Replay: "The Exvangelicals" w/NYT Best Selling Author, Sarah McCammon

Sarah McCammon, author of 'The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church" discusses her personal journey of leaving the white evangelical church and the broader movement of exvangelicals. She explores the impact of Trump on the evangelical movement and the process of deconstruction that many exvangelicals go through. McCammon also delves into the challenges of writing the book, including sharing personal stories and navigating family dynamics. Overall, the conversation highlights the complexities of evangelicalism and the diverse experiences of those who have left the church. In this conversation, Sarah McCammon discusses her book 'The Ex-Vangelicals' and her personal journey of leaving the evangelical community. She explores the struggle of belonging and the pain of leaving a community that no longer aligns with one's beliefs. Sarah also discusses the intersection of her journalistic career and her personal background, highlighting the importance of empathy and understanding in reporting. She addresses concerns about the ex-vangelical movement potentially becoming a mirror image of evangelicalism and emphasizes the need for open dialogue and empathy. Sarah hopes that her book will provide validation and understanding for ex-vangelicals and foster empathy among people from different backgrounds.

Buy the book: https://a.co/d/gZSD06y

Guest Bio:
Sarah McCammon is a National Political Correspondent for NPR and co-host of the NPR Politics Podcast. Her work focuses on political, social and cultural divides in America, including abortion policy and the intersections of politics and religion. She's also a frequent guest host for NPR news programs.

She has covered several presidential elections, including the 2016 campaign, when she reported on the rise of the Trump movement, divisions within the Republican Party over its future, and the role of religion in those debates. McCammon's reporting has documented the growing political power of the religious right culminating with the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, efforts by abortion rights advocates to push back, and the rising tide of white Christian nationalism.

She's frequently called upon to cover breaking news events and national politics. Her work has won numerous awards, among them a 2023 Edward R. Murrow Award for her coverage of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, a 2023 Wilbur Award for religion reporting, a Gracie Award in 2020 for her reporting on reproductive rights, and a National Press Club Journalism Award for team coverage of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018. She has appeared on numerous television programs including CNN's Inside Politics, MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes, PBS Newshour, and CSPAN's Washington Journal.

Transcript

0:01

Hello, Faithful Politics listeners and watchers. If you're joining us on YouTube, this is your faithful host, Josh Bertram. I'm really glad to be joined here by Will Wright, our political host. Will, how's it going? I'm super sick, thanks for asking. You're very welcome. I'm sorry you're sick. And today we have the honor of interviewing Sarah McCammon. Did I say that right? Okay. Very good. You might edit it out this whole thing there, but Sarah McCammon, who is a national political correspondent for NPR and cohost of the NPR politics podcast. Her work focuses on political, social, and cultural divides in America. including abortion policy and the intersection of politics and religion. She is also the author of a new book, the ex-vangelicals, loving, living and leaving the white evangelical church. Nice Sarah. So great to have you on the program today. Thank you for joining us. Thank you both for having me. Absolutely. So I got to ask Sarah the title. Did you choose it or did your publisher choose it? We asked this quite a bit when we... Ha ha ha. I chose the title because, and I can get into that if you want, but I had seen the exvangelical hashtag actually came across the term in the process of reporting a story for NPR during the 2016 election. And I just thought it was a fascinating word to sort of describe. I mean, it says a lot, but it also doesn't say that much. It just says basically that you used to be evangelical and now you're not. And I knew that was something that was true about me, but I also knew that getting there is... complicated and sometimes painful and a little different for everybody, but there are also some, I think, common themes. And then I started seeing this hashtag online and a lot of dialogue around these themes around that time and since. And so I proposed the title, the subtitle, Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church. I have to credit my editor, Hannah Phillips, who was wonderful to work with and had brought lots of insights to this process. It's kind of a tribute to Rachel Held Evans. It's similar to a subtitle of one of her books, Searching for Sunday, and kind of a nod to her. She was somebody who was publicly going through a lot of this, I think, before, you know, in the early days of blogging and the internet, and I think somebody that a lot of people that I've talked to relate to. That's so good. Well, I gotta ask. So, I mean, I love the title. I love the book. I gotta ask what point, you know, in this whole process where you were working through kinda how you grew up in evangelical America, white evangelical Christianity, moving to where you are now, what was kinda the turning point? Kinda walk us through that process. a little bit for those who haven't had a chance or to read the book and kind of giving them a little bit of tease there. What's this process that you went through to bring you to? In a way, it's my entire life, and I think I'm still on a journey spiritually, and I'm more okay with that than I think I was at one time. But the slightly longer answer to that question is, in many ways, as a child growing up in a world where we kind of talked about ourselves like we were sort of an embattled minority, and we were the remnant. And we were... trying to save the world with the truth that we had been given by God. I didn't realize how big the evangelical movement was. It's arguably the largest religious movement in the United States, at least up there with Roman Catholicism, and incredibly influential in our politics and culture. But as a small child in Kansas City, all I knew is that most people didn't know Jesus, and we had to try to fix that. And so there were parts of that always kind of I wrestled with and I read about this a lot in the book, you know, this feeling that it was my job to kind of not personally save everybody. We believe Jesus did that, but we had to point them to Jesus. And that meant that so many people that we encountered, you know, at the grocery store or in one scene in a roller rink, you know, or even in our own extended family were going to hell. And we believed that literally, we believed they were going to burn in hell forever if they didn't accept Jesus. And we even believe that some other people who called themselves Christians were because they weren't the right kind of Christian or they didn't have the right beliefs. And you both are nodding, I know you're familiar with this theology, but not everybody is. And so I wrestled with a lot of different pieces of that at different times and at different stages of my life. And I've kind of organized this book, The