
Member Reviews

This book hit close to home for me - if not my exact personal experience, then from a life I was very close to through friendships and schooling. I grew up in an evangelical church so have experiences very similary!
Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me.

As a United Methodist pastor, The Exvangelicals by Elizabeth A. Johnson provided an eye-opening and deeply engaging look into one woman's journey out of conservative religion. Johnson expertly weaves together personal memoir with journalistic exploration, creating a narrative that is both compelling and thought-provoking.
The author's candid reflections on her experiences within the Evangelical church, and the ways in which her faith and identity evolved, resonated with me as a faith leader in a different, yet similar, tradition. Johnson’s voice is raw and relatable, offering a glimpse into the emotional and intellectual struggle that often accompanies deconstruction.
What stands out in The Exvangelicals is its balance between personal story and broader cultural commentary. Johnson doesn’t just recount her own journey; she places it in the larger context of the Evangelical community’s dynamics and the societal forces that shape religious identity. This combination of memoir and investigative exploration makes the book not only a personal reflection but also an enlightening resource for understanding the shifting landscape of American religion.
The writing is thoughtful, reflective, and accessible, ensuring that both those who share Johnson’s background and those unfamiliar with the complexities of Evangelicalism can connect with the story. The author’s nuanced perspective on faith, doubt, and identity offers a unique and empathetic lens through which readers can better understand the emotional toll that leaving conservative religious systems can take.
I found The Exvangelicals to be an essential read for anyone interested in religion, faith deconstruction, and the personal struggles of navigating spiritual identity in a changing world. The only reason I didn’t give it a perfect rating is that, at times, I felt the flow of the memoir could have been smoother, but overall, it is a powerful work.
A big thank you to NetGalley for providing the ARC of this book.

Sarah McCammon's The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church hit close to home for me - if not from my exact personal experience, then from a life I was very close to through friendships and schooling. I have known many individuals who have gone through a personal journey of distancing themselves from evangelicalism, and having this analysis of the political entanglements was really interesting.
Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me.

This was a decent sort of introduction to religious deconstruction, but I wish it were less limited in scope. I also prefer books like this to be more focused on the historical/cultural driving factors.

Wow, I could totally relate to this story! Coming from a fundamental background, full of legalistic rules, I know exactly what Sarah was talking about and how she felt. Beware of trigger warnings when it comes to religions trauma.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publishing Company for this Digital Advanced Readers Copy, I thoroughly enjoyed this book!

Thank you @sarahmccammon_journalist @netgalley @stmartinspress for this gifted e-book!
The Exvangelicals by Sarah McCammon was published in March of this year, and I read it immediately. Reviews for books regarding my former faith tradition are so hard to right, though, that I’ve been just sitting on this review for the last 8 months.
When I think back on all of the reasons that I left Evangelicalism, I’m overwhelmed. I’m overwhelmed my own feelings of rejection, by the dance between white evangelicalism and Christian nationalism, by the hateful opinions held and shared openly by some (former) fellow churchgoers during the past few election seasons, during the height of BLM and during Pride Month.
I became Christian when I was 15: a likely story, I had a conversion experience at a youth group retreat. I have a BA in Biblical Studies. I volunteered for several years in ministry. I decided after last election season, however, that I no longer wanted to be a part of or associated with those spaces.
Sarah skillfully untangles the reasons that many have moved away from evanglicalism with both personal conviction and journalistic skill. If you’ve been in this deconstruction stage for a while, you might not find much that’s new here, but it’s always helpful to find someone who can put all of the overwhelming feelings I have regarding the Church into words for me.
🖤 Tell me something good
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#thenewevangelicals #exvangelical #faithdeconstruction #christiannationalism #nonfictionbooks #nonfictionnovember #deconstruction #crisisoffaith #rockthevote #electionday

The first definitive book that names the massive social movement of people leaving the church: the exvangelicals.
Thank you St. Martin’s Press, Macmillan Audio & Netgalley for sending me a review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! I was reading this book and decided to DNF it at 64%. There are some parts of this book that read like a memoir but then other parts of this book read like an NPR news article which makes sense that it reads like that because she’s an NPR journalist but I was expecting more of a memoir. I’m disappointed.

as someone who has been deconstructing their own walk, this book was great read.
i am happy to know that I am not alone in the feelings that I have surrounding the evangelical movement.

This ended up not being for me and I didn't finish it.
Being the type of book I hate to give a rating, so I'll put a 4 down.

Why do evangelical Christians' children grow up to leave their parents' churches? Sarah McCammon, perhaps understandably, is interested only in the ones who turn against their parents' teachings, and ignores the ones who fit themselves into their parents' churches or even their ministry, or who don't attend or give money to the church but remain sympathetic. (Fair disclosure: I'd be in the last category with regard to my mother's Seventh-Day Adventist church.) She's most interested in the ones who are attracted to left-leaning political views and reject the Religious Right on what are basically political reasons. There is that tendency young people have to idolize sexuality, to overlook the historical reality that religious people have always felt called to discipline the body and control their sexuality (and, no, it's not done most of them any harm). There is, in the public careers some preachers' kids have made of denouncing their parents' church, that ongoing bid for attention and sympathy behind a little in-family dominance display. "Look at me, Mommy, Daddy, I'm all grown up, I'm bigger than you are now!" Somehow it seems to backfire on them, to make them seem more childish.
Here, anyway, is a well written defense of these Young Apostates from one of their number. McCammon's beloved grandfather admitted long-suppressed "gay" tendencies in widowhood, and her parents didn't seem to believe he'd be with McCammon in Heaven. Christians need to read this sort of thing and remember that we're commanded not to try to judge whether people may or may not be saved. While some of McCammons complaints are the kind of merely political agitation her parents have probably outgrown, too, some have sound biblical bases and would be good for discussions among Christian parents and Young Apostates. Sometimes what Young Apostates seek outside the church are things they should be finding inside.

