This book provides a great overview of the Evangelical world, both for those who are already familiar with it and those who are not. It clarifies what is driving many people to be discontented with Evangelicalism and the various well-known figures in these circles. It is a helpful reminder of how labels are viewed and how various individuals may identify themselves depending on who they are talking to. It is an insightful and enlightening read that all could benefit from.

Thank you for an ARC of The Exvangelicals! My husband grew up in the evangelical church during the same time as the author, and that is what initially piqued my interest in this book.

It certainly did not disappointment. I was blown away but how the author was able to combine facts about typically boring topics — politics and organized religion — and use such cunning, figurative language simultaneously.

I’ve recently shied away from non-fiction because the recent titles I’ve encountered read more like a textbook, but Sarah McCammon has pulled me out of that slump.

I highly recommend this title for anyone who is looking to gain a better understanding of what it was like growing up during the 80s and 90s evangelical era. Unexpectedly, considering the genre, this is a page-turner! Easy five stars.

An in-depth book about leaving the church and what that means as a whole. You can tell the research and detail that went into each chapter. For those searching for a new normal with Christianity this is a great read.

i work in the evangelical ministry world, so this was a fascinating read for me! it’s easy for people to get lost in the different transitions of our lives & the stories they hold are important. i’m glad this was a book that was written!

Both Sarah and I have dealt with religious trauma from growing up in fundamentalist Christian households and deconstructed our former religious beliefs to find ourselves once we become non-religious. I appreciate how much I resonated with this book and the quality of the journalistic aspect of this book. However, I would've loved to see Sarah's personal journey from being religious to not being religious anymore, and how she healed from her religious trauma.

Even though I wasn't the target audience and didn't agree with everything Sarah said, I really enjoyed this book. Sarah writes as her experience growing up in an evangelical home and church culture and how as an adult she is one of the many millineals who identify as "evangelical" and have walked away from what they grew up being taught and believing. She does back and forth between interviewing other people, sharing her own personal experience, and sharing research (the last 30% of this book is references!)

Sarah says that her deconstruction process started when she was in high school and left her super christian culture home to intern in Washington DC for a writing organization. This deconstruction continued as she worked as a reporter for NPR and covered the Trump election- she was turned off by how many church leaders were worshipping Trump even though trumps character was not in line with scripture. Now Im definitely not one who likes to talk about church and politics but I think Sarah points us so many ways that the "evangelical little c church" has strayed from the way of Jesus and is leaning towards cultural evangelicalism as its guide. She interviews many different ex-vangelicals and what caused them to leave the faith.

As someone who grew up in the evangelical church culture (sarah's experience was way more extreme than mine) I found myself relating to so much of what she experienced growing up and a lot of her questions/concerns/negative things about the church I found were things that I also have been frustrated with over the past few years. These things have led Sarah to deconstruct her faith and walk away whereas it has caused me to ask questions and see where church leadership has strayed/I am reminded just of the sinful nature of humanity and how people of the church impact so many peoples thoughts about faith/jesus/their own beliefs. Reading this gave me so much compassion for those questioning what they believe and the isolation they must feel if they do decide to leave. Again, I didn't agree with a lot of things that Sarah lands on- but I really enjoyed reading her (and others) perspectives and experiences.

Many of the topics she covers include toxic purity culture, flawed church leadership, racism, church's response to covid, lack of support of the LGBTQ community, politics (mainly Trump election), and some other highly controversial topics.

This book is set to released 3/19/2024.. Thank you to St. Martins Press for the ARC!

Sarah McCammon is a well known political reporter for NPR and her book is exceptionally well researched and put together.
As somebody not in the faith community it’s a fascinating read of her background and history of evangelism in general with a deeper look into its intersectionality with today’s politics.
I would recommend this book to anybody, regardless of their political or religious side.

If you are going to go do something, you should go all the way with it. Unfortunately, Sarah McCammon plays it safe in her book, The Exvangelicals.

A bit of a clarification for this review. I will not comment on what I think of Evangelical Christianity, Donald Trump, or any sort of political agenda. What I am going to comment on is McCammon's point and whether or not she makes it.

