I’ve needed this book my entire life.

I spent my childhood and most of my teens attending conservative churches that veered deeply into Evangelical and Christian Nationalist beliefs. In fact, a college in my hometown (where I now reside) has a very special mention regarding it’s commitment to being a pillar of white nationalism in the evangelical Christian faith.

So much of this book reflected my own experiences with purity culture and repressing my Queerness until years after I had left the church, and the ways I have seen evangelicalism negatively impact the lives of so many of those I love and care about.

McCammon does not allow the exvangelical movement to stand unquestioned. She thoughtfully examines how those who leave the denomination must be careful to unpack our own personal bad habits and socialization so that we don’t rebuild those toxic power structures in our secular or other denomination lives.

There were so many moments that I found laugh-out-loud relatable: SPOILER the moment Sarah’s mother tells her that if you love Jesus enough you don’t need oral sex; many of the tales of mishaps during dating; and the line about an interviewee who has mastered the art of faking an understanding of popular culture references. END SPOILER

Other moments made me pause the audiobook in order to reflect and sit with the guilt, anxiety, and fear that permeated so much of my childhood. McCammon quotes a VBS song that made me spiral for a brief moment, realizing the fullness of what it meant to instruct children to sing songs about fighting in “the lord’s army.”

As someone who has left the faith and has built strong relationships with many secular and religious folks, I also deeply appreciated McCammon’s candidness about her interfaith marriage and appreciation for the comforting familiarity of Judaism.

I am so thankful to the author and to McMillan Audio for the chance to review the advanced review copy of the audiobook release. I know that I’m going to return to the passages in here in the future for further reflection and unpacking. Sarah McCammon does an incredible job of documenting the ways that growing up evangelical uniquely messes you up in such an honest, cathartic, and relatable manner.

This was one of my most-anticipated books of the year, and the audiobook did not disappoint. Sarah expertly weaves personal anecdotes with a more general and extremely thorough examination of what it meant and what it felt like to grow up religious in the 90s. I was especially fascinated by her ability to maintain a loving attitude toward her parents despite their extreme disapproval as she left the church- and even their refusal to attend her second wedding. I highly recommend this book to anyone who was raised within the periphery of this cultural moment.

The Exvangelicals by Sarah McCammon is hands down going to be one of my favorite books for this year. If you've ever experienced disillusion from the white American Christian church, then you will relate to McCammon's raw, personal story of growing up in the evangelical sphere and eventually her departure from it.

McCammon bravely shares about her childhood growing up in an evangelical community as well as her family relationships and how that has affected her outlook on life and the church. She was raised in a solidly conservative Christian home and attended Christian school from elementary through undergrad. It wasn't until she became older and more aware in the world that she realized her experience of reality did not match what her fundamentalist Christian faith taught her.

This book includes many interviews with others who have had similar encounters with the church in America and how it has shaped their lives. I listened to the audiobook, and it listens very much like a journalistic podcast, which I enjoyed. McCammon did her research and provided some history about the evangelical church sprinkled throughout the book, too.

I personally related to this book as someone who has experienced the disillusion with church that erupted in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, responses to COVID, and the evangelical church's staunch defense and support of Donald Trump. I, too, have been forced to revisit my values and beliefs, especially those that were molded out of a Christian fundamentalist, biblical literalist theology that I just don't think holds up under scrutiny. It is uncanny how similar McCammon's childhood and life story are to mine. I commend her for her bravery in sharing such personal details as well as for her diligence in researching and writing this much needed piece. Anyone who is going through a similar crisis of faith will appreciate her take and feel seen when they read The Exvangelicals by Sarah McCammon.

This memoir follows the author’s life from growing up Evangelical, to grappling with some of its tenets to becoming an Exvangelical. She does a great job of outlining this religion and provides balance between less harmful and more harmful beliefs. Her awakening to some of the harmful beliefs is representative of how many struggle at some point with their own faith-based following. Whether Evangelical, Exvangelical, or religious background, this book is relatable and a good springboard to meaningful faith-based conversation. Thanks to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for the ARC. This is my honest review.

This was such a cathartic experience for me. Read this if you grew up in the evangelical church and need to know you're not alone, or if you didn't and just want to better understand what the experience was like. Either way, I think this book will have something to say to you. Exvangelicals, keep sharing your experiences. There is nothing more powerful than realizing that what you went through was not okay and that you are not the only one.

The Exvangelicals is an in-depth look at the history of the Evangelical movement in the United States. Sarah McCammon does a great job putting history with her own exploration of truth and understanding. I felt deeply connected to this book and McCammon's perspectives being raised within the same time frame in the midwest and raised by a family that I do not see eye to eye with in relation to faith.

I really appreciated this book that’s part memoir and part nonfiction exploration of the reasons people are leaving evangelical churches. As a lifelong Lutheran, this isn’t fully my experience, but some aspects were similar to my childhood faith formation.

Ms. McCammon is uniquely qualified to write on the subject because her parents were devout members of an evangelical church, and she’s a journalist reporting for National Public Radio. She grew up in Kansas City so I felt a connection as a fellow Midwesterner.

Blending personal experiences with facts and statistics kept me engaged in ways I haven’t found in other books on the topic. The author’s narration of the audiobook was like having an interesting conversation with a new friend.

The book includes a fair amount of political discussion so reader, know thyself.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio, Celadon Books, and NetGalley for the review copies of this thought-provoking book.

This was a really powerful read. A person's relationship with religion and faith is such a deeply ingrained part of who they are and Sarah really got to the heart of what a generation is now working through in deconstructing evangelical christianity and coming to terms with the current direction of the evangelical faith group as a whole.

There were so many parts of this book that gave me deep nostalgia. Starting with the fact that both myself and the author have the same first and middle name - based on the Bible and given by parents who are deeply evangelical and fit much of the description of their generation that is portrayed in this book. Beyond our names, there are many experiences that the author discusses in the upbringing of this generation that were very familiar and brought another perspective for consideration and validated a lot of what I myself have been working through.

I think this book really gave me a feeling of being seen and not alone in the journey that I'm on in reckoning with my upbringing, grounding myself in my faith and dealing with feelings of disappointment and hurt associated with the current evangelical landscape. I also struggle with how to raise my children and really appreciated the different book recommendations that popped up through the narrative in this book.

The audiobook was very well done - I enjoyed hearing the author read her own work. Sarah did a great job narrating in a way that kept me engaged and not distracted. This was a pretty quick read - I read it over the course of a day - and it definitely gave me a lot to think about and continue to work through. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ALC of this book. All thoughts are my own!

Growing numbers of people raised attending evangelical churches have become disillusioned with the apparent disparity between the church’s teachings and the current conservative Christian culture. In this memoir, the author recounts her growing up years and what she was taught by her parents and her conservative evangelical church. She discusses the growing movement of people who refer to themselves as “exvangelical” who question how current conservative politics are influencing Christians to seemingly abandon the teaching of Jesus Christ.
I agree with another reviewer who commented that the author is “preaching to the choir”. Most readers are probably drawn to the title (as I was) because we have similar upbringings and currently sometimes have difficulty seeing the “Christ” in the word “Christian”. It is disheartening to see conservative believers being blindsided by the very “un-Christian” rants made by narcissistic politicians who support former President Trump. Unfortunately the people who could be enlightened by this book will not read it although it is well written, interesting and the audiobook is narrated very well.

This book is described as "part memoire, part investigative journalism" as McCammon herself was raised in, and left the White Evangelical church.
It was an interesting look at what it was like to be raised in this religion, as well as some of the reasons people leave. I guess I just expected more, this book did not tell me much more than I already knew, there was nothing shocking, or new.

It kind of just felt like this book skimmed the surface of many topics, without getting deep into any.

<i>The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church</i> brings up a lot of feelings for me.

I don’t believe I can specifically refer to myself as an Exvangelical. My upbringing did not center so wholly around religion for that to be the case. And I do think this is, in large part, due to the fact that my mother has always been unwaveringly agnostic in this respect. I think I can largely credit her and my father’s lack of genuine interest in being largely involved with his family or with any specific church.

It’s kind of funny because I think he expected us all to grow up religious despite never sitting down to teach us any of it. As if, by virtue of having a set of bibles in the house, we would just automatically believe. My mother was young and had a similarly absent set of parents in her home growing up and was just curious enough to learn about other ideas.

My brother, unfortunately, did not escape this as I did. When I was 18 and he was 8, my father returned to the church. Thus begins, for me, my spiral of resentment toward those who subscribe to the sort of Conservative Christian believes.

I barely have any relationship at all with my father anymore.

As a result, I’ve spent a fair amount of the past 13-14 years since my father began in earnest trying to force his religion upon me—one I had stopped believing in by the age of 10–learning about the world he wanted me to join. I read the Bible for him, laughing at the absurdity of some of the stories and wrinkling my nose in disgust at some of the others. I actually really enjoy the story of Babel, though I do not believe for a second that it is anything more than a fun fiction.

