I've seen a lot of jokes lately about the "exvangelical" phenomenon. I'm not anti-joke, and for sure, this phenomenon has cliches and tropes like any tribal movement, but I think underlying it is a concerning blindness to the roots of the phenomenon.
We often hear (another cliche) that "all theology is biography." In other words, our convictions are our way of making sense of our experiences. There is some confirmation bias in everyone's convictions; to suggest otherwise is to assume omniscience.
I think another lens to look at for this is that our convictions also reflect our sense of belonging. Through this lens, we see that people tend to gravitate towards tribes that make space for them. Hospitality is (or should be) a core evangelical value for our communities.
Here, I think, lies some of the concern about the exvangelical phenomenon. I see a stunning lack of curiosity by *some* conservative evangelicals about the roots of this movement, and the ways it is an indictment of contemporary church culture.
What I see instead is dismissiveness: "people are leaving the church because they want to conform to the world," "they're happy to leave the bounds of orthodoxy because they want to take the easy path," and of course, people blame Trumpism.
Some of that may be (and certainly is) true, including Trumpism. But the phenomenon predates Trump by at least 20 years. The exvangelical movement's values harmonize with the Emergent movement, and there's a gathering around similar issues:
Community, justice, spiritual formation, feminism, liberation from repressive sexuality, etc.
So... in the mid 90's this movement away from evangelicalism starts with leaders who came from large evangelical churches and institutions (Willow Creek, Mariners Church, Leadership Network). And as @kkdumez points out, 9/11 happens and a new
kind of masculine militarism rises in the church, which seems to be a response both to the liberalizing trends and to cultural fear about militant Islam/terror/etc. There also rises the anti-emergent literature, conferences, and writers who built there platforms on that identity.
(And here's where I get to my point.) I think many evangelicals, because of a lack of curiosity, failed to see the way that the Emergent movement had valid critiques of the institutions it arose from, institutions whose legacy still shape the church today.
One doesn't have to migrate on conviction to ask good questions about a culture of celebrity, megachurches, how we treat women, how we deal with human sexuality, what does contextualization mean, what is justice, and how do we embrace a holistic vision for spiritual formation.
And here's the larger point: if we *don't* answer those questions well, if we retreat to our corners and continue with the status quo, our communities will continue to feel inhospitable to those for whom these issues are critical.
I know it's a dirty word to some people, but privilege rules the day here. If it has been easy to accept the status quo on the issues I mentioned above, that doesn't necessarily reveal that you're holier-than-thou; it means that you had
plausability structures in your cultural backdrop and experience that made the status quo comfortable for you.
So, back to the beginning: being dismissive of this phenomenon without being curious about the ways our churches have been inhospitable to those who are leaving reflects a weakness of character and malformation for our churches and leaders.
I hope we can do better, and for seasons in the church, I thought we were. But it seems to ebb and flow as other cultural pressures emerge and people retreat to their tribal corners. OK I've gone on too long. /Fin.
You can follow @MikeCosper.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled: