Article originally published on Doorway Publishing

So you haven’t heard of the term “exvangelical?” 

Don’t worry, you will, all in good time. If you look closely enough online, search between the bookshelves of your local Christian bookstore, follow the trending hashtags on Twitter, or even beat down the bushes in your own neighborhood, you will see that exvangelicals are sprouting up like morel mushrooms in the damp pine forests of Upper Michigan. They are everywhere. They are loud, they are proud, and they are very, very cool. And in their coolness, they are super impressed with themselves as they bombard social media with courageous messages of self-expression and utopian love. It is a rebirth of the 60’s counter-culture — that is of course before the Altamont disaster — so you won’t be able to miss them touting a fresh new dawning of militant free love and the brotherhood, no, the personhood, of man. Oops, I meant humankind.  I’m not sure what I am actually allowed to say anymore. But who cares about all that, because what the powerful exvangelical really likes to do above all else is to tick-off regular ol’ run-of-the-mill Christians. That is what they live for!

Let’s begin with definitions. To understand what an exvangelical is we need to first define what they once claimed to have been; a sad woebegone Christian evangelical. An evangelical, in the simplest, or most brutish of terms, is a person who believes three basic things: (1) They believe the Gospel and want to spread it as “Good News” (‘evangelion’ in the Greek). The “Good News” has three parts: Jesus, the Son of God, lived, died, and rose again. (2) Faith in that message is what God requires in order to have a relationship with Him and to be “saved” from eternal condemnation, or as people once used to say, hell. (3) The Bible is God’s inspired word, which means it is the authoritative and error-free source for all Christian beliefs and practices. 

But now, according to the most vocal trendsetters and popular opinion-makers of current culture, the word evangelical has morphed into something far more insidious and dark over the last few decades.  Dani Fankhauser, a writer for The Salve, a progressive liberal Christian lifestyle publication, explains: “For some evangelicals, especially millennials, the recent confluence of religion and politics has reached a tipping point. The need to distance themselves from Republican views gave rise to a new term: exvangelical.

The term — now a hashtag, podcast, and community — brings together people who seemingly want to identify by what they are not.

Some still claim their Christian identity but reject headlining Republican policies on abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. Others left religion completely, but the exvangelical identity creates a common bond with others who escaped a particular type of trauma, perhaps as one might attend a support group for survivors of champagne cork accidents.”

A couple of things need to be noted from this definition:

• Exvangelicals view all of life as political. Life, to them, is a polarized universe where people must fall on either side of the pendulum swing that goes back and forth between conservative and liberal political ideologies. And since they think like this, they wrongly assume everyone thinks like this. They believe Biblical moral convictions do not really come from a person who “rightly divides the word of truth” but from countless hours of being brainwashed by cable news and reading political blogs and listening to binary leaning podcasts.
• Exvangelicals are deconstructionists by nature. They have convinced themselves that since they have suffered trauma, they have the right to attack and destroy the systems that gave them that trauma. They blame those in charge, and since those in charge like parents, pastors, traditional historians and the old guard of politicians (patriarchy) didn’t protect them from emotional harm, those same leaders are never to be trusted again.
• Exvangelicals have embraced a brave new ethos, they accept everything but Evangelicalism. Some Christian writers like Grayson Gilbert describe this mentality as, “an exercise in absurdity on its face to justify the desired outcome. The ends of emotional self-satisfaction justify the means, in spite of overwhelming evidence that betrays the mantra of ultimate fulfillment in ‘you doing you.’…where it is simply a series of logical, hermeneutical, and psychological gymnastics one must perform to jump through the necessary hoops to affirm their sense of self.”

I call this cool new perspective simply the “Running Away from Home Syndrome.” When I was a kid I wanted to run away from home because my mom wouldn’t let me have snacks before dinner. I was mad at her. So in that moment of anger, I ran away. All I knew was that I was mad at my mom and dad, and sisters and brother because they didn’t give me what I wanted at that moment. So I ran away, not realizing no one else really cared about my silly childish problems.  Clouded by rage, I saw my family as the issue. But what was I running away to? I didn’t know and I didn’t care. It took me only half an hour to wake up from my childish funk and go back home.

Many of the exvangelicals have run away from the church, those who were once considered their family, and now they boldly declare that they are never coming back home. As Jessica Bennett, a 30-year-old exvangelical says, “I don’t personally see the benefit of any religion. I know many do and I think there is nothing inherently wrong with faith. I think that views of evangelical and/or fundamentalist Christianity regarding women, people of color, and mental illness to be particularly abhorrent. If we are talking about the good and bad of evangelicalism, I don’t think there is any good to keep. Whatever existed there that was good is not anything inherently owned by evangelicalism.”

So they leave and are following many of the well-known names like Marty Sampson from Hillsong, Bart Compolo, Joshua Harris, Abraham Piper, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Christian author Glenna Doyle Melton who left her former husband and is now married to the Olympic Soccer star Amy Wambach. As she declares in bold freedom on a recent Facebook post, “What do you want to believe? What do you need to believe? Stop waiting to believe it, and do something to make it real!”

The Dead Roots of Exvangelicalism

So why are so many people leaving? Is it because they have thought deeper and longer and more ‘authentically’ on theological truths than your average evangelical does?  Is it because they are more compassionate towards the marginalized? Is Emily Joy, the 27-year-old exvangelical yoga teacher right when she laments over the present state of the church after she heard the news that World Vision would no longer hire any LGBTQ people (“In that moment, I knew evangelicalism was an empty belief system that didn’t have anything to do with repairing real harm and injustice in the world”)?

Does the exvangelical just love more? Or is there another reason why they left the evangelical church?

On closer inspection, I think there is something more basic that lies beneath the extravagant language and passionate bold tones of the exvangelical, I think it is simply good old-fashioned self-absorption. Some people would call this Narcissism, but I think that we should reserve that word for only the true psychopaths. Self-absorption is kinder and gentler, the way they like it, and it is another way to say that exvangelicals are simply people who are “easily impressed” with themselves. 

Let me give you an example. Recently, Los Angeles Magazine wrote a puff piece on one of the original famous exvangelicals, Rob Bell. Toward the end of the article, journalist David Gardner in fawning praise of his spiritual hero writes, “When we went surfing and Bell caught a particularly good wave, he’d still bail off his board at the end so that he could feel the jolt of the cold Pacific Ocean on his skin. When he saw something characteristically L.A., like a smoothie menu that offered ashwagandha and lion’s mane boosters, he’d snap a photo on his phone. If he liked something he ordered, he’d insist on sharing it. When he shopped at Trader Joe’s, he sang “I Love Rock ‘N’ Roll” out loud as it played on the loudspeakers. When his kids congregated in the living room, he’d throw himself entirely into whatever they were doing, whether it was playing Minecraft or playing the guitar.”

If you read between his gushing lines, David Gardner makes it seem like Rob Bell lives life as nobody has ever lived it before. Golly gee, Rob Bell sang “I Love Rock’ N’ Roll” out loud as it played on the loudspeakers at Trader Joe’s. No boring evangelical would ever do that, would they? Oh no, they are too old and crusty, stuck to their boring traditions carved out of ancient medieval stones of dogma and Calvinistic death. But the fresh and new exvangelical heart of Rob Bell is so free he actually plays Minecraft with his kids, and most shocking of all he picked up a guitar and played! All of us creepy old evangelicals can do is maybe turn on the Lawerence Welk show and tell our kids to shut up and read Our Daily Bread. (You should also see Rob’s new Hamburgler shirt, no evangelical will dare to wear something so raw and real.)

Do you see how impressed they are by simply living? It is as if they breathe and the footsteps they walk have never been attempted before.

Let me give you another recent example, and it is the one that was the impetus for writing this article. A new member of the exvangelical camp is a singer by the name of Kevin Max, formerly of the band DC Talk (Decent Christian Talk). This group was leading the popular Christian music scene in the early 1990s and Kevin was the epitome of cool! He also was the first of the group to leave so he could chase fame on his own. That was around the time he was experimenting with his voice modifications and wearing thick black eyeliner. I remember DC Talk and Kevin’s leaving well because I was a youth pastor at the time and the kids in my youth group thought he was doing things no rock star had ever done before him. The kids in my youth group at the time were not familiar with old classic rock and thought DC Talk was so original when they took and retooled old favorites like ‘Lean on Me’, ‘Jesus is Just Alright’, and U2’s “40.” That isn’t creativity, it is sheer capitalism, something he decries now. I have also tried to follow the career of Kevin Max, formally Kevin Smith, because he sang Christian hymns with my wife in the choir at Baptist High School in Grand Rapids. She said he was always a bit of a celebrity who liked the spotlight and rarely noticed the underclassman.

Recently Kevin Max has described himself in a tweet as “anti-war, pro-peace, anti-hate, pro-live, pro-LGBTQIA, pro-BLM, pro-open mindedness, anti-narrow mindedness, pro-utopia, anti-white nationalist agenda, pro-equality, pro-vax, pro-music, anti-1%rs, pro-poor, pro-misfit-pro-Jesus, etc…”

Wow, that is quite an amazing list, even though these words mean nothing, he wants us to be impressed. But wait a minute, how can you be pro-utopia when utopia quite literally means, “an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect.” He sounds a lot like John Lennon did when he sang “Imagine”:

“Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us, only sky
Imagine all the people
Livin’ for today
Ah”

If people were allowed to be honest, this is nothing more than self-deluded nonsense, but it sure sounds cool!  If you ask me, Kevin’s tweets are simply the words of a man who is impressed with himself. He continues, 

“God cares about my progression and asking questions and wanting to know what is real and what isn’t real. I don’t think the God that I believe in is going to just all of the sudden ignore me because I don’t believe every single thing that’s written down somewhere.”

In other words, I’m cool so I think I should be able to make up the reality that I want to be true along the way. But what does God say about himself and his word? Can we just treat them as another opinion with a wink and a nod, or should we do everything we can to believe what has been written down? 

Paul is pretty clear about God’s word. “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16)

Moses is pretty clear on Scripture, “Take to heart all the words I have solemnly declared to you this day, so that you may command your children to obey carefully all the words of this law. They are not just idle words for you—they are your life.” (Deuteronomy 32:46-47)

David is pretty clear on Scripture, “The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The decrees of the Lord are firm, and all of them are righteous. They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold.” (Psalm 19:7-11)

Solomon, the wisest man before Jesus, is also pretty sold on God’s word as well, “Every word of God is flawless; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Do not add to his words, or he will rebuke you and prove you a liar.” (Proverbs 30:5-6)

The sad part of the exvangelical is by abandoning the high view of scripture and theological truth, they have ended up abandoning all of their convictions, and have landed into the muddy river delta of ideas called progressive liberalism. Some call it the misery of leftism, a sad land where people take themselves far too seriously.

The God Who Is

Why do people become so impressed with themselves? It is because they forget about God. They have stopped worshipping him. As A.W. Tozer has said, “In many churches, Christianity has been watered down until the solution is so weak that if it were poison it would not hurt anyone, and if it were medicine it would not cure anyone!” And why has this happened? Here is what Tozer says, and listen close:

“As long as God is considered to be very much like the rest of us, except a little higher and a little greater, there won’t be any great amount of holy fear among church people. In my opinion, the greatest single need of the moment is that lighthearted superficial religionists be struck down with a vision of God high and lifted up, with His train filling the temple. The holy art of worship seems to have passed away like the Shekinah glory from the tabernacle. As a result, we are left to our own devices and forced to make up the lack of spontaneous worship by bringing countless cheap and tawdry activities to hold the attention of church people.”

In other words, we are far too easily impressed with ourselves. God’s greatness is lost in the fog machines of our own fallen glory. Have you ever watched Kevin Max act? Watch the movie “The Imposter” and you will see the perfect metaphor of what has happened in the exvangelical world. A cheap substitute for good acting. Exvangelicalism is a cheap substitute for a faith that sustains you all through life. Come back home, and stop running away. The world cares nothing for you, and eventually, they will hurt you too.

Deconstruction leaves only ashes and rubble, and nothing more.

Exvangelicalism is full of imposters who are full of themselves. We need a fresh vision of God that is so bright we learn to forget about ourselves and worship the only being who can truly fascinate, Jehovah God. Another word for this is genuine humility. Oh, what a wonderful and freeing place to be.