First and foremost, this book has convinced me that NPR reporters are incredible at writing well-researched, accessible nonfiction (my first experience was Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital by Elise Hu).
Second, I highly recommend this book to former “church kids” like myself. I picked up this book expecting it to be a chill, fun memoir from someone who grew up evangelical and that was not the case! Sarah McCammon uses her own experience as a starting point, but goes deep into the many topics she covers through research and interviews. She begins by stating that there really isn’t a term ‘exvangelical’ - meaning those who have left the evangelical church - because not everyone who has left the church considers themselves an exvangelical.
McCammon does a fantastic job of examining the many abuses of the church while respecting the many paths former evangelicals have taken since leaving the church. I grew up in a significantly less strict household (plus my family wasn’t religious itself - long story), but I was able to feel deeply connected to the anxieties and fears that many young people have experienced while immersed in the evangelical world.
This book will be particularly interesting to those who have been in the evangelical church, or those who have had an interest in fundamentalist christianity. Focus on the Family makes quite a few appearances.

Such a powerful read - especially those of us interested in religious trauma. I'm so glad that I got the chance to read it early and will definitely be recommending it to multiple people who enjoy these types of novels. I enjoyed the characters and especially enjoyed the writing by this author. I'm excited to see what the author comes out with next as I'll definitely be reading it! Thank you to the publisher for my early copy of this book!

NPR’s Sarah McCammon investigates her own religious upbringing in “The Exvangelicals”
31-minute radio and podcast interview on North Carolina Public Radio WUNC, broadcast April 3, 2024 at 9:42 AM EDT
NPR political correspondent Sarah McCammon gets personal, and reports on the motivations giving rise to the "Exvangelical" flight from the white Church
Guest
Sarah McCammon is a National Political Correspondent for NPR and co-host of the NPR Politics Podcast. She is author of the new book The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church published by St. Martin Press.

As someone who spent the first 10 years of my life in an Evangelical Christian church (essentially against my will LOL) and was fortunate enough to have a mother who realized the hypocrisy being perpetuated by that Church, I was intrigued by this topic. Unbeknownst to me, I became an exvangelical at a very young age as I saw the abusive treatment and negative rhetoric that was prevalent in my Church. As a child, being taught “God’s way” and taking it literally as a child does, to then hear hateful speech towards LGBTQ+ people and non-christians made no sense to me. To this day, I have strained relationships with family me members due to this hypocrisy (and subsequent support of Trump).
This book only solidifies that there is a real disconnect (whether unintentional or manufactured) by the evangelical christian faith. As mentioned in the book, this didn’t just happen because of Trump, Trump happened because of the lost identity of the evangelical christian movement:
I liked the mix of memoir and research the author provides. I wish she would have touched more upon 1) her mother’s/family’s response to her leaving the faith and 2) the multimillion dollar schemes some of these televangelist have going on. She delved deep into a lot of issue (race, gender, sexuality, etc) but classism within evangelical christianity was barely touched on, because yes, you can be white, straight and Christian but if you don’t open your checkbooks, you’re not REALLY an evangelical.

As someone who grew up Christian but not in the evangelical church I am eternally grateful for that. Sarah's story highlights so many of the reasons that so many younger folk are leaving the evangelical church, and with good reason. I thoroughly enjoyed reading her story and am glad that she and others are sharing their stories.

Thank you NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Sarah McCammon for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! I really enjoyed this one and found it really interesting with the personal stories as well as journalistic investigation. If you’re interested in learning more about exvangelical culture, pick this one up.

It's hard for me to write a review for this book because I think it does have value and so much of it is intertwined with the author's own personal experience. However, as someone who is pretty deep into exvangelical culture, a lot of this was just 101 content for me on stuff that I've already learned quite a bit about. So that didn't really resonate for me. But I can see this being beneficial for people who are newer to deconstruction or less chronically online than me. Personally I wish this had either been more of a memoir or more academic and dived deeper into a select few topics rather than an overview of several.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this book. I was excited to read this part-memoir, part-journalistic examination of the evangelical church, how it's members are indoctrinated, and what it takes for people to leave that faith. The author did a great job of examining how the evangelical movement has shaped and influenced politics in the U.S. for many years, and highlights the dangers still ahead. It's full of accounts and testimonials from other exvangelicals, and is quite well-written and researched.

This book was a perfect mix of personal experiences and broader discussion of the evangelical church. While my experience did not fully match the author’s and I don’t typically use the term “exvangelical”, this book made me feel seen in a lot of my struggles with the church. This book won’t be for everyone, but I recommend it to 2 categories of people: (1) those who’ve left or are considering leaving the evangelical church and want to feel seen or (2) people within the evangelical church who want to understand why people are leaving - but only if you’re willing to read with an open mind. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC!