In her new book ‘’The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church”, NPR political correspondent Sarah McCammon names the massive social movement of people leaving the church. She spoke with Scott Brocato about the book, her own experience growing up as an evangelical, and the appeal that Donald Trump has for today’s evangelicals.
SCOTT BROCATO:
First of all, how would you describe "exvangelicals”?
SARAH McCAMMON:
Quite simply, somebody who has come from an evangelical background, and for whatever reason has sort of consciously evolved away or moved away from it. And that can happen for a lot of different reasons, although there are some common themes, and it can look different for different people. But the thing that I discovered, both from my own life and from my reporting, is that for people with an evangelical background, there's often a sort of shared history and culture and vocabulary. And some of the reasons why people sort of rethink their faith and move to a different place are sometimes similar. There, once again, there are common themes, and leaving can be very painful and challenging. I think that's true for leaving any religious community. But mine was evangelicalism and, you know, I wrote this book because in a sort of surprising and unexpected way for me in 2016, my personal background ran right up against my professional work as a journalist covering the 2016 Republican primary. Coming out of that, I came across this term “exvangelical”, and became kind of fascinated with this movement that I was seeing online of people sort of processing their evangelical background out loud and thinking about what it meant to them and what they wanted it to mean going forward.
SCOTT BROCATO:
Well, you refer to yourself as an exvangelical. What were some of the moments that made you realize that maybe the teachings that you grew up with were no longer teachings that you could embrace?
SARAH McCAMMON:
It's interesting, because when I when I was an evangelical, I didn't use that term, and I never used the term “exvangelical” until I came across it in the last several years. But I think they're both useful terms, because they sort of describe a religious movement. And as I said, they describe a movement away from that background, that context.
For me, it was a number of things. It was largely a sense that some of the things I was being taught in my church and my Christian School didn't feel like they added up, and they didn't feel like they aligned with my values. One of the central characters of this story is my grandfather, who was one of the very few people in my life growing up that wasn't particularly religious? He was also one of the most accomplished people I knew. He was a a neurosurgeon who took care of people, including children, in the midst of health crises. He was a very thoughtful person who later in life, I would have some really deep and interesting conversations with about religion and spirituality; but who, as a child, was presented as somebody that we needed to “save”, and this idea that we needed to “save” everyone, that we needed to persuade everyone to think like us and live like us, was something that I struggled with even as a child. And increasingly as I got older, the idea that I had all the answers and was supposed to persuade the rest of the world to share those same answers...it was just something that became untenable for me. And for a lot of the people I talked to, that process was a similar process, again for all sorts of different reasons.
There are different tension points for different people, and this book is organized around some of those themes, some of those sources of cognitive dissonance. You know, for some people, it’s meeting someone of a different faith, meeting someone who's gay or lesbian. If their church teaches that that is not God's will, maybe their own struggles with their sexuality. Maybe it's the intensifying alignment of many evangelical churches with a particular form of politics and, sadly, extremism in some cases. The specifics are different for different people. But for everyone I talked to, that process was often very conflicted, scary, confusing. But on the other side of it was a sense of relief and freedom, and I think greater authenticity.
SCOTT BROCATO:
Well, you covered the Trump campaign for NPR (in 2016). How do you explain why so many evangelicals are attracted to Donald Trump as a politician?
SARAH McCAMMON:
For some, it's pragmatic and instrumental, and that was what I heard from a lot of people that I interviewed in the run up to the 2016 campaign. I heard a lot of people say, evangelicals and otherwise, that this was a binary choice. It was between policies they agreed with, even if they didn't like the guy, and policies they didn't agree with.
But I think what we've seen in this campaign cycle is, if you look at polling data, exit polling, white evangelicals were instrumental not only in electing Trump in 2016, voting for him in large numbers in 2020 in the election that he lost, but in 2024 and once again making him the Republican nominee. So whatever qualms evangelicals seem to have, they seem to have overcome them. And maybe that's not a big surprise, because he did deliver on many of their policy goals. Things like the overturning of Roe V Wade. And, you know, the theme that I hear, that I've heard again and again and that I think other journalists have heard from evangelicals and evangelical leaders: Trump isn't a pastor. He's a political leader. You don't have to be a perfect person. But for someone like me, who watched the evangelical response to Bill Clinton's moral failings as president in the 1990s, it feels like a juxtaposition, like a very different tone we’re hearing today about those issues.
SCOTT BROCATO:
Finally, what do you want readers to take away from your book, especially evangelicals, who might also be struggling with the same doubts and fears that you struggled with?
SARAH McCAMMON:
This book is not anti-religion. It's not anti-Christianity. It's really about honesty and authenticity and being willing to ask questions, and being willing to approach faith in a complex, thoughtful way that's inclusive of other people. I think one of the most dangerous things that we can do is claim that God is on our side and we have everything figured out. You know, if you're committed to a pluralistic democracy like the one that our founding fathers tried to set up in our Constitution, for all of their faults, that is something that our country’s founded on. We become very anti-democratic, very fast, if we claim that we have all the answers, and that God is on our side and that our way is the only way, and that not only should religious faith be something that is thought about and forms our personal lives, but it can be really imposed on other people. And I think those questions of how to sort of apply that thinking get complicated and messy. But for me, it goes back to the Constitution and the idea that the United States of America is a place where everybody gets to live and worship their God or not. And I hope that that's something that everyone will sort of reflect on as we go forward.
You know, there's some really worrying trends. If you look at some of the data around white evangelicals, there's an increasing alignment with Christian nationalistic ideas and the idea that you need to be a Christian to be an American. That concerns me as someone who grew up in a Christian environment. And I hope that we’ll come to a place where freedom for everyone continues to be to be paramount, as I think it has been historically.
I guess the last thing I'll say is, I just hope that people who read this book, if they have struggled with their own religious background in whatever way, will feel seen and described, and in some way validated. And that maybe those on the outside of this experience will have a sense of more insight and also empathy into what this process is like.
