Reviews and Comments

Aaron Lord

devlord@bookwyrm.social

Joined 1 year, 5 months ago

software dev in northern california • former worship leader now exvangelical, though the bulk of my reading history is theology • fiddle player 🎻 • INTJ • he/him

This link opens in a pop-up window

Blake Chastain: Exvangelical and Beyond (2024, Penguin Publishing Group) No rating

Growing up, I knew that, yes, there existed Christians far afield who were Catholic or Coptic or Orthodox, but as far as I could tell, we only nominally considered them a part of our brother-hood. Our teachings, on the other hand, were immutable and eternal, as if the Christians of the first century handed their traditions and ways of life directly to us. Evangelical Christianity was default-setting Christianity; everything else was lumped into a big vague category of "other." (7-8)

Sarah McCammon: The Exvangelicals (2024, St. Martin's Press) 5 stars

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NATIONAL BESTSELLER

"An intimate window into the world of American …

The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church

No rating

Sarah McCammon is an NPR journalist who was assigned to cover the Trump campaign in 2016. The Exvangelicals is part memoir and part reporting about that state of the church and why so many are leaving. I identified with the book all the way through, as I grew up in the church as well and left for similar reasons, though mine involved actual conflict rather than a quiet departure.

The author begins with reflection about growing up in the church, and describes the religious trauma that comes when you worry that when you prayed the sinner’s prayer when you were a few years younger didn’t “count.” “I didn't think I felt any different, and I wondered how I could know for sure that I was saved, that God had definitely heard my prayer. So, two years later, I asked my mom to help me pray it again, just to be …

Tim Alberta: The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism (Hardcover, 2023, Harper) 5 stars

The award-winning journalist and staff writer for The Atlantic follows up his New York Times …

A great book. I am an exvangelical. Alberta has admitted he has not “deconstructed “, though he writes, “Biblical Christianity requires a constant reassessing of one’s beliefs and biases; deconstruction is something that should be done every single day.” Even though I left the church a decade ago, I still hold so much of church culture in myself. So I was able to understand where Alberta was coming from. This book is a great takedown of Trumpism and right-wing evangelicalism, if you can get past the author’s pro-life stance.

I just wish it had a different cover. Alberta’s intended audience is the Church. But there’s no way I could send a copy of this book to my dad, who really needs to read it. He’d throw it away on sight.

A proper takedown of Christian Nationalism, but it seems to be for a specific audience

4 stars

Gushee correctly points out the errors in Christian Nationalism, but avoids the term because he dislikes it. He describes it as "authoritarian reactionary Christianity," which I dislike because "reactionary" seems to put them on the defensive justifiably, whereas in my opinion, Christian nationalists haven't been wronged and have nothing to defend themselves for.

His solution to the growing problem is a covenental approach towards society (as in Covenant Theology, see Puritans, Reformed Baptists), nurtured by participation in a Baptist polity. That is, as people are brought up in the church to participate in a local congregational church government, they are in training for a democratic participation/covenant in the broader community. But the covenental approach is decidedly religious in nature and fails to take the atheist into account, other than acknowledging separation of church and state and that "all are equal." It doesn't offer Enlightenment solutions because the covenant itself is …

Gushee correctly points out the errors in Christian Nationalism, but avoids the term because he dislikes it. He describes it as "authoritarian reactionary Christianity," which I dislike because "reactionary" seems to put them on the defensive justifiably, whereas IMO they haven't been wronged and have nothing to defend themselves for.

His solution to the growing problem is a covenental approach towards society (as in Covenant Theology), nurtured by participation in a Baptist polity. But the covenental approach is decidedly religious in nature and fails to take the atheist into account, other than acknowledging separation of church and state and that "all are equal."