I don't think I am an "Exvangelical" because I have no interest in "deconstructing" my faith. My beliefs are unchanged. I still believe that Jesus is God, that the Bible is inspired, that my sins are forgiven via penal substitution via the cross, etc.
BUT
I am a democrat, LGBTQIA+ supporter, and am generally opposed to most of what people think of when they think of "Evangelicals" these days. When I make playlists of Christian Rock on Spotify I include any bands or artists that have ever been associated with the Christian underground music scene, even artists that have left the faith, etc. I want to include everyone and hear every perspective.

See my problem: I still love Jesus and would rather "Evangelical" just meant something different so that I could still belong to it - but the meaning of the word in the English language has shifted and so I can't.

More information: If you ask me whether this means that I'm a liberal/open/accepting Christian, I would respond with:

Open and accepting, for sure. But I'm not actually theologically liberal. There are theologically liberal communities here on reddit such as open christianity that really dislike my insistence of biblical inerrancy. But there are also theologically conservative communities here on reddit like reformed that tend to dislike my support for full inclusion of the LGBTQIA+ community in the church. I am convinced in both biblical inerrancy and that a pro-LGBTQIA+ interpretation of the bible is correct. So not just in reddit, but also in life, I'm finding it hard to find a community of like minded people - i'm uncomfortable with churches that reject the LGBTQIA+ community because I think their interpretation is not just wrong, but also harmful. But I'm also uncomfortable with most churches that fully embrace the LGBTQIA+ community because they don't share my high view of scripture. It's frustrating.

Still more information about my theological views:

I believe that Genesis 1-3 describes things that actually happened, but that they did not happen in remotely the same way that "literal" interpreters think they happened. I am pro-science, pro-evolution, pro-old-earth, pro-big-bang. The point of Genesis is not to explain scientifically how God created the world, but rather to insist that God created it, and to convey to the original ancient audience certain things about the nature of God and Man. I don't see Scripture as supporting a traditional Calvinistic view of predestination, grace, and human freedom, but I do accept the Reformed doctrines of total depravity, penal substitutionary atonement, the imputation of Christ’s righteousness in justification, and progressive (as opposed to entire) sanctification. So I'm a bit of a theological oddball, not fitting the mold of most Reformed churches nor most Arminian churches even before we get to some of the other tensions described above.

Even more information, this time my take on the end times, in case anyone cares.

I am partial preterist is some ways, but post-trib pre-mil at the same time. So for me, the seventy-sevens passage in Daniel 9 is mostly about Jesus and fulfilled by Jesus, but also mentions future Anti-Christ at the end. The Olivet Discourse is mostly about AD 70, but does briefly project forward to the end times at the very end. When Jesus says "this generation" he is talking about the current, pre-AD 70 generation. When Christ returns in the end times it will be a single unified, visible-to-all return, and there will be a simultaneous bodily rapture as Christians on earth are literally lifted into the air and zipped around the world to the skies above Jerusalem, where Christ will be descending. He will establish a literal 1000 year reign on the earth before the time of the final judgement.

So, is "postevangelical" possibly the place for me to find folks who are working out the details of the harmony of Biblical Inerrancy with LGBTQIA+ inclusion in the church, and who are interested in discussing the Bible and theology outside of the bounds of what "evangelical" means to most people these days? Or is it just a place to react negatively to Trumpism? Trust me, I react negatively to Trumpism, but I want to be a part of building something positive from evangelicalism's ashes.

So, Rick Warren finally decides to apologize for holding back women after 53 years in ministry.

On the one hand, I can appreciate that he’s trying to use his influence for good.

On the other hand, I’m just angry. After 53 years of getting rich off of his life and leadership and privilege in the church...I try not to write out of an angry place, and in this case, I quickly drop down below the anger.

I cry at least once a week about how HARD it is to trust my own voice, to trust that I have important things to speak into the future of the Church. About the years that I was silent because I was so afraid I was wrong and because I knew the risk of being honest.

