Publishers Weekly
11/20/2023
NPR political correspondent McCammon debuts with a clear-eyed look at the mass disaffiliation from evangelical churches and culture in recent years. Drawing on her experience growing up in a deeply religious evangelical family in Kansas City, Mo., as well as interviews with former evangelicals, McCammon charts conservative Christianity’s explosion of cultural power in the late 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, as the evangelical movement veered into fundamentalism, aided by seismic cultural shifts and accompanied by a sea of televangelists who preached a prosperity gospel. In more recent years, evangelical support for Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and intolerance for other groups have caused growing numbers of believers to break off into a group of “exvangelicals”—loosely defined here as millennials and Gen Zers raised in white evangelical Christianity who are now “trying to make sense” of a more interconnected world, and “who they are in it.” Chapters cover the evangelical movement’s flash points, including its failures at racial reconciliation; rejection of the LGBTQ community (including the author’s grandfather, who came out as gay as a widower); and strict parenting advice that included corporal punishment. McCammon carefully dissects the lasting emotional impacts on those who’ve left the church and the role of social media in helping former evangelicals to deconstruct their prior beliefs. It amounts to a lucid picture of life inside the evangelical community and the complicated choice to leave. Agent: Margaret Riley King, WME. (Mar.)Correction: A previous version of this review misidentified the state where the author grew up.
From the Publisher
"With sensitivity and candor, Sarah McCammon offers readers an intimate window into the world of American evangelicalism. Fellow exvangelicals will find McCammon’s story both startlingly familiar and immensely clarifying, while those looking in from the outside can find no better introduction to the subculture that has shaped the hopes and fears of millions of Americans. Filled with humor, insight, and hard-earned wisdom, The Exvangelicals is a gift to all who find themselves on a spiritual journey." —Kristin Kobes Du Mez, New York Times bestselling author of Jesus and John Wayne
"No one else could have written The Exvangelicals but Sarah McCammon. The way she seamlessly weaves together her own journalistic expertise and deeply personal experience of leaving evangelicalism to explore this moment in American history is stunning. Immediately after reading this book, I found myself already excited for her next one." —Nadia Bolz-Weber, New York Times bestselling author of Accidental Saints
"Sarah McCammon's The Exvangelicals is a necessary and powerful unveiling of Christianity as one of the most powerful forces in American culture and politics. With precision, personal insight, empathy, and rigor, McCammon investigates her own past and in the process illuminates the America of today in all its gory complexities and fervent faith. A must-read for anyone looking to understand American politics, faith, and culture." —Lyz Lenz, New York Times bestselling author of This American Ex-Wife
"The Exvangelicals is a sensitive, informed exploration of what is often most personal and perplexing to us—our faith. McCammon takes the scramble of thoughts, feelings, and fears that characterize this era of religious re-examination and makes them legible. This isn't just a book about what evangelicalism has become, it is also about the ways people are trying to find what comes next." —Jemar Tisby, PhD, New York Times bestselling author of The Color of Compromise and How to Fight Racism
"Sarah McCammon is an extraordinary writer and reporter, telling the story of growing numbers of people deeply disillusioned with their religious upbringing. She writes The Exvangelicals with such precision, passion, and insight because she's one of them. Highly recommended." —Brian D. McLaren, author of Do I Stay Christian?
"Making sense of the larger movement currently taking place throughout evangelical spaces is no easy task, but McCammon takes it all on—while anchoring the reader in the personal, human details that made me feel I was not alone in my own increasingly wide-ranging faith journey.” —Jessica Willis Fisher, author of Unspeakable
"A bold, intriguing, intimate read . . . McCammon’s poignant book serves as a launchpad to learn more.” —Kirkus Reviews
"McCammon’s history is captivating and well told." —Los Angeles Times
“A much-needed look at evangelicalism from a perspective that’s both investigative and personal. It offers intriguing, compelling insight with expert reporting.” —Library Journal (starred)
“Incisive, clear, and deeply compassionate, The Exvangelicals is a brilliant critique of a powerful cultural movement, and a moving meditation on loving (and eventually leaving) one’s roots.” —Shelf Awareness
“[A] clear-eyed look at the mass disaffiliation from evangelical churches and culture in recent years . . . a lucid picture of life inside the evangelical community and the complicated choice to leave.” —Publishers Weekly
"Informative, thought-provoking, and enlightening.” —Booklist
“McCammon renders exvangelicals’ search for life after evangelicalism with sensitivity . . . . The Exvangelicals is a welcome addition to the story of faith in 21st-century America.” —Bookpage
Library Journal
★ 03/01/2024
Exvangelicals are former evangelicals who, for social, political, or theological reasons, find themselves at odds with the current state of the conservative American evangelical ethos. NPR political correspondent McCammon is well-suited to exploring exvangelicalism in this memoir, having been raised in a deeply religious evangelical family. She says her environment fostered a fear of the outside secular world, and her homeschooling kept any doubts or questions under wraps. As she began to experience life outside her religious cocoon, she realized that some of what she had been taught—that dinosaurs roamed the earth with Adam and Eve, for example—were not just "alternative facts." Her circumstances eventually morphed into religious trauma, where obedience born of fear was the norm. Her breaking point came with the campaign and presidency of Donald Trump, whose vitriolic rhetoric seemed likely to repel evangelicals. And yet, little that Trump said or did could dissuade her family and religious friends from their enthusiasm for him. Out of such cognitive dissonance came a real break with the Church, although McCammon says that her healing is ongoing. VERDICT A much-needed look at evangelicalism from a perspective that's both investigative and personal. It offers intriguing, compelling insight with expert reporting.—Sandra Collins
Kirkus Reviews
2023-09-16
Through the lens of her personal and professional experiences, an American journalist describes the rapidly growing social movement abandoning fundamental evangelicalism.
McCammon, a national political correspondent for NPR and co-host of the NPR Politics Podcast, vividly describes her evangelical-based childhood and education in suburban Kansas City in the late 20th century. The author also explores the significant social and political influence of the evangelical movement in the U.S. that she witnessed as a correspondent during the 2016 presidential election and how she came to grips with the inherent contradictions and distortions preached by self-appointed arbiters of God's word. McCammon is at her best when describing the construction of the evangelical infrastructure via TV and radio by figures such as James Dobson and Jerry Falwell, and what she and many others raised in the evangelical culture gleaned from the lessons and warnings espoused in churches and schools concerning the afterlife, human sexuality, and the role of women in the family. The element of fear seems ever-present—fear of not being a fervent enough witness for Christ, fear of doubting the inerrancy of the Bible, and even fear that she would miss the Rapture because she wasn't truly a believer. Throughout the book, McCammon deftly weaves the story of her immediate family's marginalization of—yet urgent concern for—the soul of her kind, successful, and agnostic grandfather, a brain surgeon who happened to be gay, together with her own questioning of everything that had been drilled into her during childhood. She also discusses "religious trauma" among exvangelicals and how she and others have experienced it and treated it. This fascinating and enlightening aspect of the consequences of a fundamentalist upbringing is only now beginning to be thoroughly explored, and McCammon’s poignant book serves as a launchpad to learn more.
A bold, intriguing, intimate read.