Exvangelicals, thematically around some of the sort of tension points and sources of cognitive dissonance that made it difficult for me to continue to identify in that way. And we can talk more about those. But I really kind of found that for a lot of people, there were a number of different things. It was sort of running into a clash between what you've been told and what was often a very carefully curated version of the world, you know, with Christian textbooks very often in homeschool or Christian school, Christian books, Christian music, Christian movies, Christian magazines, all of which espoused a particular evangelical worldview, you know. And when you start to sort of crack that facade just a little bit and look outside, you know. it becomes harder to hold those same beliefs. And not everybody rejects them altogether. And I'm certainly not here to tell anybody where they should land. But what I did want to describe was the really sometimes painful process of what is now being called deconstructing, which was not a word I had, you know, as a child or even in my twenties, when I was really intensely going through this. And so there was not one moment. There were many moments for me. And I think that's true for a lot of people. You know, so for a person that did not grow up in the church, I mean, I mentioned this on the show quite a few times that I've spent the better part of my life, like, either as an atheist, as someone that would have considered himself Wiccan even, and I didn't come to the faith until basically I got married. I married a pastor's kid. And uh... And she's now currently going through like her own bit of a deconstruction. Cause when I read your book, I was thinking a lot about my wife because like, like everything that you sort of talked about in your, in your book, I'm like, yeah, like, like my wife, I think could relate to a lot of, a lot of this, you know, just, just the need to constantly tell people they're going to hell, you know, or, uh, you know, trying to pass out tracks, um, or, or what, what have you, so. So I really appreciate it, just everything that you included in there. But for me, I'm the politics guy on the show. So there are terms that are not necessarily familiar, or words that I don't use all the time, such as evangelical. So can you kind of define what does it mean to be an evangelical? It was funny you say that because I didn't really realize that I was evangelical until I was in college and I went to college with the word evangelical in its name, but you know we just called ourselves Christians. We just believed that we had, you know, the Bible was the Word of God and we could believe it, open it up, read it, believe it literally, and we would find the truth. And you know, in reality, if you opened up the Bible and read it and came to a conclusion that didn't align with your pastor or other people in the community, sometimes there were consequences for that, I mean, at least in the form of just maybe not being accepted or being seen as kind of a threat or a danger or maybe not fully even a Christian. But at least, ostensibly, that was what we believed. And as I got older and I learned more, I got very fascinated in college with the history of religion and I still am, and wanting to understand like, well, where did the Bible come from? How was it put together? I learned a little bit about that in high school, even in Christian school. And I remember my teachers really struggling to answer the questions that I had about like, well, how do we know that this Bible that we believe tells us everything we need to know? How do we know it's the right one or the right set of books or certainly the right translations? And I think I sometimes hear those kinds of questions presented as like, well, those are cynical questions. Those are questions from skeptics and doubters, but they were questions I really had. And really as somebody who wanted to... stay in the community and wanted to be part of the church and wanted to love Jesus in the way I'd been taught, they were questions that really bothered me and troubled me. And all of this is to say that there was a particular perspective on the answers to those questions that turned out to be situated within the conservative Protestant theological tradition. And so when I talk about evangelicals, I'm generally just talking about conservative Protestants. There have been whole books and- Dissertations written about the line between a product or an evangelical and a fundamentalist or you know How do different other there are so many different movements within Christianity? So how does charismaticism fit into evangelicalism? Etc, etc, and I won't bore everybody with all of those but you know for what for all I knew I was a Christian I followed Jesus and I read the Bible and that was that and the people and I knew people who in retrospect were other types of evangelicals, you know who were for more of a Calvinistic tradition or We're less charismatic than we were or whatever you might want to say, but we all fundamentally believe those essential things. When I say ex-vangelical, I say somebody who's come from one of those movements and one of those churches and has kind of, in some way, reinterpreted their faith or left it for whatever reason. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, I can totally relate to your story. I grew up in the Assemblies of God, which is, you know, the denomination I was ordained in. I no longer am ordained in them, but I still have very close ties to the Assemblies of God and really care about the organization. There's a lot of friends that I have, very good people that I've known and still know in those organizations. And so nothing I say is like in any way disparaging, except that I did up, I can totally relate to the feeling like if you don't talk to this person, they're gonna go to hell. I remember distinctly this youth group where this guy got up, this kid, he's like, I didn't share Jesus with some friend at school and then he died. like in this tragic way. And he's like, and his blood is on my hands. And I was like, holy smokes. And it's like thinking about that now, like his blood is on your hands. Like how is that even possible that his blood and there are so many ways that, you know, that kind of thinking is probably much more modern, right, than we would even want to admit or think about people in the evangelical movement. But I think it's so fascinating how you're sharing your personal story. You're also doing investigative journalism into this movement. What was that like kind of trying to separate yourself, give yourself distance and also like, how did you, how did you come at it? Not only as a sort of insider, cause you've experienced and grew up with it, but also kind of taking the perspective and even being in the perspective of an outsider, since you've kind of. taking that step back. What was that process like for you? Well, the format of the book, I guess, came, it happened really organically. It was kind of how I always wanted to write this book. So after 2016, when I covered the presidential campaign, a few people asked me, why don't you write a book about that experience? And I really didn't want to write a book about that experience for a lot of reasons. I just didn't think that I had enough to say about it for a standalone book. And I mean, I felt like there were things I wanted to say, but I didn't want to just talk about that because I thought that what I was interested in