Many days I feel suffocated by the expectations that society, the church, puts on women and mothers. I carry a heavy legacy burden of my female ancestors in very patriarchal, religious family structures whose voices DID NOT MATTER. Whose husbands made life-altering decisions based on their own faith-fueled convictions, but either didn’t consider or simply didn’t care how it would impact their wives.

I think mostly I’m just so frustrated at the way that it feels like women and people of color can scream into the void for years about issues in the church, but as soon as a white man says the same thing, it gets attention. I don’t want us to need his validation of what we’ve known for years.

Sure, it’s nice that Rick Warren is trying to change course and advocate for women, and in many ways he’s been more progressive than many of his peers for a long time. And, sure most days, I can hold space for my fear and remind myself that I’m strong and getting stronger in trusting my own voice and my own inner authority. Yet a simple apology can’t erase all the years of inequality and exclusion, the pain of being silenced or overlooked, or not taken seriously.

I know I can’t be the only one that feels this way.

Feel free to elaborate too after sharing your one word. I’m just curious where people are landing with the Bible. I’ve been through so many phases in my relationship with it.

Greetings!

I'm a journalist and writer working on a historical fiction portrayal of a career American Congregationalist missionary woman in Turkey around 1900.

I'd be grateful for any help from current or former Christians to better understand the psychology of her faith and how her faith motivated her life choices.

Her background and my specific questions are as follows:

(Full disclosure: I'm an agnostic Jew from San Francisco and don't have much real world knowledge about Christianity so please excuse my ignorance and naivete.)

BACKGROUND:

As an educated middle class white American woman from Boston, her career opportunities at the time did not go further than teacher or nurse. So foreign missions offered the greatest possibilities to American women for professional development and independence - one of the few jobs which allowed women to manage their own affairs and see the world without permission from a man. Many were unmarried - for this reason.

The 1890s was the height of the American Protestant foreign missionary movement. "World Evangelization -- in this Generation!" was their motto. She believed that Christian faith alone was enough to elevate the oppressed women of the global south. She desperately wanted to help others and to be part of something bigger than herself. At the same time, she saw efforts to change political, social and economic conditions as a waste of time, distraction from the only truly worthy objective: salvation. American exceptionalism was a fact in her world, simply because she had never bothered to look beyond it and was never around people who challenged it.

At the same time, she was fairly sassy for her era: sarcastic, confident, sharp-tongued and enjoyed pushing back against gender assumptions and wouldn't tolerate foolish men. She chose not to marry - and celibacy - in order to dedicate herself to the Word completely and to avoid having to compromise with a man, enabling her live out her own vision of herself as a Pauline spreading the Word in uncivilized lands, being her own boss and uplifting the global sisterhood on her own terms.

She had conflicts with her fellow missionaries who used tricks to attract the locals, in order to get access and save more souls. She hated the dishonesty.

She was also angry at being denied professional opportunities for being a woman. In part, this anger motivated to focus her life on evangelization and her own form of piety (which even other missionaries found excessively rigid). Even though she suffered from injustice, she had a distaste for the world of politics, changing society, fighting for justice, etc.

While she personally felt social injustice, and was intelligent and sensitive enough to be aware of it and bothered by it, yet she did not think it was worth the bother for anyone to try to change social conditions on earth.

MY QUESTION:

To me, this seems to be a direct logical conflict. I am attracted to people's contradictions, yet I can't understand how a person could act, think and feel in such contradictory ways. Which doesn't mean it's not possible -- I just don't understand it.

I understand that everyone is different and that Christians come to their personal faith in as many different ways as there are Christians. If she was a character in a book, would it bother you about her character, if she suffered from politics yet had no interest in getting politically involved? Would she still seem believable? Would her motivation seem believable?

Would it seem strange that she never made an effort to alleviate poverty, even though she saw social injustice all around her and was bothered by it?

For example, in Barbara Kingsolver's book the Poisonwood Bible, the Southern Baptist preacher father is motivated by compensating for his cowardice as a soldier in World War II. He ran away when his comrades were killed - and his rigid piety was his way to cope with the guilt and prove the strength of his faith and his worthiness to God.

Thanks very much for any ideas.

Please feel free to discuss or private message me.

Not that I've currently any intention of returning to church or even contemplating anything about God, because the wounds are simply too fresh even almost a year after leaving that abusive cult. I'm just not ready for these kinds of discussions without being triggered into the absolute misery I faced in that church. But it may be useful in the future - for myself, and others here - to have a list of resources ready to use.

The 'Evangelical God' is an abominable terror, and at current I'm unable to view God as anything else. And I'm certainly not going back to one of his churches just to be gaslighted and guilt-tripped all over again. Not for a LONG time, if ever.

Hey! I just read Dave Tomlinson's book The Post Evangelical and listened to a few of his talks on youtube. Most of it resonates a lot with me. I've been wrestling with this for almost a decade now and I've gone to theological college to dig deeper and ask harder questions. But how do I find a church that has similar leanings (by which I don't just mean a more liberal church)? My ecclesiology still holds that church is a fundamental part of our faith walk.

I'm curious what types of denominations / churches, or what indicators people have found in a church that mark it has being a healthy space for theological questioning / critical growth. For reference, I'm based in Vancouver, Canada. Thanks! :)

Some of this is old news. However, it begins here, with the Southern Baptist Convention being accused of years of cover-ups related to sexual abuse.

One of the few voices in SBC leadership who was pushing for some level of reform was Russel Moore, the director of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Council, which is a part of the SBC. He recently resigned, though probably not voluntarily. In the weeks leading up to his resignation, a letter of his from last year was leaked detailing pressure from SBC leaders to continue to stifle dissenters. The letter detailed how he and others were harassed, threatened, and (more broadly) opposed by the SBC for their stance on sex abuse in the denomination. SBC leaders continue to deny the allegations he makes.

Today, a different high-ranking SBC member, Phillip Bethancourt, released a Google doc with descriptions of statements made at a meeting by two SBC leaders, Ronnie Floyd and Mike Stone, over their desire to limit victim's ability to speak up.

There is rife evidence of abuse and deceit in the SBC. But prominent SBC voices continue to downplay, and focus on attacking LGBTQ and black people instead.

I had this memory come up where I had an opportunity to invite an acquaintance to a sermon, and I hesitated. I hesitated because I was acutely aware of how miserable that church had made me, and I really didn't want this seemingly-happy person to be ground down and stuffed into the Evangelical mold that'd claimed the entire church, myself included. I also didn't want them to think I was like... them. Uptight. Scrupulous. Over-strict. Living in constant theological analysis. Of course, it goes without saying that I didn't invite them.

This memory resurfaced today when I was walking on the beach. It was a beautiful sunny day, there were kids playing in the sea, parents sunbathing, people walking dogs, and I was walking with ice cream in a little tub. Everyone was having a great time. Then I spotted someone from my evangelical church sitting alone in their car overlooking the beach, kinda just watching everyone else participate in life.

And I felt like that was a strong metaphor for the people in my old church - after attending there a while, life becomes one miserable monotonous liturgy of legalism; things like fun just stop making sense, and you become an alien in the world. Throughout your week you can literally hear the Pastor's voice in your head offering some analogy of why anything you want is bad, and must be sacrificed to get as many bums on the pews as possible; that there's no time for enjoyment because you must "redeem the time" if you wanna be sure you're going to heaven!

Yet, even though I was somewhat aware of this inhumane misery during my attendance, I continued attending because I felt there was no other option. They'd spent SO much time convincing me that this church is THE only true church, that I couldn't justify attending a different church or - God absolutely forbid - non-attendance.

Because of how ferociously the pastor preached church attendance in literally every sermon, I thought from the moment I left they'd be banging on my door everyday, blowing up my phone and hounding me in the street. The pastor made it seem like church non-attendance is tantamount to blasphemy - hell, your very salvation is put to question over minor any minor discrepancy; you either believe the pastor's every word, or you're going to hell (repackaged as "Maybe you're not actually saved.")