With the arrival of Trump on the scene, co-opting the evangelical right for his grifts and quasi-ponzi schemes, I do feel I lost my father to the cult entirely. And I’ve not yet found any reasonable way to get him back. Was he always this horrible of a person and I never noticed it? Or is it this line of belief, this idea that you cannot question these “teachings” else you face and suffer unimaginable pain as a consequence?

Reading this book was enlightening, to an extent. It was hopeful and inspiring in other areas.

And, for a large portion, I just felt infuriated. It’s a feeling that comes up often when I read books like this. First comes the gratefulness, the appreciation, and the hope—because the more people who leave, the better I think the world could become. Of course, this feeling only arises when I’m reading books written by those who no longer exist in the Conservative Evangelical mindset. Next comes the frustration and anger, the despair. How could people be like this?

I connected so much with the stories in this book, thinking about how fractured my relationship has become with the vast majority of my family. My father was not the only casualty and I have rebelled so much against his belief system that I cannot help seeing it as responsible for the lack of critical thinking skills I have seen with him and so many of my extended family members. It horrifies me, the idea of even associating with them.

Suffice to say, I am exceedingly grateful for this book. I hope it helps those who need that support. I hope it enlightens those who need the knowledge. And I hope we see more of them in the future.

The narrator did well; nothing standout, but good overall.

<i>I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.</i>

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for being able to listen to an advanced reader copy. This audiobook was hard to put down. I could relate to the author and her Kansas City upbringing. I also was raised in the evangelical church so things she mentioned I saw and experienced in the mid to late 90s while in high school and college. I was saddened that Sarah and many other former evangelicals had such a horrible experience with Christianity. I would still call myself evangelical; but from listening to this book it had me question if evangelical is the word I would use. Maybe for me I would say I am a disciple of Jesus.
I liked how thorough this book is and how it was filled with well researched information about why Sarah and many others have left the evangelical church. This book got me out of my comfort zone and allowed me to see another point of view. It also allowed me to see how the evangelical movement has made so many distant themselves from Christianity and the church.

the Exvangelicals was an excellent read and listen. I really appreciated the author's weaving of her own experience with evangelicalism with the power it holds over the political systems in this country. The indoctrination was eye-opening and the "world" these believers live in is so not "of this world." I have shared this book with a few friends who grew up like the author.

First thing’s first: thank you Netgalley for the ALC of this book!
The Exvangelicals was an interesting book that felt awfully familiar to me. The author is honest and open in detailing her upbringing and the ways it damaged her, her adult life and the ways her faith began to unravel, and the pain and grief that comes with questioning everything she’d been taught. While this didn’t challenge me in any way (I had hoped it might), it was still comforting to read someone’s journey and see so much of my own reflected back into it. She spoke with a lot of compassion for the life she’d left without shying away from the honesty of the trauma it left her with. I really enjoyed this one.
4⭐️

Macmillan Audio ALC
This memoir looked at the evangelical church, and pointed out it shortcomings. I appreciated how candid the author was about her experience growing up in the church and all of the different hangups she had because of that upbringing. I found a lot of it to be relatable and it’s just a perfect book to read for where I am at disentangling all of my different beliefs. I also liked how the author personalized the story for those that are trying to figure things out. I’ve seen other books lately that has come out and just not give any nuance or grace to the deconstruction movements. I was very impressed with this and I can see myself coming back to this again one day. I would also highly recommend pairing it with Jesus and John Wayne wings.

I just finished listening to The Exvangelicals by Sarah McCammon. I find this subject matter interesting, so I thought this would be my cup of tea.

The book is well written. It puts forth the many reasons people are leaving evangelical churches in droves. It also examines the new religious and spiritual homes these evangelicals are finding.

Unfortunately, the author appears to suffer from TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome). A large portion of the book smacks of political commentary favoring leftist liberal ideals.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received a free digital audio copy of this title from Net Galley.

#TheExvangelicals#SarahMcCammon#NetGalley

This was a deeply thoughtful and engaging book about the white evangelical movement. As a person who didn't grow up within christianity, this helped me to really humanize how people exist and believe in the church and what allows them to leave.

I am so grateful to #NetGalley and #MacMillanAudio for access to an audio arc. Listening to this book helped me to understand everything being shared, particularly the data and research, in a more meaningful way!