observing was much bigger. And then, you know, people would often ask me, knowing that I'd grown up evangelical, what it was like to cover the Republican primary and cover these sort of debates within the Republican Party about Trumpism and how it aligned with evangelical beliefs. And you know, that was all stuff I should just say I never planned to cover. It just kind of happened to me, kind of fell in my lap. And so I found myself in this. kind of interesting but awkward sometimes position of reporting on a community that I knew a whole heck of a lot about. And people, I think I gave one interview to basically an industry publication, a podcast that used to exist about public media and talked a little bit about that at the request of a friend of mine who hosted it. And basically once I gave that one interview, it was like, that's all anyone wanted to ask me about at speeches and events I would do. At a certain point, it got to be kind of overwhelming because I felt like, well, I'm a journalist. I don't want to put myself in the middle of the story. But I also knew that a lot of interesting where things were happening and there were fractures in churches and there were all these conversations on social media about like not just this moment but everything that led up to it. And so I began to feel like, you know I had a real specific experience and an insight into something people were curious about and something that I felt mattered. And so I wanted to tell my story and be transparent about my role in the story in this case. But I also, you know, I'm a journalist and I love telling other people's stories. I love talking to people about how they think about things and how they make sense of the world. Like that is something that just kind of drives me and energizes me and excites me. And so I wanted to do both. And it happened, like I said, just really kind of organically. I thought about I spent some time sort of journaling about the moments. of my childhood that created this cognitive dissonance for me and the things that made me feel like maybe I wasn't in the right room. And then I was just observing these kind of public conversations that were happening online and in podcasts. And I sort of started like stitching it together, reaching out to people, doing phone interviews. I did a reporting trip to Nashville to kind of an ex-vangelical church that I described in the book of just people who wanted to come together and talk about Christianity, but without the pressure to believe a specific thing. And so I kind of structured it around some of these themes, these sort of key breaking points that a lot of people find themselves facing. And it was interesting as I was writing the book proposal and pitching the book to different publishers, there are a couple of publishers that didn't really seem to understand. And I understand why, it's kind of a complicated thing to do, but St. Martin's, which wound up buying the book, they totally got the vision from the very beginning. And I just felt like when I sat down to write it, it just worked. I mean, it is my story in conversation with a lot of other people's stories and woven together because I am a journalist with a lot of research, a lot of history and some primary sources. I went and dug up a bunch of textbooks and other books that I'd had at school and at home that had shaped my understanding of the world. And I quote from them a lot too, to just kind of paint a picture of what it was really like to be an evangelical kid. growing up at the height, the peak of the movement. You know, so I'm curious about, so the subtitle says, White Evangelical Church. I'd love to get your take on why is that part relevant to sort of the overall arc of your story? Well, you know, if you look at data and you look at voting patterns, white Christians and Christians of color who believe a lot of the same things on paper theologically vote really differently. And I think it's important to say that, you know, race is just one category, it's just one lens through which to look at these things. And when you're talking about evangelicalism, as a movement, you have to talk about race, you have to talk about culture, you have to talk about theology, you even have to talk about geography because different parts of the country, certain movements are bigger in certain parts of the country. But I felt it was important to say white because there is a sort of distinct political project that is predominantly white. Now, it's not exclusively white, there are certainly non-white people in some of these. churches that have been sort of absorbed into the Christian right political movement. There are certainly non-white people who are attracted to Christian nationalism. But by and large, you know, and partly through my reporting, one of the chapters is about a movement among black evangelicals who sort of existed in white evangelical spaces and some of these churches that were trying to be more racially inclusive. And they talked about some of the struggles of that because, you know, fundamentally, A lot of white evangelicalism has a history that is intertwined with the history of racism in the United States. I mean, the Southern Baptist Convention, which is the largest evangelical denomination, was created in direct response to the debate around slavery. I think we can't ignore that history, and it shapes these political and cultural pieces of the conversation in a significant way. you know, no title can encompass everything, but I thought it was important to just sort of name the fact that this is mostly a white movement. I got it. And, you know, when you say in the subtitle, leaving the white evangelical church, does that equate to you, like, leaving the faith or just leaving the church? Because I feel like they're two separate things. Yeah, they are two separate things. And the answer is, the answer has been different for me at different times in my life. And it is different for different people. And I didn't want to focus as much on where people end up so much as where they've come from and the journey that they're on. Because I think that's what the conversation is in a lot of these spaces. Some of the social media groups I pay attention to, there are people who've become. mainline Protestants, there are people who've become, you know, wiccans, there are people who are not sure what they are. And I have been, I have never been a wiccan, but I have been, I spend a lot of time in mainline Protestant churches and a lot of time just trying to figure things out. You know, today I'm in an interfaith marriage, my husband's Jewish, and so I go to synagogue with him quite a bit. And I've also, you know, gone to church on... major holidays with my kids and their dad and my husband. So, you know, we're all kind of, I think, trying to make sense of the world and that looks different for different people. But for me, it was, I realized something in my 20s that just the term evangelical didn't sit right. And I think a lot of people feel that have that I've talked to feel that way more and more as it becomes, has increasingly become a political label, you know, that may or may not have anything to do with one's faith or spirituality. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You know, I went through, like when I was in my 20s, I went through this deep struggle as well with some of the major theological beliefs that we have. I know hell is one of them, right? This sense of like, you know, is it being used against people? It's like it's weaponized. It can feel like sometimes. control people's fears, then you can control them. And yet so many of the people that I connected with in the churches I was with, they were such genuine people. Even the pastors, there wasn't like this, like, conspiracy, I'm not saying you're saying that at all. I'm just saying there wasn't like this sense of sometimes they're just feeling like it's all made up and it's all about power and things like that. You know, in your experience, how... What do you see as the major drivers of people leaving the church? Like help our audience understand, like what are the drivers? Is it the theological issues? Is it the political issues? How is your experience, and then kind of bring that together with your experience, like how even, like, what were those major things that made you feel like, oh man? That just doesn't make any sense. Why would I believe that? Or why can't I ask these questions? Those kind of things. You had alluded to before, but I'd love for you to go into more depth if you can. Yeah, I mean, and again, it varies for everyone. And I talk to a lot of people for the book for whom there were different moments. And a couple of them that I'm thinking about is, I talked to one woman who was, grew up in a school much like mine with Christian textbooks that taught that evolutionary theory was wrong. And hearing a lot of the kinds of things I did that scientists believe in evolution because they wanna deny God, they don't wanna acknowledge God's role in the world or their lives. And then she talked about just kind of becoming fascinated through some things that had happened in her life with science and learning more about it and just getting kind of doing a lot of reading and I think watching videos and just kind of discovering that what she'd been told wasn't in line with what most people who know something about science would say is true. And that, and certainly there are evangelicals that accept evolutionary theory. I wanted to be clear about that, but the, part of that world that I grew up in, and really a lot of it. I mean, if you look at materials from groups like Focus on the Family, you know, tend to be creationist leaning. And you know, some people decide that's kind of a small thing that they can set aside, but it wasn't for me. It always kind of bothered me that I was being asked to believe in something that really felt like it wasn't real. And that didn't actually feel that it kind of felt at odds with some of the things I was taught about truth seeking. You know, so that's just one thing. I write about encountering people of other faiths and the struggle that created for me and how I was supposed to think about that. I hear you when you talk about the relationships that you build with really genuine people at church. I've had those too, and I still have relationships with people who are within the evangelical world to one degree or another. I think it's difficult, and I am certainly not here to impugn anybody's motives, and I don't think that there's some big conspiracy. that this is a large movement that has been harnessed in many ways by some of its leaders in various political ends that may or may not have anything to do with what Jesus taught. I won't pass judgment on that, but I think that that's something I heard from a lot of people I talked to. But for me, I think I had a kind of unique experience, maybe not that unique, but my experience was... As I write about in the book, I had a foil for everything I was being taught in the form of my grandfather, who when I was pretty young, after my grandmother passed away, came out as gay after, you know, decades of hiding it. He'd been born in the 1920s and served in World War II, and this was not a time when it was okay to be gay. And so his coming out kind of coincided with my parents. becoming increasingly enmeshed in the Christian right. And that created, I mean, it's a central tension point in my book because it was a central tension point of my childhood. And so for me, I could go to church and talk to all those nice people, but then I would go see my grandpa on Christmas and, or go home at dinner and sit at the family dinner table and pray. And we prayed for his soul almost every day because we believed he was gonna burn in hell when he died. And that was... You know, it's one thing to believe that in the abstract. It's another thing to believe it about someone that you love. And we prayed and prayed, and my dad would witness to him. And, you know, it didn't work. And I, you know, and I don't base my entire belief system on what my one person believes or doesn't believe, but my grandfather forced me to contend with that reality and to think about difference in a way that I don't think I would have otherwise. And the book talks a lot about that, how I discovered the truth about him and how I wrestled with it throughout my life and continued to even as an adult in a different way. So I hope that answers your question. But and certainly there are people who continue to be Christians and adjust their theology in some way. And I think that's also part of this conversation, too. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I love how you described it, the foil, because I think if all of us are honest, there are people in our lives that don't fit. At least, let me speak for evangelicals, because I did grow up in that and still consider myself an evangelical. There are people that don't fit our theology. We feel like they, oh, they're not Christian. So they should be, you know, there's something wrong with them or there's something like they're not gonna be as nice. That's kind of how you felt like they're not gonna be as nice. They're not gonna be as anything. And then when you meet someone and they're caring or whatever it is and they don't fit your theology, then it challenges you. And I feel like that's part of the reason so many people, and I would love to hear if this was part of your experience. where so many people, like when someone would become Christian and the first thing they would do to say, you gotta basically dump all your friends because they're gonna basically take you down the road to hell, you know, essentially like everything you've come into, they're gonna take you in the wrong direction. And so you essentially dump all your friends and then now you're surrounded like your only social group. is this group of evangelicals, or people with the same belief, and it creates this echo chamber. Was that part of your experience? Is that part of the experience of the people that you were like got to connect with through this process? Oh, for sure. And I think, you know, a lot of people, most people I've written about either were raised evangelical or came to it at a young age. And this is probably not, I'm sure not unique to evangelicalism, but, you know, communities that basically, I think any sort of strict religious tradition or community that holds to very sort of rigid expectations and views. It's hard to, contending with difference is difficult. And I think there's a tendency to become insular and to create an echo chamber because that's what's safe and that's what reinforces it. And I mean, that was, there's a chapter in my book called A Parallel Universe, which is really about the way that was kind of constructed and cultivated for me in the form of church and Christian school. And like I was saying, all the books and media and things that we were exposed to, it was