Long story short, she doesn't. McCammon is a former evangelical and is clearly trying to work through her feelings of leaving her childhood religion behind. She is a brave person and is on a path which seems to be better for her. Quite frankly, if this were just a memoir of and by McCammon, then I would feel differently about it.

The problem is that McCammon tries to keep her journalist hat on while presenting this story. Which would be fine if not for the fact this is still half memoir. McCammon relives hurtful personal memories without fully placing blame and calling out the perpetrators. For example, (avoiding spoilers) McCammon has multiple stories about her relationship with her grandfather. I was invested in this thread and I wanted McCammon to truly vent her spleen about the wrongs done to their relationship. We don't get that. Instead, we move on to other topics or the views of other exvangelicals instead of spending more time with the author and her family.

Another example of problems with scope in this book are multiple references to Donald Trump which don't always fit. It certainly makes sense to point out the current political climate and Trump specifically but not repeatedly based on the way the author handles the rest of the book. McCammon herself points out that the problems with evangelicalism came way before Trump. He becomes a needless distraction instead of getting a catharsis from McCammon.

I was truly frustrated because I think McCammon pulled her punches. I think she intended for this to be an indictment of the state of evangelicalism, but instead it feels like a kind admonishment. She lit a match but refused to burn it all down.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and St. Martin's Press.)

Thank you to St Martins Press and NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

I will happily leave a review for this when the racist remarks by one of their employees is addressed. I want to support the author, but also want to know they don’t support this behavior.

The Exvangelicals is an extremely personal and touching book. As someone who fell headfirst into evangelicalism in college without really knowing it only to begin questioning things following the 2016 elections, seeing Sarah echo my own feelings and experiences (though more intense and entrenched than mine) felt like a balm. This book resonated with me and I'm excited to pass it on to a few friends who have experienced the same awakening.

" I've asked God again and again to "open the eyes of my heart," as we used to sing in one of the praise choruses projected on the big screen at church. But those eyes can only see so far. And I can't pretend to know with certainty what's beyond my field of vision."
As a reporter covering a presidential candidate's rallies who grew up in an evangelical tradition, Sarah takes a personal and journalistic look at why so many are struggling with the term, the church and their faith.
I found it to be an interesting, thought-provoking, sometimes relatable and other times infuriating and emotional read.

Thanks to Netgalley for the chance to read it in exchange for my honest thoughts.

Wow. This was challenging in the best way as someone who struggled with staying in the church or to leave and start a new away from it.

oh boy! What a wild ride this was. I connected on a pretty deep level as I too have recently left a very high-demand religion. I luckily was able to make a pretty clean break unlike McCammon who had this life deeply engrained in every facet of her personal and work life. Reading how she managed to find her way to the other side was exhilarating and I just loved this!

I found this book fascinating, mostly because I did not grow up in a church. I came into my own on faith as a young adult who could choose a church that I felt comfortable attending. The concept of leaving a faith practice is unfamiliar to me and the author did a great job of describing the complicated feelings attached. There were lots of personal stories as well as interviews with other exvangelicals. The book was a well researched and thought out examination of Evangelical culture.

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

I would describe this book as a collection of interviews mixed with the Sarah's own memoir that presents stories of so many who find themselves identifying as "exvangelical."

For those not familiar with the term, exvangelicals are individuals who were once deeply entrenched in evangelical Christianity but have since left or distanced themselves from evangelicalism to various reasons.

Key factors of the exvangelical movement--broadly speaking-- include dissatisfaction with conservative theological and social stances within evangelicalism, especially on issues like LGBTQ+ rights, women's rights, and the church's alignment with right-wing politics

If you, or a family member, or someone you know is exvangelical, this is the book you need to read! This book will help you better understand what people mean when they say they are exvangelical or are deconstructing from evangelicalism.

The author is a journalist and was an NPR reporter, and her career has focused on social issues and politics. She brings that expertise to the discussion and presents many sociopolitical concerns of exvangelicals. I found her reporting fair and honest.

I suspect this book, when it releases March 19, 2024, will be controversial to many. I hope those who have questions about the exvangelical movement or those with criticism of those deconstructing will read this book. This books does a great job of describing a "state of the movemrnt" of exvangelicalism.

