Cultural narratives come and go. For instance, looking back at the movies of 50 or 60 years ago, narratives of patriotism and love of country were pretty popular. Nowadays, stories of suspicion and conflicted loyalties are far more common. I mean, in The Avengers even Captain America has to have his doubts-about-my-country moment before he dons the flag again in order to be believable or appealing to us.
Over the last few years, we’ve seen one narrative in particular rise in ascendancy, the story of broken religious faith—either to be recovered, transformed or possibly forfeited forever.
While they can be found in most traditions, given my own context, I’m thinking of the ”I had a terrible evangelical experience” story in particular. An expanding number of blogs, long-form articles and memoirs dedicated to telling these stories have emerged, and done quite well. Indeed, it seems to be a wave with no end currently in sight.
Of course, even those specific to evangelicalism come in different forms.
For some, there’s a story of flight from churchly abuse and control. Others share their experiences in “purity culture” with its repressive and distorted teaching on sexuality and personhood. Still others give us insight into communities of scared, intellectual obscurantists set to repress all questions and intellectual honesty.
A lot of it is really sad, heartbreaking stuff, for a number of reasons.
In the first place, like I said, the stories themselves are just sad. I think it would be difficult to read more than a few of them and remain unmoved by the pain of some of our brothers and sisters.
Beyond that, at times, they seem to have the unfortunate effect of playing into the larger cultural perceptions/misconceptions people have about Christianity in general, and theologically conservative evangelicalism in particular. To outsiders, there’s a little bit of the “See, I knew it” effect at work. Of course, if it’s the truth, well, there’s no sense hiding it and it’s just something we have to deal with.
I think the thing that weighs on me in particular is that most of this doesn’t reflect the majority of my own very positive experience being raised in evangelicalism.
In other words, I’m saddened because I know it doesn’t have to be that way—I’ve seen it myself.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
Now, I won’t lie, I’ve seen some stuff. I’ve been at church at least twice a week for most of my life. My mom has led women’s Bible studies since before I can remember, and my dad’s been an usher and an elder of sorts, which means I’ve been there for the pettiness and hypocrisy.
I’ve watched churches split because of pride and an overweening sense of power. I’ve sat in worship services that look like concerts and heard sermons that made me long for a Tony Robbins pep talk. I’ve mourned pointless, commercialized building projects put ahead of local service. I’ve even told my own story about the awkardness of growing up Palestinian in a Pro-Israel tribe. In other words, I have plenty of criticisms of what we might think of as generalized evangelicalism.
Overall though, growing up evangelical has been a mostly positive thing for me.