talked about sometimes like, well, you don't want to... You know, you don't want to be, keep bad company, you know, I think was the terminology that we would use. Corrupts good morals, good character, yes, depending on which translation you're going with. But I think that could also sometimes mean we don't expose ourselves to anybody that might challenge us. And I will say, you know, I mean, it's not all bad, right? Like Like there are things to protect children from and to protect ourselves from. Like this world is messy and there is evil in the world and I don't wanna sort of whitewash that. But like I think everything is sort of a balance. And so when you hide a child and protect a child from really... aspects of the reality of the world and human existence, I think for a lot of us, when we get a little bit older, it becomes really difficult to, you know, either you have to sort of keep your mind in a little box or change some of the ways that you think about things. And to me, that journey, that process is fascinating and I find it exciting and a little and absolutely scary too. But like, it's part of why I wanted to write the book because I'm fascinated by how people sort of come to terms with that. That's really cool. And so we're 30 minutes in, so it's time that I ask you a question about Trump. And, you know, out of all the authors we've spoken to, I mean, Andrew Whitehead, Tim Alberta, like we spoke to all of them about their books. And I remember specifically with Andrew Whitehead, I asked him, like, would he have written the book he wrote, American Idolatry, like, if Trump never... became president. And I remember him sort of just really thinking about it, like he hadn't really considered that, but I think the question sort of prompted him to think, like, yeah, like it really, like his presidency and his effect on the Christian church in America has been, I don't even know how to describe it. It's been pretty powerful and pretty scary. And I would love to kind of get your thoughts on... on how do you think Trump, because you did mention it kind of early in your book, you know, a little bit about Trump, but I'd love to kind of get your thoughts about how Trump's relationship with Protestant Christians in America impacted sort of your journey, if at all. It's a fascinating question. I mean, I will say I've been interested in these themes since long before I thought it all about Donald Trump. I mean, I'm 43, just turned, and I remember, so I was born like right at the beginning of the Reagan era and was a teenager during the Clinton scandal. And the first election I could participate in was the 2000 election, that content just won. And so Like I have been sort of, you know, as I was going through my own personal trajectory, I was kind of curious about what other people raised in the evangelical world were doing and would do. And so I've been interested in these themes for a long time and I've always been kind of the person who was like, I'd be like at a party, you know, in my twenties and find somebody else who grew up like I did and we'd be off in the corner, like trauma dumping together, you know, because there are sort of similar experiences that I think a lot of us share. But I do think that Trump catalyzed a lot of these conversations, as I've alluded to already, just through, you know, I think there was a convergence of things. There was the Trump movement, which really was in many ways the culmination of a trajectory that I think the Christian right had been on for a long time. And that really started with the moral majority in groups like that worked to turn the conservative white evangelical community into a voting block that would be aligned with. Republican politics. And that had been happening for a while, but I think Trump really fully harnessed it to a point where it even surprised a lot of people that Trump, of course, became the standard bearer. So there was that moment, but there was also, again, like this wouldn't have happened. I don't think these kinds of conversations would be possible without the internet. Like when I was growing up, people who left their churches were just called backsliders and... bad company. And now it's like, well, if you're one, if you want to learn about something that you hadn't been exposed to, whether it's evolution or biblical criticism or the history of Christianity or whatever the case may be, sexuality, certainly, there's a wealth of information at your fingertips in a way there wasn't before. And there are communities at your fingertips through search terms and hashtags like ex-vangelical and like deconstruction and So I think all of that kind of happened at the same time and for a whole lot of different reasons. And that's at the same time also that the country's becoming that the white Christian percentage of the population has been rapidly shrinking for a whole bunch of reasons. I think some of which are in response to the politicization of the white Christian movement for lack of a better word but also some of it's just demographic shifts. So. Yeah, I don't think it's just one thing. And I think that there would have been something to say about this, regardless of Donald Trump, but Donald Trump, I think really brought a lot of things to a head. Yeah, I mean, I'm always struck and saddened because... Whenever we post, you know, one of our videos that kind of talk about Trump and the church, specifically on YouTube, there's a lot of really great comments. And the comments that really, I think, impact me the most are the ones that talk about, I used to be a Christian, used to, you know, do the Wednesday, Saturday night, Sunday, Sunday afternoon, sort of like, whole thing, and then Trump happened. And I looked at my church and I'm like, what the heck has happened? And I stopped going and I stopped believing. And it's just really sad. And then when we talk to theologians about it, they're just like, I don't know a single other person on the planet that's had as much of a negative impact on the church as Donald Trump. And people are just scratching their heads. It's one of the reasons we, so by the time this airs, our five-part documentary series about Christian National would be out, and we did a whole episode about Trump and the evangelical movement. We called it Choosing Barabbas, because, I don't know, if you're Christian, you'll understand the reference. But like, you know, I'm... Yeah. So, I'm curious, like, because the book is sort of like part journalistic inquiry of yourself. autobiography, I'm curious, like, what was the hardest part to write in the book? Definitely the parts about my family that might not surprise you. I had to talk about my childhood to talk about my childhood. And that meant I had to talk about, I mean, a lot of it was about investigating where a lot of the ideology that drives our politics today came from. And I had to do that. And I did that in a personal way as well. Where did all of these, you know, what sort of the history of ideas of Sarah McCammon? And so that meant looking back at what I was taught and that meant, you know, pulling a lot of textbooks and books from my childhood. It meant pulling journal injuries. And it also meant thinking about and talking about my own family to some extent. I tried to be judicious about what I shared. And, but I also felt like I needed to be honest and authentic and talk about the most important pieces of it, some of which are very painful. So I lost some sleep over those decisions, I'll