I received an audio copy of this book from NetGalley as an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This is the book that I did not know that I needed to read. As someone who has grappled with so many of the topics discussed here and as someone who has left faith completely after being traumatized by the evangelical church and “purity culture”, this book resonated with me in so many ways. I felt extremely seen by this book; because of that, it is a 5-star MUST READ for those questioning how they grew up.

I do wish it would have gone deeper into the roots of extremist evangelical Christianity that is rooted in the conservative party, as on a personal note, this is a huge part of what has led me away from the faith.

I am so appreciative of this book and I will be recommending it to many.

The ExVangelicals is an accounting of the modern history of folks leaving their Evangelical Christian faith and trying to find themselves after having to leave that style of Christianity and find out what spirituality is for them, personally -- if anything at all.

Sarah McCammon is an NPR political reporter, so her book being narrated by her also has the sort of "NPR sound" you may be familiar with if you listen to their reporting. Additionally, she intersperses anecdotes about her own life being raised Evangelical and what made her question and eventually move out of the strict rules in her own life, although she remains a Christian, just less... intensely. Being an NPR political reporter, she very rightly ties the tenants of Evangelicalism including the expectation that you will vote a certain way (aka, American right-wing) and 'turn the other cheek' toward a bad person being bad if their policies align with what The Church wants. Like, who cares if this dude is sinning up the wazoo as long as he wants to keep restricting the rights of human Americans in a way The Church also wants to restrict, right??

This is a work that I know was good, objectively, but as an audiobook I kept finding myself sort of spacing out... throughout nearly the entire thing. I don't know if it was just too much data presented dryly or my mood over the week or so that I spent listening to it, and maybe it's because I listen to more memoirs that this pseudo-memoir wasn't... memoir-y enough for me? Or was I, as a complete outsider, hoping she had left Christianity entirely behind after the trauma of being raised so strictly inside the cult that didn't love her, but the her they wanted her to be through obedience? I don't know, but it didn't quite do it for me personally but neither am I sure what I would have done to make it more ... not enjoyable per se, but maybe more drawing-in. Actually, I think it's more that maybe this book wasn't finished being cooked yet, and perhaps McCammon wasn't quite ready to publish and hadn't worked through enough of her own feelings yet, so the anecdotal, life story parts were kind of here and there while the history and reporting parts were more locked in.

Thank you to NetGalley and MacMillan Audio for the ALC!

An excellent combination of personal experience and reporting on the experiences of others. A helpful look at why so many people are leaving the evangelical church and also how being raised in the tradition shaped their lives, even after exiting it.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4.*

I confess to not really knowing what this book was when I requested it. I had hoped it would be a kind of expose, along the lines of Uncultured. While it isn't salacious, Sarah McCammon's research and honesty regarding her personal experience as well as her shared experience as an Evangelical forced to re-evaluate her faith as she came to adulthood in modern times.

An NPR reporter, McCammon is a great narrator as well as interviewer and storyteller.

A "fallen" Catholic myself, I found some resonance with McCammon's moral struggles to marry the theology she was brought up with and the lived experience in the wake of the MAGA explosion.

I enjoyed this book.

*with thanks to NetGalley for the audio ARC in exchange for this honest review.

I’m feeling a lot right now, but I’ll try my best to parse through all these feelings.

I had to stop reading The Exvangelicals about a quarter through because I felt like I was drowning. The premise is fascinating and I’d love to learn more about this group I fit into, but this was just information overload. It’s too academic and not personal enough. Honestly I didn’t feel smart enough to understand anything the author was talking about or the connections she made. Hmm. I loved her ideas though, and I’ll definitely be looking more into the exvangelical movement!

After years of looking for a book that is an honest look at why white evangelicals leave the church/their faith, Sarah McCammon has finally written it. She says the quiet part out loud - daring to delve into the history of evangelical teachings, how some faith leaders weaponize it for political gain, and the religious trauma that has affected many.

Her journalism is intertwined with her own story, which furthers the narrative and gives it more weight. Her story will ring true with many whose parents brought them up in this atmosphere, complete with purity culture and the relentless message that church teachings were not to be questioned.

One note of caution: if you're a disillusioned/former evangelical, this book will no doubt bring up things that have been deeply buried. Some of it may be triggering and feel like a gut punch. But it also may finally give a name to some of the anger felt in the process of leaving the faith and figuring out what's next.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an early audiobook copy.

Note: this turned into less of a review and more of a personal response essay. TLDR- it's not a perfect book but it's a good one and I felt very seen by it.
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I know I'm not the only one saying this, but I felt very seen by this book. So many little details of childhood and adolescence that you think you don't share with other people, but are apparently very common pieces of religious trauma. I know this book isn't going to be all things to all people but it's part of the beginning of a much needed reckoning with the long term impact of growing up in white, evangelical churches in America through the 80's, 90's and early aughts. And it's a narrative that should be read in conversation with other books, such as Jesus & John Wayne or #ChurchToo. Bit by bit, a fuller picture comes together.

This book is a blend of memoir and journalism, drawing on the author's background as a journalist. She draws connections between the church embracing Trump and many millennials & Gen X people becoming disillusioned by the lack of consistency between what was taught and what actually happened. And she rightfully shows how many (if not most) "exvangelicals" are people who had been deeply embedded in Christianity, not people who just casually went to church on occasion. We're often the people who did actually read the entire Bible, wrestled with theological questions, invested time and passion in the church, did the things we were supposed to do.