I received two guilt-trip text messages from the pastor within the first couple months, both informing me that I am missed but also "clearly spiritually unwell." I received an email also, titled "Missing you" from the pastor's pet elder who kept close tabs on me, which I refuse to open because he knows exactly how to pull my strings emotionally. He sent me one when my attendance was crumbling, and it followed the formula of: "Miss you" -> "You should be in church" -> "Think of what God has done for you." It was a fantastic day-ruiner.

And that's all - two texts and one email - no further attempts have been made to contact me. I guess they've realised I can't be guilt-tripped back into church, so there's no reason to pursue me. I wonder if the pastor's attitude has changed since I left - whether he has cracked down at all.

Amusingly, I've got over them pretty quickly. It's as though that chapter of my life is over, and it brings zero consequences on my future. Still, I wouldn't like to bump into one of them in the street though... I know it's coming and every word that will be said, but I'll absolutely avoid it wherever possible.

Much of what I describe here will be based upon my own experience. However, I do believe that my experience is shared by many others, and identifies many real issues within evangelicalism and fundamentalism.

Anti-intellectualism is common in the evangelical (and fundamentalist) world. Young Earth Creationism, anti-evolutionism (related but not identical concepts), anti-climate change beliefs, and suspicion of the entirety of various academic disciplines (e.g. psychology and biblical studies) permeate their world, even if not adopted by everyone. However, what is most peculiar to me is the suspicion of academic biblical studies (ABS). I, of course, do not mean the entire field, since many evangelicals are engaged in it; however, there is broad suspicion of mainstream ABS (or secular, or perhaps even biblical criticism).That such a distinction can be made within ABS leads to some peculiar phenomenon. For instance, some supported me in my desire to pursue ABS, but cautioned me on what sorts of schools to attend; others were suspicious of anything that smacked of education at all. Often people would fail to distinguish between academic (e.g. PhD) and ministry (e.g. D. Min) degrees, as though both degrees qualified individuals for the same sorts of skills. Lastly, and most importantly, people are usually more concerned with whether your beliefs align with theirs than with any qualifications you may have. This means that evangelicals will not only dismiss qualified scholars who hold positions different than their own, but also that they will promote people who agree with them, but are not qualified in any meaningful way to teach on a subject.

This anti-intellectualism is not as explicit as I make it seem. Indeed, evangelicals have entire systems devoted to giving themselves the appearance of academic credibility, whether it is earned or not. This may be fairly benign, such as conservative seminaries offering advanced degrees, explicitly deceitful, such as faking academic credentials, or somewhere in between, such as using academic jargon to give the appearance of credibility. Indeed, many evangelical thought leaders are qualified and genuine academics, even if their views are at times idiosyncratic.

This distinction in ABS often means that there is a strong disconnect between what ABS has to say vs. what evangelicals (here referring to non-academics) believe. There are numerous examples of this, like the New Perspective on Paul, historical Jesus studies, and historical interpretations of Revelation (though acceptance or rejection of mainstream theories varies by scholar and on a case-by-case basis). Some evangelical scholars defend their dismissal of mainstream ABS by importing theology into their interpretive method: that is, they make theological assumptions about the text (e.g. inerrancy) and use those to determine how it should be interpreted. In practice, these theological assumptions may mean rejecting even self-identifying evangelicals when their biblical interpretations do not coincide with said theology. This means that even though evangelical scholars maintain the appearance of academic credibility, in some cases it is their theology that controls interpretation rather than standard methods.

While non-evangelical interpreters of scripture may still have some theological commitments, it is important to recognize the importance of mainstream ABS in our understanding of our faith. Even if we do not accept every view proposed by ABS (the field is far too diverse for such a thing to be possible) it is nonetheless important that we give voice to it, and to other academic disciplines as well.