I have never been a religious person, but grew up around an extended family who were evangelical. And I've got to say, McCammon's experiences closely resemble that of my family members. It was eerie to find out just how widespread a lot of the ideology and extremism is. I thought it was just a small pocket of my own family taking things too far, but I see now that the evangelical movement as a whole seems to be getting worse in certain aspects. This book isn't for everyone, but I did find it quite interesting and we will likely be purchasing for our library's collection.

‘The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church’ was an incredible read and I cannot wait for its release next spring. The amount of times I found myself thinking “oh yes, that is relatable” was too many to count. Having grown up in an evangelical church and going to a Christian school, I was surrounded by this rhetoric on the daily that I never fully trusted or believed. Meanwhile, I had friends and family who were/are fully in it and I always thought it odd, almost cult-like. When I asked questions to authority figures I was met with push back and aptly told I wasn’t praying enough, or that my faith wasn’t strong enough to understand. Now that I’m 15 years removed from the church, I’ve had plenty of time to deconstruct and work through a number of troubling beliefs/quirks that had been ingrained into my life since birth. McCammon does an incredible job telling her own journey to leaving the church while intertwining it with factual data and fellow Exvangelicals personal accounts. These accounts are based in sexism, racism, science, and the overwhelming evolution of evangelicalism into white nationalism that has occurred in the past 10 years.

So, for those who are interested to learn more about the deconstruction movement, or those who have left the church already, this book is a fantastic insight into what led so many to reevaluate what the religion means to them.

Sarah McCammon grew up in a deeply evangelical family in the Midwest. Church, rules and God formed her identity, influenced her belief system and shaped her activities. It wasn't until she began covering the Trump campaign for NPR that she learned about exvangelicals, folks who are in the midst of a faith deconstruction and moving away from the church of their youth. This book discusses various aspects of the evangelical movement and shares stories of exvangelical individuals.
I too am an exvangelical, which is why this book resonated so deeply. In almost every chapter, I thought, "Oh crap, this is me!" And most of the book brought back memories I thought I had forgotten. I found myself doing a lot of praying, crying and thinking as I read this book.
And I felt grateful that I'm not alone in my deconstruction journey. I really appreciated the personal stories.
While the content of this book is important, I didn't care for the emphasis on Trump. Almost every chapter tied back to him, and the exvangelical movement is way bigger than this one person. That aspect of the book prompted me to give the book three instead of four stars.

I do not consider myself an exvangelical (or an evangelical any more), but I was surprised how relatable this book was. Author Sarah McCammon combines her incisive journalistic skills with her personal stories of growing up in a Fundamentalist home that was even more extreme than mine. I loved the structure of the book, with chapters organized around evangelical beliefs, such as evangelism, end times, gender roles, purity culture, parenting, LGBTQ issues, and hell. Because she writes about politics as a journalist, her coverage of political issues and the overwhelming Evangelical support for Donald Trump and conservative causes like anti-abortion, were particularly intriguing. The diversity of her interviews and depth of her research, yet accessible and personal nature of her writing, are impressive. This book reminded me of Testimony, also by a journalist describing his fundamentalist upbringing, yet was more engaging, perhaps because I related more to a female author.

The audience that will relate the most to this book is exvangelicals, progressive Christians, and post-deconstructionists who lean left on social issues and theology. Yet I hope that those in Evangelicalism or who are curious about deconstruction will read it too. This book explains why "about one-third of Americans raised in evangelical households leave the tradition as adults". We should all pay attention.

This book is exactly what the description says it is. If you are not famliar with the Evangelical world, you will get a pretty good primer. If you are already familiar with it, you will get a good glimpse a what is driving many people to be dissatisfied with many aspects of what is called "Evangelicalism", as well as the many current names that are famous in these circles of discussion.

It is good to be reminded of how labels are perceived. I know many who would call themselves evangelicals who would be horrified to be associated with some of the descriptions here, and many more who are not religious at all but who would be lumped into what the media calls "Evangelicals" in present day. I find myself changing descriptors based on with whom I am speaking.

All in all very well researched and something that everyone both in and out of the church would learn from.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book #sponsored