be honest. And some people probably won't like them very much, but I gave them a lot of thought. And... talked to a lot of people in my life about how to navigate that. And the thing is, you know, I'm a journalist, right? Like I one of the things I've covered the last few years is reproductive rights. I've covered, you know, economic catastrophes, natural disasters, mass shootings. And one of the things that people consistently do in my work is show up and tell their stories and tell them honestly, sometimes when they're painful and a little ugly. And I felt like if I was going to write a book that was part memoir. and ask people I was interviewing for the part that wasn't memoir to do that, then I had to do the same thing. So, you know, I recorded the audio book in December, and that was another chance to kind of revisit this text that I'd spent so much time with over the last couple of years, and I have to say, I felt good about it. Like, it felt, I felt like I said what I wanted to say, and I was grateful that my voice was alongside other voices, metaphorically. They didn't all narrate the book. But that was definitely challenging. I think the other thing I'll say quickly about that is I wanted to try to strike a balance between talking about the pieces of this experience that feel quasi-universal for those who've left these kinds of religious communities without saying that there's one experience, which again is why I didn't wanna just write a memoir. I wanted to talk about lots of other people's stories as well, because there are commonalities, significant commonalities, but of course, each person is on their own path and has their own... experience of it. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I gotta say, I mean, kudos to you to be able to come out and say things that are painful, especially about your childhood, especially about things that, you know, people in your family or people that are close or whatever it may be, they may not, not like you said, they may not like it or wish that it hadn't been out there, but it is your story and then sharing other people's stories. I think it's so important. You alluded to it before as well, There's this fear in the church of the truth, and I don't understand that because of all people we should be most eager to hear the truth, most eager to hear people's perspectives because we're supposed to be truth tellers, you know, and people who... who represent the truth. And I say we as in myself, and I know Will is a Christian as well, but we're thinking truth should not be something that we're afraid of, and yet there felt like there's this really, there's a lot of fear around this, and fear around, oh people, they're gonna go, and they're gonna go to college, and they're gonna lose their faith, and they're gonna deconstruct everything. And it would be awesome if you would help clarify what is deconstruction in its current context, especially when it comes around this movement of ex-vangelicals. What does that look like? Because I hear deconstruction, I think of the philosophy, I think of Jacques Derrida, but then Right. A lot of it's not exactly the same thing. It doesn't exactly go into the same amount of depth. And I'd love if you could demystify that for us, this idea of deconstruction. What is it? What have you experienced in your own life and in the lives of the stories of the people that you're telling? Yeah, there's definitely an academic definition of deconstruction, which I'm not even going to attempt to go into because that is outside my purview. But as I've encountered it, well, first I'll say, much like I think a lot of the terminology I use in this book just didn't exist when I was early in my own process of trying to figure out what I believed. And so deconstruction is one of those terms. And it's not. a word I ever used when I was in the thick of it, but in retrospect, it's what I was going through. And I think, and I'm not an expert on it, but from what I've observed talking to other people and seen in these spaces online, it's about questioning, examining, re-examining, trying to understand where ideas came from. I was just talking about what's the origin of these ideas and beliefs, how many of them... do I think makes sense? How many were just handed to me as a package that I may or may not have asked for? And I don't think anybody can, I just don't think anybody, we're expected to delve into the entire history of the world and learn biblical Greek and Hebrew and just figure it all out for ourselves. But I think that knowing a little bit about where these ideas came from. For me, it's fascinating kind of academically and it's also something that sort of informs my understanding of the world that I grew up in. And that can take the form of books or podcasts or just talking to people, trusted friends. A lot of the people I interviewed, or at least some of the folks I interviewed have spent a lot of time reading about the history of religion or listening to podcasts by academics and journalists and historians. One of the people I interviewed for the book, Stephanie Stalvey, who is an artist on Instagram who writes really beautifully about some of these, I think, really common and resonant experiences that a lot of us have had leaving these spaces, she talked about a sense of unraveling and that if you just pull on one thread, ask one question, open one door and look at what's beyond it, that things will just fall apart. And I think it can feel that way a lot of times. And I think that's where a lot of that fear comes from. But I think you're right. I think that there's, we shouldn't be afraid of learning and asking questions. I mean, it's part of what I believe that God made us to do. If you believe in God and you believe that in some way you came from God, like, I think our minds are one of God's greatest gifts and it's okay to use them. Now, we have to use them with some humility and understand that like, I mean, I certainly don't. claim to have any answers. I mean, I'm not here for those. I'm here to, but I'm also not afraid of questions. And I think that like, if a question keeps burbling up inside of you, feeling like you can't, like you have to pretend like it's not there. I just don't think that's a sustainable way of existing. You know? yeah. Yeah, you know, so we have a whole lot of different types that listen and watch our show. Left, right, atheist, Republican, Democrat, whatever. And... that by the way, there aren't a ton of spaces like that anymore and I think there should be, so that's fantastic. Yeah, I mean, it's good and it's bad. It's probably one of the reasons we don't necessarily have the same download numbers as Joe Rogan because we're not necessarily making headlines. But we'll talk to satanists, but actually be civil and not try to ask gotcha questions. So, you know, glass half full, right? So, but I would love for you to maybe provide a, if possible. a like secular explanation of what it means to be an ex-phangelical in terms that aren't necessarily Christian-y, so to speak. So, you know, like, is there another equivalent that somebody that has never gone to church a day in their lives, they're listening to this podcast, they're like, I have no idea what that means to be, you know, part of something and then not be a part of it anymore. Is there a parallel that you can provide? Oh, a parallel. I mean, I think a lot of people know what evangelicalism is, right? I mean, just because it's been so, um... significant and has