‘The Exvangelicals’: Q&A With Journalist And Author Sarah McCammon
In the “The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church,” Sarah McCammon, a national political correspondent for NPR, shares — with a sometimes visceral honesty — the everyday currency of childhood in an evangelical subculture in which the Bible was the ultimate authority.
It was a world where it was clear, McCammon recalled, who was “saved” and whose lifestyle (like that of her gay grandfather) could land them in hell.
The main strength of McCammon’s book, on sale now, is the way this seasoned storyteller locates her own experience amid that of multiple others raised in evangelical circles.
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Whether they still identify as Christian or not, many of the Americans whose voices enrich this book have put the boundaries of their conservative Protestant childhood in the rear-view mirror — but are still profoundly affected by the world in which they were raised.
Religion Unplugged caught up with McCammon to discuss her new book.
This interview with McCammon has been edited for length and clarity.
Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans: What led you to write a book about “exvangelicals” now?
Sarah McCammon: I think my process of what people now call “deconstruction” began in childhood. I talk in the book about some of the tension points that generated that process. I spent much of my 20s and 30s trying to distance myself from that world … and make sense of my own personal beliefs. I’m a journalist, and so I tried not to bring my own perspective to things too much, but to ask questions and understand [people’s] points of view.
Then I got hired to cover the 2016 campaign and the Republican primary, and seeing the same major figures with whom I grew up (or their relatives or predecessors) slowly coming to support (then-candidate) Donald Trump, was fascinating to me on a professional as well as a personal level. Then I started seeing all of these conversations unleashed online and in podcasts about the experience of coming to terms with this background.
Sarah McCammon, author of “The Exvangelicals” (Photos courtesy of St. Martin's Press)
Evans: How did Donald Trump and his presidency change evangelicals and the people who identify as evangelicals?
McCammon: Did Trump change people or did he reveal who they are, and what they value? I don’t know if I have the answer for that. What I call tell you is that for a lot of younger … evangelicals, it forced a moment of soul-searching, fracture, and perhaps the first time they have ever questioned the evangelical mindset. It became a catalyzing force for a lot of people to have conversations, some of them about long-standing concerns about the role of women and the view of queer people. Where we are now shouldn’t be a total surprise to anyone who understands the trajectory of the Christian right, and what their goals have been for a long time.
Evans: Your book is candid, startingly so in places, like where you talked about your parents spanking you. What was it like for you to share those more intimate details of your upbringing?
McCammon: I lost sleep over whether or not I should talk about that. Ultimately, I felt I needed to, because that part of growing up was so prevalent in my generation. Multiple evangelical leaders [like James Dobson] advocated for corporal punishment. Many people were traumatized by it. Corporal punishment is nothing new. But there’s something specific about being told that this is happening to you because you’re a sinner and God wants you to be disciplined. There’s a lot of shame attached to that, and a real feeling of helplessness. What’s really tragic about this is that it was happening at a time when we had access to psychological research that increasingly showed corporal punishment was damaging to children.
Evans: Has sharing this in a public forum altered your relationship with your parents?
McCammon: I shared significant portions of it, particularly the parts related to them. I took their feedback into account. They didn’t fundamentally dispute it. It was more my perspective on how things happened. I should if I was going to write a book, I should treat myself in the same way. I ultimately shared what I thought was most salient.
Evans: Your relationship with your grandfather (a gay physician) threads the pages of the book. Can you talk a little bit about his influence on you?
McCammon: I was in a bubble that was very hard to penetrate, except for this person, my grandfather, a Harvard-trained neurosurgeon who was one of the most impressive people I know. Coming to terms with who he was coincided with my parent’s deep commitment to and involvement in the Christian life, and in the 1980s created a painful tension in my family throughout the childhood. I was proud of him. I wanted to be like him.
As I got older, and I thought more about what I believed, it became really important for me to have a relationship with him than we were permitted to have as children because of his (secular) beliefs and sexuality. I was grateful that he lived a long life and I was able to have him (around) well into adulthood.
Evans: The title of your book references the White evangelical church. How do you think that church setting differs from evangelical churches of color?
McCammon: We’re really talking largely about two different groups. American churches are still famously segregated. Some of the churches talked about wanting to reach out and build relationships with African Americans in an effort to become more inclusive. They weren’t always successful.
I talked to several Black evangelicals, or Black Christians with ties to the evangelical church who described what it was like to for them spend time in predominantly White spaces and feel not included or prioritized in a way they felt they should be. When it comes to racial justice there’s a real disconnect. So yes, I think I have a different history and a different perspective.
Evans: You say you fear the “evangelical impulse” may currently be laying the groundwork for irreparable harm to our country and the world. What did you mean?
McCammon: If you look at the iconography of Jan. 6, 2021, when people marched into the U.S. Capitol with Christian symbols, they fused Christianity and extremist ideology. I don’t think all evangelicals are like that, but it is present and it is alarming. I don’t mean to suggest that it’s the only group that would ever consider violence, but there’s an alarming sort of intensification of that kind of anti-democratic, potentially violent ideology.
Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Religion News Service, National Catholic Reporter, Sojourners, Christian Century, The Washington Post and Philadelphia Inquirer.