Miles Smith of Mere Orthodoxy was kind enough to read a stack of exvangelical memoirs for us. For those of you who are blessedly unfamiliar with the trend, this is now a whole subgenre of personal memoir. You, too, can be applauded as courageously speaking truth to power, if only you will very publicly break up with the church, preferably on Instagram. You might even get a book deal out of it. Mr. Smith has done us all a service, plowing through a number of such books in order to discuss some of the common elements. He writes:
“Fundamentally, exvangelicals seemed to have been told that a specific type of church was the true church, that true faith probably didn’t exist outside of it, and that the leaders of those churches could speak with near ex cathedra authority on any issue they deemed important. The specifics may change from church to church–some tended to be vaguely charismatic, others strict dispensationalists, and still others a kind of independent folk Calvinist. But all shared a certain exclusivity and clericalism that defined their existence. These churches and this culture were governed ostensibly by the Bible, but ultimately it was a faith defined primarily by individual pastors….Enough of these churches led by enough of this clericalist type of minister popped up between 1970 and 2000 to build an entire subculture.”
Just a Subculture?
Speaking from my experience ministering to people who’ve abandoned their faith, I agree that a number of them fit Smith’s profile, which is to say that (in rough generalities) they come from churches that mix generic doctrinal orthodoxy with cult-of-personality sociology. I’ve been at war with that defective ecclesiology my entire adult life. I cut my teeth in ministry doing counter-cult work with the victims of exactly that sort of ministry. Upon hearing their stories, I’ve surprised quite a number of exvangelicals from such churches by responding, “Well, you can’t go back to that!” (And they shouldn’t, either. There are plenty of faithful-if-flawed churches to fellowship with; no need to get tangled up in a cult.) But look, while we all agree that cults of personality are a bad idea, that’s hardly the whole story with exvangelicals.
Plenty of these folks don’t fit that profile, and Smith himself mentions one of them when he wonders aloud why so many people listened to Bill Gothard and Joshua Harris. It’s a good question (which I’ve discussed elsewhere), but the point for the moment is that he’s aware of Joshua Harris, himself now an exvangelical. Harris didn’t grow up the downtrodden follower of some clericalist mini-pope out in the swamps, thinking his church was The Only True Church. He grew up speaking all over the country in churches and at conferences, and attended seminary at Regent College in Vancouver before abandoning his faith. The exvangelical phenomenon is not confined to the isolated backwaters.
Politics and Pentecostals…
Smith’s article focuses quite a bit on both recent politics and the charismatic movement with regard to his exvangelical interlocutors. Bethel Church gets a mention, as does Greg Locke’s Global Vision Church, and the word “Trumpist” also comes up a surprising number of times for a short article. The overall effect is to give the impression that you’re seeing a wave of these “I used to be a Christian, but…” books because independent churches with no historical roots got themselves tangled up with Trump and Pentecostalism, and people understandably fled. (If only we’d all remained mainline, cessationist, and respectably centrist, how faithful we would be!) In keeping with that, there’s a definite class-oriented vibe in Smith’s piece. Trump’s appeal is populist, Pentecostalism is famously working-class, particularly in the South, and there’s a certain looking-down-the-nose, “Isn’t this a bit regrettable” tone in the article, especially in its conclusion: “We sometimes accuse exvangelicals of leaving ‘Protestant churches.’ I’m not so sure they did.” I began to wonder about Smith’s background: I made a bet with myself that he was a southern Episcopalian.
Upon a little research, I discovered that Dr. Miles Smith IV (Ph.D. in history, 2013) is Anglican (ACNA), “a native Carolinian,” and a Citadel M.A. graduate who, in addition to his serious work, “sometimes writes for popular outlets like Mere Orthodoxy, The Gospel Coalition, Public Discourse, The Federalist, and The University Bookman.” Call me crazy, but my Appalachian fundie-trained nose could smell the clubby, upper-crusty Southern Anglican aspirations coming off Smith’s article. As you might have guessed by now, Gentle Reader, I do not find this an endearing trait, but that’s fine; Jesus transcends all our tribal affinities. Miles Smith and I both belong to Christ, and therefore to one another, and anything that stands in the way of our unity is future ash in the Kingdom of God. For today, the point is that you should not be lulled by Dr. Smith’s complacent sense that exvangelicals don’t come from the same places that we real Protestants do.
…and you
I do appreciate Dr. Smith’s sacrificial act, slogging through a stack of self-justifying exvangelical accounts so the rest of us don’t have to. Speaking as a pastor who actively works with such people on a regular basis, I think Smith’s treatment tells some truths, but falls woefully short of really capturing the exvangelical phenomenon. The whole truth is a good bit less comfortable: while some of the folks who abandon the faith come from insular, low-caste swamps on the working-class side of the tracks, rather a lot of them are more like Joshua Harris: well-resourced, experienced, and connected to multiple institutions. (And not all of them admit to having abandoned the faith, but that’s a subject for another time.)
It would be comforting to believe that people like us (“real” Protestants, or whatever) know too much to fall for the temptation to abandon the faith, but it’s just not true. We’re not just losing people from the margins; we’re losing people like you–and your kids. Cool-shaming can work on anybody, and seems to work particularly well on people who aspire to respectability–or as C. S. Lewis put it, a place in the Inner Ring. The antidote is as simple as it is painful:
“Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore let us go forth to Him, outside the camp, bearing His reproach, for here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come. Therefore by Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name; but do not forget to do good and to share, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.” (Heb. 13:12-16)
UPDATE: Dr. Smith recently discussed his article with Aaron Renn.
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