such an outsized influence on our politics. I don't know if I can fully convey it. I think a lot of people will understand the idea of being part of a community, right? Being part of something, feeling like you kind of know who you are. And maybe you have from your community some sense of what it means to, what your place in the world is and what you're supposed to be doing while you're here. At least that's what I think Christianity or religion in general often provides people, is a sense of community and some answers to these questions that I think affects a lot of us, like how did we get here and where are we going and what do we do in the meantime. And then, you know, for whatever reason, imagine that community, however you identify yourself, was causing you a lot of pain and that was asking you to accept things and not just accept things but endorse things and promote things. maybe literally to the point of standing on the street corner handing out papers, flyers, you know, tracks. And you just couldn't do it, you know? That you suddenly just couldn't do whatever it was that you had to do to be part of that community. And so there's a real pain and a loss that goes with that and a sense of like, well, who am I now? And will the people that I love accept me? And I think for a lot of us, you know, I tried really hard to like get my head around this stuff. Like I read, you know, When my parents took me to this creationist seminar as a kid and I would read creationists, you know, my Bible teachers in high school and college or science teachers in high school and college would talk to us about, you know, all these alternative explanations for everything. And I really tried to get my head around, that's just one example, but tried to get my head around those things and believe them. You know, I really tried to like make sense of how I could stay in my community because it's so frightening and painful to leave. Yeah. But again, it goes back to like, I can't, I don't think it's, I mean, I don't think that what God wants for me is to pretend to think things I don't think, you know? And I hope I'm approaching that all of this with some level of humility because I really don't, I'm not here to tell people what the answers are once again, but I also just, I couldn't do and I couldn't be what they wanted me to be and be honest with myself or the world. And, you know, there's a price tag that comes with it. Yeah, yeah. Well, here on our show, we love journalists. We have a lot of them on, talk about stuff. And every single time we have one on, I'm inclined to say we appreciate all the work that journalists do. I've got a lot of sympathies for journalists, like a thankless job. And why in God's name anybody would want to be like a congressional reporter is beyond me. But especially with this Congress. So, I want to talk a little bit about sort of your journalistic, like, acumen and how, if any, sort of like your, you know, deconstruction, ex-vangelicalism, whatever you want to call it, sort of like, plays a role, especially on like stories that you write about religion. Like, how do those two mesh or do they mesh at all? Well, it's been a struggle sometimes because, in a couple different ways, I mean, first, when I was first starting out, I felt like I had to hide my evangelical background. I felt like I had some holes in my education and I felt like people might make assumptions about me or what I thought. I remember having a colleague early on in my first newsroom sort of grill me about my views on same-sex marriage and I think it may have been because I went where I went, I think it may have been because of where I went to college. And I was very... uncomfortable being asked about that and I didn't want to talk about it and I felt like it was not something I should be talking about at work. But it's hard to just not talk about things sometimes when you're a journalist. You're at least covering them or interacting with them. There's this old debate about objectivity versus some other form of some other approach to journalism and I think we as an industry have come to a point where we realize that everybody brings their own perspective and background to the reporting, I still very much try to be professional as I'm approaching people and materials and subjects and try to think about things from multiple points of view. I think that's really important and I think it's important to try to entertain arguments that you may not agree with or be initially persuaded by within reason. Because I think when you're covering a complicated world and political landscape— it's really important to try to sincerely understand the points of view that are sort of driving public debate. So, there have been times when I felt like I didn't want anybody to know where I came from, and there have been other times where I felt like in the 2016 election cycle, like, wow, I actually know a lot about this community, and I felt like it helped me sometimes to sort of. ask the right questions and maybe bring a sort of nuance to my reporting that I might not have otherwise. That doesn't mean apologizing for, defending, advocating for or against anything. It just means, you know, like if I were, you know, a science reporter covering oncology and I had a deep understanding of cellular biology, that would make me a better reporter than if I... really didn't know much about it. I might be able to do a good job by asking the right questions of a lot of experts, but being sort of fluent in that language and that culture, I think was really helpful for me. I mean, just things as simple as going to events and talking to evangelicals who would just naturally, without thinking about it, quote from the Bible or make religious references. And I was right there with them and knew what they were talking about and could then ask the next question. So in some ways, one of my colleagues said it was like my superpower. But it's also difficult sometimes. I mean, I've spent now several years of my life kind of unintentionally, even to the point of now writing a book, which obviously I did intentionally, but the way I got here was unintentional. Thinking about and sort of steeping in all of this stuff that was really pretty central to my childhood and now has reached this point of, you know, incredible public significance. And sometimes I struggle with that. And it's like, I want to be as... as fair and thorough and I don't know if I want to say objective because again I don't know if that's fully possible but I want to be as honest and professional in my reporting as I can be but we all come from somewhere, you know? We all have a history and I think so what I've tried to walk that line with this book of just sort of acknowledging like here, here's my story, let me put it out there but you'll also notice I don't tell anybody what to believe, what to think, who to vote for, who to pray to and I'm not interested in that. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, I really appreciate it. It's refreshing to have someone and talk to people like yourself who don't have... It doesn't feel like there's a strong agenda to get you to think a certain way or believe a certain way or anything like that. And it's really nice to feel like you can kind of just, okay, yeah, I'm okay with... I'm safe to believe what I believe. I guess my question kind of piggybacks on that. And I want to make sure I get this out right. So just give me one moment, because I want to make sure I get this out in the way I'm trying to say it. You know, we grew up, you and I, Will didn't, right? But I have very similar experience where you were told what to believe. if you didn't believe it, if you had questions, they weren't accepted very well, because reality is my Sunday school teacher didn't know how to answer that question. They just didn't know the answer to it, so they didn't know how to answer for me, and they're afraid if they answered it wrong, it would, you know, that's kind of what I'm thinking back on those kinds of experiences. Do you, and do you have any concern about the ex-vangelical movement? in any way becoming a mirror, just an opposite mirror of the evangelical movement. For instance, if someone were to come to a place and say, well, I don't, I think there's the political stuff with the evangelical movement, I'm totally against that. But you know, I wanna think about this hell thing. I mean, what do we do with justice? I mean, it's easy for me to sit here and say, hell is weird, you know, bad, but I've never had someone in my family murdered by someone and never wanted justice for that person so badly that I would feel like they would deserve hell. And I'm just, I'm saying that. just because of things I've seen on like, you know, cold case where I remember this person in particular is like, this person deserves hell and I want justice. What are those kinds of views? What place do they have? Like, do you have any concern that even itself, these kinds of things solidify where someone, there can be kind of that you're not accepted because you don't. because now the status quo has become solidified and you're no longer a part of it. You don't believe what ex-vangelicals are supposed to believe. I'm not saying, I know it's not there yet, maybe never will be, I'm not saying it will, but is there any concern for you with that? And maybe that's a bad yes or no question, but what concerns do you have, maybe is a better question, about the ex-vangelical movement moving forward? I mean, I think any group is susceptible to group think. And I think that is something that we all have to be aware of. I think the ex-vangelical movement, such as it is, is much more loosely defined. There aren't like churches you can go to and publications, but there are podcasts and maybe it will, maybe it, there are actually, there already is an ex-vangelical podcast. I mean, so, and I think people in these spaces tend to have similar ideas about a lot of things. But I think it's an interesting question you ask. I mean, I think that it's a concern I heard to some degree from some of the people I interviewed. I mean, there are people I talked to who are sort of post-evangelical, like my friend, Jeff Chu, who I quoted the book is, he's a gay Christian who wrote a book about coming out as of having grown up in evangelical spaces and how. painful that was and I talked to him, I quote from his book and talked to him about it in my book. But he said, he's a little leery of the term ex-vangelical because it has sort of like this negative energy behind it. And I talked to Jamar Tisby for the chapter on black Christians leaving white evangelical spaces. And he said he uses words more like decolonization instead of deconstruction. And so I don't. I think getting too hung up on one particular label or maybe one particular set of ideas that goes along with it, I can certainly imagine there being negative consequences to that. I think the exciting thing about it is just having a space and language for talking about this experience that so many people have of being raised in a very specific constrained view of the world. And then... taking the time to kind of unpack that and figure out what pieces to keep and what pieces to let go of. And I really think that's something that, I mean, even people who didn't grow up in the evangelical world will be able to relate to because to some extent, we all kind of have to deconstruct our childhoods, you know? The more extreme and insular it is, the more intense that process is and the more painful it can be. But I think that people of multiple faith backgrounds or maybe even no faith background will be able to understand. you know, again, this concept we were talking about earlier of just being part of a group and figuring out how you fit into it and to what extent you do or do not fit into it and why. I think that's a somewhat universal human experience. Yeah. Yeah, I just wanted to say real quick, I meant that you might plant the first ex-vangelical church. I was just being... What? Nice. Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, so it's all been done before. But this is what I do as a journalist. I observe things. I see things happening. And I go, OK, let's talk about them. And let's kind of describe it and try to get our arms around it a little bit. That's what I like to do. But I'm glad other people are doing other things. Yeah, so our last question before we let you go, what impact do you hope your book will have on the lives of people that read it? Well, I really hope that Ex-Vangelicals will feel seen. And like we've been talking about, I'm so grateful that there is sort of a language around these experiences that didn't exist when I was younger. I hope they'll feel kind of validated. And I really hope that they'll, you know, maybe give the book to a friend or a partner or a family member and say like, this is how it felt. You know, if it's hard to describe. I know my husband, growing up in a totally different tradition from my own, said he'd learned a lot just from kind of watching me as I wrote it. I hope that evangelicals who are still in evangelical churches and spaces will maybe have empathy for those, because probably if you're in a church, you know people who've left it for whatever reason, and maybe have a little bit more empathy and understanding for why and be able to respond in a softer, kinder way. And then I think for non-evangelicals also, just... more of an understanding and empathy for what it's like to grow up in this massive subculture. I think just about everybody probably knows somebody who grew up evangelical because of the size of this movement. And you know, I think the more that we understand each other and even if we're different, I think that that's a healthy thing. So I hope it will help people from multiple different perspectives and backgrounds in that way. Yeah, so where can people buy your book, listen to your book? Yeah, give us the deets. Yeah, there's an audiobook narrated by yours truly. So that's one option. Of course, there's a digital and hard copy version available now. And you can go to pretty much any major bookseller, as well as I think a lot of indie booksellers are offering it. If you just Google the ex-vangelicals, E-X- I think I spelled it right. Hehehe The order page will come up. I'm also on Substack and all of the information is there. So if you Google my name, Sarah McCammon, it'll come up that way as well. That's awesome. Well, thank you, Sarah, so much for spending some time with us, telling us about your book and big fan of NPR. Big fan of journalism in general and just all the other great work that you're doing. And yeah, just good luck with the success of the book. And yeah, we will see you next time. All right. so much for the great conversation. I really appreciate your time. Yeah, thank you. And to our faithful politics listeners, remember, keep your conversations not right, not left, but up, and we'll see you next time. Take care.