The Exvangelicals

October 1, 2023

A national political correspondent for NPR, McCammon was raised evangelical and was a believer entertaining some doubts until the 2016 election. Then she saw how powerfully evangelical Christianity influenced the political Right and discovered that she belonged to a rising tide of younger people raised in the faith and now fleeing it. With a 125,000-copy first printing. Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2023
Through the lens of her personal and professional experiences, an American journalist describes the rapidly growing social movement abandoning fundamental evangelicalism. McCammon, a national political correspondent for NPR and co-host of the NPR Politics Podcast, vividly describes her evangelical-based childhood and education in suburban Kansas City in the late 20th century. The author also explores the significant social and political influence of the evangelical movement in the U.S. that she witnessed as a correspondent during the 2016 presidential election and how she came to grips with the inherent contradictions and distortions preached by self-appointed arbiters of God's word. McCammon is at her best when describing the construction of the evangelical infrastructure via TV and radio by figures such as James Dobson and Jerry Falwell, and what she and many others raised in the evangelical culture gleaned from the lessons and warnings espoused in churches and schools concerning the afterlife, human sexuality, and the role of women in the family. The element of fear seems ever-present--fear of not being a fervent enough witness for Christ, fear of doubting the inerrancy of the Bible, and even fear that she would miss the Rapture because she wasn't truly a believer. Throughout the book, McCammon deftly weaves the story of her immediate family's marginalization of--yet urgent concern for--the soul of her kind, successful, and agnostic grandfather, a brain surgeon who happened to be gay, together with her own questioning of everything that had been drilled into her during childhood. She also discusses "religious trauma" among exvangelicals and how she and others have experienced it and treated it. This fascinating and enlightening aspect of the consequences of a fundamentalist upbringing is only now beginning to be thoroughly explored, and McCammon's poignant book serves as a launchpad to learn more. A bold, intriguing, intimate read.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

November 20, 2023
NPR political correspondent McCammon debuts with a clear-eyed look at the mass disaffiliation from evangelical churches and culture in recent years. Drawing on her experience growing up in a deeply religious evangelical family in Kansas City, Mo., as well as interviews with former evangelicals, McCammon charts conservative Christianity’s explosion of cultural power in the late 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, as the evangelical movement veered into fundamentalism, aided by seismic cultural shifts and accompanied by a sea of televangelists who preached a prosperity gospel. In more recent years, evangelical support for Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and intolerance for other groups have caused growing numbers of believers to break off into a group of “exvangelicals”—loosely defined here as millennials and Gen Zers raised in white evangelical Christianity who are now “trying to make sense” of a more interconnected world, and “who they are in it.” Chapters cover the evangelical movement’s flash points, including its failures at racial reconciliation; rejection of the LGBTQ community (including the author’s grandfather, who came out as gay as a widower); and strict parenting advice that included corporal punishment. McCammon carefully dissects the lasting emotional impacts on those who’ve left the church and the role of social media in helping former evangelicals to deconstruct their prior beliefs. It amounts to a lucid picture of life inside the evangelical community and the complicated choice to leave. Agent: Margaret Riley King, WME. (Mar.)Correction: A previous version of this review misidentified the state where the author grew up.

February 1, 2024
Exvangelicals, the author explains, are a loosely organized, largely online movement of former Evangelicals trying to make sense of the world they are navigating as they deconstruct--and in some cases, reconstruct--their faith. A self-avowed Exvangelical herself, McCammon writes a kind of spiritual memoir of her growth, from her childhood as a student at a private Christian school to attending a religious university to her current life as a journalist. The author's reporting skill provides context as she examines the present state of white evangelical Christianity: as she sees it, a culture and a way of life that consumes everything in an era already characterized by a growing evangelical alliance with Christian nationalism, conspiracy theories, and science denialism. McCammon addresses the political power of white Evangelical Christianity and the zealous support of ex-president Trump, who was called "God's chosen one"--a phenomenon that made her start questioning everything. The result is this informative, thought-provoking, and enlightening book.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from March 1, 2024

Exvangelicals are former evangelicals who, for social, political, or theological reasons, find themselves at odds with the current state of the conservative American evangelical ethos. NPR political correspondent McCammon is well-suited to exploring exvangelicalism in this memoir, having been raised in a deeply religious evangelical family. She says her environment fostered a fear of the outside secular world, and her homeschooling kept any doubts or questions under wraps. As she began to experience life outside her religious cocoon, she realized that some of what she had been taught--that dinosaurs roamed the earth with Adam and Eve, for example--were not just "alternative facts." Her circumstances eventually morphed into religious trauma, where obedience born of fear was the norm. Her breaking point came with the campaign and presidency of Donald Trump, whose vitriolic rhetoric seemed likely to repel evangelicals. And yet, little that Trump said or did could dissuade her family and religious friends from their enthusiasm for him. Out of such cognitive dissonance came a real break with the Church, although McCammon says that her healing is ongoing. VERDICT A much-needed look at evangelicalism from a perspective that's both investigative and personal. It offers intriguing, compelling insight with expert reporting.--Sandra Collins

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.