And yet... The cracks eventually began showing. And once you start to recognize and peel back the layers of trauma and anxiety you have carried in your body since childhood- from always trying to be perfect and make sure God wasn't angry with you, fearing being left behind in the rapture, believing that demons were always trying to trick your thoughts and emotions to pull you away from God, believing you were never good enough and constantly needed to repent of sin (like being angry with a sibling or feeling jealous of a schoolmate), purity culture leaving you feeling bad about your body and gender, thinking something must be wrong with you if you were experiencing sexual desire as a young woman because that was only supposed to be something boys dealt with, or maybe even failing to recognize your own sexuality until much later in life because you were told that attraction to your own gender was just jealousy or didn't actually mean anything. And I'm barely scratching the surface here, leaving off all the people who experienced various forms of abuse at the hands of church leaders.

There's a reason people my age are leaving the church in droves. And I especially related to a line in this book about struggling with the fact that your childhood could be both deeply traumatizing, and perfectly fine. Having parents who loved you and did their best to do what they thought was right, not experiencing sexual abuse the way some people did, having plenty of happy moments. But also learning never to trust yourself because "the heart is deceitful", and constantly being aware there is a being surveilling your every action and thought, all of which you will one day have to publicly account for in the afterlife. That's terrifying. No wonder so many of us have been diagnosed with anxiety disorders as adults.

All that to say, this book felt like an empathetic hug and I hope we see a lot more people speaking about their experiences and walking through what it means to find healing and peace as adults. She does a good job too of specifying that this is mostly about the white evangelical church. The Black church and others might have their own issues, but it's not the same thing. And for all the complaints about how this ties in politics, there's really no way not to do that.

The white evangelical church is DEEPLY political and we got that indoctrination as children. I've been at protests and prayer circles outside abortion clinics as a minor, wrote a high school paper about abortion being unethical and murder, another one about how evolution was wrong and unscientific, attended a creationism conference with my class in middle school, heard from the pulpit about how to vote and about fighting marriage equality legislation, attended prayer rallies that were deeply rooted in Christian nationalism... None of which I would advocate for today and much of which I very much regret in terms of the harm that was being done, but it has been a long journey.

And the thing is, I have a better scenario than many fellow exvangelicals. My parents actually were consistent in their beliefs and didn't jump on the Trump train. We disagree about plenty of things, but they've been at least willing to listen and not try to push me back into their belief system. They've respected our choices as parents and because of that can have a relationship with their grandkids. I know plenty of people who have not had that and I'm grateful, but I am also still working through a lot and that makes family relationships complicated. And I'm having to learn how to do parenting from within a very different framework than the one I grew up in, which has it's own challenges.

I think Trump was the turning point for a lot of people, but for me this started much earlier. It was less of a sudden breaking off and more of a slow journey away across more than a decade that culminated with the COVID pandemic. Up until then, we had still been going to church from some sense of obligation, even though I was miserable and fuming, and then would spend Sunday afternoons decompressing by talking to my spouse about all the things I disagreed with from the service. Why were we doing this? We had never NOT gone to church and it seemed unthinkable. But then COVID happened and we couldn't go. And realized maybe we didn't want to go back, and how nice it was to have Sundays at home with our family. Then I started therapy and wow did that help.

Today it's been almost 4 years since I've attended church, and it has been incredibly freeing. For the most part, I don't miss it. And there has been joy in seeing my kids grow up without the same kinds of fear and anxiety I had. But it has required much more intentionality to find the kinds of regular, recurring community that come built in with attending church. Would I ever go back? I'm not sure. I've sometimes thought about finding a progressive, multi-faith community (the kind of church we would have said wasn't REALLY a church back in the day), but right now it's not something I'm ready for. I still have too much to work through and the idea of having an obligation to go every week or get dragged into volunteering still sends my heart racing with anxiety.

And as far as God...I'm not sure. I'm not an atheist. I think there's something out there, something of ourselves that continues past death. But what always felt so certain, the sense that I was communing and having conversations with some higher being in my head, that seems to be gone. Instead I'm alone in my own mind, and honestly it's pretty peaceful. There are moments where I feel the loss of something comforting in situations that feel out of my control. Like a child being sick, where praying felt like you could at least DO something. But instead I'm finding my own inner strength, resilience, and love. And it feels good to have the freedom to fully be myself and figure out what that is, even if I'm doing it at 36 instead of 16.

I received an audio review copy of this book via NetGalley, all opinons are my own.

As someone who was raised evangelical-adjacent, this was a fantastic audiobook! I loved hearing McCammon's story intermixed with the experiences of other 'exvangelicals.' I am fascinated (in a looking at a car wreck kind of way) by this sect of Christianity. I recognize that this book is targeted to a certain audience, but I think that McCammon's personal story along with her discussions of the effect of evangelical Christianity on politics (and our daily lives).

Thank you to Macmillan Audio & Netgalley for this ALC!

The Exvangelicals by Sarah McCammon was also narrated by her and she did a great job.
I gave this 4⭐️. She shares her personal journey with Evangelical Christianity and talks about the deconstruction that’s taking place in our churches today. I’m familiar with Joshua Harris and Rachel Held Evans stories and it all broke my heart.
Thanks St. Martin’s Press and Macmillan Audio via NetGalley.