I can't review The Exvangelicals without first disclosing my personal perspective, which is that I grew up Seventh Day Adventist (its own kind of evangelicalism) in the 1980s and '90s and that although I would still consider myself a Christian, I am no longer affiliated with a church and strongly disagree with the evangelical stance on sociopolitical issues. (Thankfully, this did not cause me to lose family, which is sadly the case for many people who leave the church.) My personal religious philosophy is this, I suppose: Jesus loved and accepted everyone, so I'm going to do that too. Even the people who park like assholes and don't return their carts at the grocery store.

It took a long time for me to get here. There's part of The Exvangelicals where Sarah McCammon talks in great detail about childhood religious trauma, and it resonated with me. When you're a child in that sort of environment -- when you're constantly told that you are a sinner, you'll always be a sinner, and that God is watching everything you do; when your questions about the geographical locations of heaven and hell or how the Bible's teachings and the proof of dinosaurs can co-exist are disregarded or outright ignored -- that sticks with you, and you really can't see how it may have affected you until you're an adult and are no longer in that environment. At least, I couldn't.

The Exvangelicals is part memoir and part journalistic investigation into the white evangelical church, blending McCammon's personal experiences with the larger evangelical narrative encompassing political and social issues. The structure really worked for me, as the book read like both a cathartic experience for McCammon and a well-researched, insightful discussion of complex issues. McCammon successfully navigates several highly-charged issues with empathy and sensitivity in a thought-provoking exploration that encourages pragmatic dialogue and raises lots of questions, and admits that there are no easy answers. However, I feel like she does sometimes paint evangelicals as a whole with a pretty broad brush without acknowledging those churches or individuals that are more progressive in their mindsets.

The sad reality is that most white evangelical Christians are not going to pick this book up, because it overtly challenges the dogma of the church -- and exploring other viewpoints and perspectives is not something that most white evangelicals are comfortable with. But if you are interested in the Christian church or involved in evangelicalism yourself -- formerly, tangentially, or currently -- I highly recommend The Exvangelicals as a solid entry into a growing cannon of books that challenge organized religion. And for this book specifically, treat yourself to the audio; McCammon, a journalist for NPR, reads it very well.

The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church by Sarah McCammon is a fascinating look at the evangelical Christian community. Part memoir and part investigative reporting, the author takes us on a personal journey to better understand this far-right community and its influence on current politics.

Until reading this book, I never had the opportunity to take a deep dive into understanding the evangelical church. The author explores many topics such as relationships, education, discipline, modesty and purity, and the evangelical perspective on each of these topics. I particularly connected with the chapter on their LGBTQ+ beliefs and the author’s relationship with her gay grandfather.

While I did appreciate the investigative nature of the book and the interviews with other “exvangelicals,” I looked forward to reading about the author’s personal story and her ever-evolving relationship with her parents and the church.

Ultimately, The Exvangelicals is a well-researched and well-written book, particularly for those of us who wish to learn more about the cultural and political impact of the evangelical Christian community.

Sarah McCammon was raised in a conservative Christian home in Kansas City and educated at Christian schools. She attended a Christian college before becoming a political reporter for National Public Radio. Even in her teens she saw conflicts between the Christian worldview that was imposed on her and things that she was observing firsthand, including racism, sexism, xenophobia, and homophobia. Over time the author left the evangelical Christian church and now belongs to a growing group of ex-followers named the exvangelicals.

The Exvangelicals is part memoir and part investigative journalism into the influence of evangelical Christianity in modern American politics. In each chapter, the author describes multiple personal experiences during her childhood (1980s and 1990s) alongside Christian practices social mores, and political practices at the time. She also quotes other peoples’ experiences and social scientists on the exvangelical movement.
Additionally she reveals what she witnessed firsthand when she covered the Trump campaign for NPR: power and influence that evangelical Christian beliefs held on the political right.

This book explains why so many conservative Christians have left either established denominations or the church altogether and describes the hypocrisies that they see. It also describes how religion has influenced recent American politics. The Exvangelicals is full of cultural references and quotes from prominent religious leaders that most adult Americans will be able to recognize. It is a very well researched explanation of what is happening in the United States today and presents questions for voters to think about before going to the polls.

I listened to the audiobook, which was narrated by the author. She speaks clearly and is easy to understand. I definitely remembered many of her childhood experiences because they were also occurring in my Alabama church at the same time. Her insight is valuable to both spiritual leaders concerned about declining memberships and to political activists. The Exvangelicals definitely should be on the shelves of every public library in the United States.

I received an advance review copy (ARC) from NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.